"His name was Rakhan, which is, I believe, of Tartar origin; and he showed signs in character and in features too of kinship to that widespread race. But his father had been of pure Ossetian blood, and now he was acknowledged Chief of a certain wild, and semi-Christian tribe. We had never had much to do with them, although their villages lay near us on the West; for the Russians kept a fortified post between us, where their main road crosses the mountain-chain, and we scarcely regarded them as brother Christians, though that did not prevent us from having plenty of private feuds with them. And now this man of an inferior race, and a poor one too—for they throve principally upon goats—had dared to make up to my twin-sister, and marry her, and demand her heritage!
"And this was not the wors
