The Cossacks surrounded him, and questioned him: "Who are you?" "What is your name?" "Where did you come from?"
But Zhilin was almost beside himself; he wept, and kept on shouting, "Brothers, brothers!"
The soldiers hastened up, and gathered around him; one brought him bread, another kasha-gruel, another vodka, another threw a cloak around him, still another broke his chains.
The officers recognized him, they brought him into the fortress. The soldiers were delighted, his comrades pressed into Zhilin's room.
Zhilin told them what had happened to him, and he ended his tale with the words,—
"That's the way I went home and got married! No, I see that such is not to be my fate."
And he remained in the service in the Caucasus.
At the end of a month Kostuilin was ransomed for five thousand rubles.
He was brought home scarcely alive.