"To that town, whose name was now poison to me, where dissolute Russians came to revel, and vile Circassians to sell their daughters, the journey from Karthlos in the best of weather was a matter of three days; and now with the road so cumbered, and the buffet of thick snowstorms often dashing in our faces, it seemed as if a week was likely still to find us struggling vainly. But about noontide of the second day, being on the northern fall of mountains, and within the boundaries of Ossetland, we came to a fork of the torrent channel which here served for a roadway, and we knew not whether to go right or left. As for any guidance the chance was small, one traveller in a winter week was enough for such a road as that. The harvesting of the tissue-grass between the crags was over; the neatherd, the shepherd, and the goatherd had long driven home their charges. We knew not what to do, until one of us espied a little drift of smoke among the pine-trees on the ridge, and I sent the hardy Usnik on foot in that direction, while we rested the horses and awaited his return. By this time the wind had dropped a little, but a white vapour rolled in and out the crags and forest, as if a giant lay snorting among them, and the air felt like the breath of death. Stepan strode up and down, when he had tied the horses, slapping his bosom to keep himself warm; but I sat upon a rock, and cast my eyes upon the ground. I was thinking of what I had heard from an Englishman, who had been our guest at Karthlos. He had told me of the savage gaze of Prince Rakhan, at my then beloved wife, when he met her at our summer-feast of roses, when I had been called away from home.
"'Why, who comes here on this evil travelling day?' cried Stepan, turning suddenly. 'My lord will have company, I think; but not of the kind he delights in.'
"His dark look showed me that there was something to be met, and, leaping to my feet, I beheld a company of horsemen advancing towards us by the road upon our left. They broke through the drifts by twos and threes, which was all that the track in its widest parts admitted; but the one who rode first rode singly, and he was a big man, stern and swarthy. The slope they were descending showed us a score of men, well-armed, behind him.