CHAPTER III.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 89, 14 February 1885, Page 4

CHAPTER 111.

Somk days later Niaz went on an expedition again, "on the Czar's sorvice for the protection of the frontier," and took more than half his able-bodied Tartars on the journoyvuth him. Olga had never felt so lonely before, surrounded now by doubt and mystery in that awful solitary stronghold. Tho broken watch weighed gloomily upon her frightened spirits. Niaz was gone for threo days, as often happened, and on the fourth night, after she had retired to her lonoly bedroom, sho felt sure she heard his voice speaking low somewhere in tho courtyard. At the sound she sprang from hor bed and wont to tho window. Yes, there, down in tho far corner of tho yard, without lights or noise, and treading cautiously, she saw Niaz and his men filing quietly in through the dim gloom, and bunging with them a number of boxes. Her heart beat fa?t. Could it bo some kind of smuggling ? They lay so near the pass-e^ into Turkestan and China, and she knew that the merchant track from Yarkand to Semipalatinsk crossed the frontier not far from Niaz'a villageHuddling on her dress hastily, sho issued out, alone and terrified, into tho dark courtyard, and fought over the whole place in the black night lor sight of Niaz. She could find him nowhere. At last she mounted the staircase to the mouldering rampart. Generally tho Tartar guards kept watch there constantly, but to-night the whole place seemed somehow utterly deserted. Sho groped her way along till she reached the far corner by a patch of ground which Niaz had told her was the Tartar burial-place. There sho came suddenly upon a great crowd of men below on the plain, running about and shouting wildly, with links and torches Niaz stood in tho midst, erect and militaiy, with his Russian uniform gleaming fitfully in the flickering torchlight. In fiont of him six Turcoman merchants, with their hands bound behind their backs, I knelt upon the ground, and beside him two Tartars hold by cither arm a man in Euiopcan dress, whom Olga recognised at once as the English traveller from India by way of the Himalyas. Her heart stood still within her with terror, and &he hung there, mute and unseen, upoi the rampart above, wondering what in heaven's name this extraordinary scene M r as going to end in. j What could it mean ? What could Niaz be ' doing in it ? Great God, it was too horrible ! A Tartar came forward quietly from the crowd with a curved sword. At a word j from Niaz he raised bis sword aloft in the air. One second it glanced bright in the torchlight ; the next second a Turcoman's head lay rolling in the dust, and a little torrent of blood spurted suddenly from the still kneeling corpse. Olga opened her mouth to scream at the horrid sight, but happily hor voice at onco forsook her as in a dream, and she stood fixed to the spot in a perfect fascination of awe and terror. Then the Tartar moved on, obedient to a word and a nod from Niaz, and raised his sword again abovo the second Turcoman. In a moment the second head too rolled down quietly besido the other. Without a minute's delay, as though it formed part of his everyday business, the practised headsman went on quietly to the next in order, and did not stop till all six heads lay grim and ghastly scattered about unheeded in the dust together. Olga shut her eyes, sickening, but still could not scream for horror. Next, Niaz turned to tho English traveller and said something to him in his politest manner. Olga couldn't catch the words themselves becauso of the distance, but she saw from his gestures that he was apologising to the Englishman for his rough treatment. Tho Englishman in reply drow out and handed to Niaz a small canvas bag and a purse and a watch. Niaz took them, bowing politely. "Hands off," he cried to the Tartars in Russian, and they loosed their prisoner. Then he made a sign, and the Englishman knelt. In a minute more his head lay rolling in the dust below, and Niaz, with a placid smile upon his handsome face, turned to give orders to the surrounding Tartars. Olga could stand it no more. She dared not scream or let herself be seen ; but she turned round, sick at heart, and groped her way, half paralysed by fear, along the mouldering rampart ; an^l then turned in at last to her own bedroom, where she flung* herself upon the bed in her clothes, and lay, tearless but terrified, the whole night through in blinding misery. She did not need to have it all explained to her, Niaz was nothing more, after all, than a savage Buriat robber chieftain.