“Tell me, please, what are those lights?” I inquired, in a whisper, of a Tartar riding beside me.

“What, don’t you know?” he replied.

“I don’t.”

“It’s the hillsmen have tied straw to poles and are waving the lights about.”

“Why are they doing it?”

“So that everyone should know the Russians have come. Oh! oh! what a bustle is going on now in the aouls ; everybody’s dragging his belongings into the ravine,” he said, laughing.

“Why, do they already know in the mountains that a detachment is on its way?” I asked him.

“Eh, how can one help knowing? They always know; our people are like that.”