under cover of night, and carried off Kamco and her daughter Chainitza
captives to Kardiki. It was proposed to put them to death; and
sufficient evidence to justify their execution was not wanting, but
their beauty saved their lives; their captors preferred to revenge
themselves by licentiousness rather than by murder. Shut up all day in
prison, they only emerged at night to pass into the arms of the men who
had won them by lot the previous morning. This state of things lasted
for a month, at the end of which a Greek of Argyro-Castron, named G.
Malicovo, moved by compassion for their horrible fate, ransomed them for
twenty thousand piastres, and took them back to Tepelen.

Ali had just returned. He was accosted by his mother and sister, pale
with fatigue, shame, and rage. They told him what had taken place, with
cries and tears, and Kamco added, fixing her distracted eyes upon him,
"My son! my son! my soul will enjoy no peace till Kormovo and Kardiki
destroyed by thy scimitar, will no longer exist to bear witness to my
dishonour."

Ali, in whom this sight and this story had aroused sanguinary passions,
promised a vengeance proportioned to the outrage, and worked with all
his might to place himself in a position to keep his word. A worthy son
of his father, he had commenced life in the fashion of the heroes of
ancient Greece, stealing sheep and goats, and from the age of fourteen
years he had acquired an equal reputation to that earned by the son of
Jupiter and Maia. When he grew to manhood, he extended his operations.
At the time of which we are speaking, he had long practised open
pillage. His plundering expeditions added to his mother's savings, who
since her return from Kardiki had altogether withdrawn from public
life, and devoted herself to household duties, enabled him to collect
a considerable force for am expedition against Kormovo, one of the two