The night passed slowly with me in the khan. After the conclusion of the Hadji's story, the travellers who were halting there coiled themselves up to sleep, on the divan or on their carpets or felt mats; but I was too much excited, too wakeful and suspicious of the honest intentions of all about me, too anxious for dawn and the successful completion of the important duty confided to me, to attempt following their example, or even to allow that my horse should be unsaddled. I simply relaxed his girths, and remained in the travellers' common apartment, listening to every passing sound, and watching the sharp oriental features of the black-bearded and picturesque-looking sleepers by the smoky light of a solitary oil-lamp, which swung from a dormant beam that traversed the apartment. The arched rafters of the ceiling were painted in alternate stripes of white and black. There was a fireplace or open chimney, where smouldered on the hearthstone a heap of branches and dry fir-cones, the embers of which reddened and whitened in the downward puffs of wind that eddied in the vent; and round the walls were rows of shining tin plates, and under these were other rows of white cloths, like towels in shape and size, but worked and embroidered with gold thread, all made and prepared before marriage by the Tartar hostess in her bridal days. All these quaint objects appeared to recede or fade from my sight, and sleep was just beginning to overpower me, when my sleeve was twitched by the Hadji, who pointed to the snow-covered summits of the mountains then visible from the windows, and becoming tipped with red light; and stiff and weary I started up, to have my horse corned and watered for the task of that day, the close of which I could little foresee.

The wife of the Tartar placed before me, on a table only a foot high and little more than a foot square, a large tin tray, containing some hard boiled eggs, black rye bread, and a vessel filled with the sweet juice of pears. It was a strange and humble repast, but proved quite Apician to me after our mode of messing before Sebastopol. I had barely ended this simple Tartar breakfast, when the Stamboul Hadji, who was to be my guide to Canrobert's post near Kokoz, exclaimed, in a startled voice, "Allah kerim--look!"

I followed the direction indicated by his hand and dark, gleaming eyes, and with emotions of a very chequered kind saw, through an open window, "a clump of spears," as Scott would have called them; in short, a party of Cossacks riding slowly and leisurely down the mountain-path that led straight towards the house. In the eastern sunlight the tips of their lances shone like fiery stars; but no other appointments glittered about them; for unlike the gay light cavalry of France and Britain, their uniforms are generally of the most plain and dingy description. As yet they were about a mile distant, and if I would escape them, there was not a moment to be lost. I rushed to my horse, looked hastily but surely to bridle-bit, to saddle-girth, and stirrup-leather; and without waiting for the Hadji, who, being afoot, would only serve to retard my pace and lead to my capture, I gave some money to the Tartar hostess, and galloped away, diving deep into the forest, hoping that I had been as yet unseen, and should escape if none of the people at the caravanserai betrayed me, either under the inspiration of cowardice or malevolence. To avoid this party, who, it would appear, were coming right along the road I should pursue, I rode due eastward towards the ridge of Mount Yaila, which rose between me and the Black Sea, and which extends from Balaclava nearly to Alushta, a distance of fifty miles.

The day was clear and lovely, though cold and wintry, as the season was so far advanced, and I proceeded lightly along a narrow forest path, the purely-bred animal I rode seeming scarcely to touch, but merely to brush, the dewy grass with its small hoofs. The air was loaded by the fragrance of the firs; here and there, between the dark and bronze-looking glades, fell the golden gleams of the morning sun; and at times I had a view of the sombre sea of cones that spread over the hills in countless lines, and in places untrodden, perhaps, save by the wolf and the badger; overhead the black Egyptian vulture hovered in mid-air, the brown partridges whirred up before my horse's feet, and the hare, too, fled from its lurking-place among the long grass; but by wandering thus deviously in such a lonely place, though I might avoid those ubiquitous Cossacks, who were scattered "broadcast" over all Crim Tartary, I should never reach Kokoz, or deliver that despatch, which, if taken by the enemy, I meant to destroy. Once or twice I came upon some Tartar huts, whose occupants seemed to be chiefly women--the men being all probably employed as military wagoners, in the forest or afield; but they drew close their yashmacs and shut their doors at my approach; so midday came on, and I was still in ignorance of the route to pursue, and in a district so primitive that, when the simple natives saw me scrape a lucifer-match to light a cigar, they were struck dumb with fear and wonder. Vague, wild, and romantic dreams and hopes came into my mind, that, if I perished and my name appeared in the Gazette, Estelle would weep for me; and in my absurd, most misplaced regard, and almost boyish enthusiasm, I felt that I should cheerfully have given up the life God gave me, for a tear from this false girl, could I be but certain that she would have shed it. Ay, there was the rub! Would she shed it, or the sacrifice be worth the return?

"Bah!" thought I, as I bit my lip, and uttering something like a malediction rode sullenly and madly on.

"Why cling thus to the dead past?" thought I, after a time. "Pshaw! Phil Caradoc was right in all he urged upon me. Yet that past is so sweet--it was so brilliant and tender--that memory cannot but dwell upon it with fondness and regret, with passion and bitterness."

Pausing for nearly an hour, my whole "tiffin" being a damp cheroot, I loosened my horse's girths for the time, and turned his quivering and distended nostrils to the keen winter blast that blew from the Euxine, and then I remounted. After wandering dubiously backward and forward, and seeking to guide my motions by the sun, just as I was about to penetrate into a narrow rocky defile, the outer end of which I hoped would bring me to some proper roadway or place where my route could be ascertained, the distant sound of a Cossack trumpet fairly in my front, and responded to by another apparently but some fifty yards in my rear, made me rein in my horse, while my heart beat wildly.

"Cossacks again!" I exclaimed, for I was evidently between two scouting parties, and if I escaped one, was pretty certain to be captured by the other.

Instinctively I guided my horse aside into a clump of wild pear-trees, the now leafless stems and branches of which I greatly feared would fail to conceal either it or me; but no nearer lurking place was nigh, and there I waited and watched, my spirit galled and my heart swollen with natural excitement and anxiety. Death seemed very close to me at that moment; yet I sat in my saddle, revolver in hand, the blade of my drawn sword in the same grasp with my reins, and ready for instant use, as I was resolved to sell my life dearly. Preoccupied, I had been unconscious for some time past that the cold had been increasing; that the sun, lately so brilliant, had become obscured in sombre gray clouds, and even that snow had begun to fall. Delicate and white as floating swans'-down fell the flakes over all the scenery. On my clothing and on my horse-furniture it remained white and pure; but on the roadway I had to traverse it speedily became half-frozen mud. If I escaped these scouting parties my horse-tracks might yet betray me, and I thought vainly of the foresight of Robert Bruce when he fled from London over a snow-covered country with his horse-shoes inverted. If I escaped them! I was not left long in uncertain............