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 about, huddled together. All around them were the Tchetchens searching the bodies scattered over a great circle—making sure in the daylight they had missed nothing of value in the massacre and robbery during the night.

During the morning the Tchetchens busied themselves with the young women who had been permitted to survive the night. We could see them go up to the little group of survivors and drag some of them away.

It was when the Tchetchens began to tire of this that we saw them preparing, a little way from where we were, in a flat place on the plain, for one of the pastimes for which wild Circassian tribes are famous, and which they frequently repeated, as I afterward learned, as long as my people lasted.

They planted their swords, which were the long, slender-bladed swords that came from Germany, in a long row in the sand, so the sharp pointed blades rose out of the ground as high as would be a very small child. When we saw these preparations all of us knew what was going to happen. When Armenian children are bad their mothers sometimes tell them the Tchetchens will come and get them if they don’t be good. And when the children ask, “And when the Tchetchens come, what will they do?” their mothers say:

“The Tchetchens are very wicked robber horsemen, who like to sharpen their swords with little boys and girls.”