“Hah! are you come back, you devils?” she shrieked, and flew at Dobri, who would certainly have been stabbed, for he paid no attention to her, if I had not caught her wrist, and forced the knife from her grasp. Even then she sprang at him and fastened her fingers in his neck while she cried, “Give me back my child, I say! give me my child, you fiend!”
She stopped and looked earnestly in his face, then, springing back, and standing before him with clenched hands, she screamed—
“Ha, haa! it is you, Dobri! why did you not come to help us? traitor—coward—to leave us at such a time! Did you not hear the shrieks of Marika when they dragged her from your cottage? Did you not see the form of little Dobri quivering on the point of the Circassian’s spear? Were you deaf when Ivanka’s death-shriek pierced my ears like—. Oh! God forgive me, Dobri, I did not mean to—”
She stopped in the torrent of her wrath, stretched both arms convulsively towards heaven, and, with a piercing cry for “Mercy!” fell dead at our feet.
Still the scout did not move. He stood in the same half-shrinking attitude of intense agony, glaring at the ruin around him.
“Dobri,” said I at last, gently touching his arm, and endeavouring to arouse him.
He started like one waking out of a dream, hurled me aside with such violence that I fell heavily to the ground, and rushed from the spot at full speed.
Lancey ran after him, but soon stopped. He might as well have chased a mountain hare. We both, however, followed the track he had pursued, and, catching our horses, passed into the village.
“It’s of no use to follow, sir,” said Lancey, “we can’t tell which way ’e’s gone.”
I felt that pursuit would indeed be useless, and pulled up with the intention of searching among the ruins of the village for some one who might have escaped the carnage, and could give me information.