"I would not have believed it, but an old woman came up to me on the street, of her own accord, and said:
"'They all got into a wagon and have moved away into a Russian village.'
"What the village was called she could not tell me, and so every trace of them was lost.
"Many years later a gentleman came from Stavropol to our city, who gave me some news of the poor wretches. They had settled in a Cossack village—he told me the name, but I have forgotten—where at first they suffered great want; and just as things were going a little better with them, Mairam and Sarkis died of the cholera and Takusch and Toros were left alone. Soon after, a Russian officer saw Takusch and was greatly pleased with her. After a few months she married him. Toros carried on his father's business for a time, then gave it up and joined the army. So much I found out from the gentleman from Stavropol.
"Some time later I met again one who knew Takusch. He told me that she was now a widow. Her husband had been a drunkard, spent his whole nights in inns, often struck his poor wife, and treated her very badly. Finally they brought him home dead. Toros's neck had been broken at a horse-race and he was dead. He said also that Takusch had almost forgotten the Armenian language and had changed her faith.
"'That is the history of the Vacant Yard."