of Anapa, at the time of our story there dwelt two families, named
Gymroc and Adegah. Both these families traced their ancestry back to
noble chiefs, who, in the days of Circassian glory and independence,
were at the head of large and powerful tribes of their countrymen.
These families, from the fact that they were thus descended, were
still held by the mountaineers who lived about them in reverence,
and their words had double weight in council when important subjects
were discussed; and indeed the present head of each was often chosen
to lead them on to the almost constantly recurring battles and
bloody guerilla contests that transpired between the mountaineers
and their enemies, the Russian Cossacks.

The family of Gymroc was blessed with a fair daughter, an only
child, who, though living among a people who were so universally
endowed with loveliness in their gentler sex, was famed for her
transcendent loveliness far and near, and the youths of the
neighboring valleys and plains sighed in their hearts to think that
the fairest flower in all Circassia was but blooming to shed its
ripened fragrance and loveliness in the harem of some dark and
bearded Mahometan, to be the toy of some rich and heartless Turk.

One there was among the young mountaineers, Aphiz Adegah, whose
whole life and soul seemed bound up in the lovely Komel, as she was
called. Neither was more than eighteen; indeed Komel was not so old,
for but sixteen full summers had passed over her head. They had
grown up together from very childhood, played together, worked
together, sharing each other's burthens, and mutually aiding each
other; now quietly watching the sheep and goats upon the hillsides,
and now working side by side in the fields, content and happy, so
they were always together.