[1]

[2]

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The provincial, who knows all about Central Park and regards it as the eighth wonder of the modern world, is more nearly right than the New Yorker, who is inclined to take it as a matter of course. There are comparatively few who remember the unpromising aspect of the rocky, swampy waste which, thirty five years ago, occupied the midmost portion of Manhattan Island. The designers of the park have been so signally successful in overcoming the difficulties that confronted them when they took their task in hand, that the visitor of today hardly gives them due credit for the remarkable result, or realizes the vast expenditure of money, labor, and skill that has here created the most beautiful park possessed by any of the world’s great capitals.

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For where can Central Park’s charms be matched? Not beneath the smoky sky of London, where vegetation cannot attain anything like the variety and luxuriance possible in our clear, pure atmosphere. Besides, little attempt at landscape gardening has been made in any of the parks of the British metropolis. They may be termed useful rather than ornamental, and are valued more for their practical hygienic effect as breathing spots in a vast and crowded city than as fields for the artistic reproduction of natural beauties. And in Paris, the allées of the Bois de Boulogne, prim and formal in their straightness, lack the charm of Central Park’s winding drives with their changing vistas of bordering woodland and meadow. Philadelphia and Chicago—if we admit those cities to a comparison—have parks of larger acreage, but inferior attractions. Quantity can never atone for defects of quality.

Central Park is not so very small, either. It is over half a mile in width, and more than two and a half miles in length. It covers 840 acres, which will hardly compare with Fairmount’s 2740 or the Bois de Boulogne’s 2150, but is enough to rank it with other large metropolitan parks, and to afford ample scope to the various arts that have contributed to make it what it is. Londoners call Hyde and Regent’s Parks large, but their united extent is but five acres more than that of Central Park.

Indeed, one of the most wonderful and attractive features of Central Park is the skill with which its apparent size has been magnified. A stranger driving or walking through it would never suppose that in his entire journey he had never been more than four hundred and fifty yards away from the streets of New York. The almost total exclusion of the outer world, and the production of effects of distance, are really remarkable[5] triumphs of landscape gardening.

Another great charm of Central Park is the marvelous variety of its scenery and embellishments. In the Mall, and especially in the terrace that leads from it to the lake, we find the highest development of artificial decoration. The broad promenade and the straight avenue of trees, the work of masons and sculptors, the plashing fountain and the lake below—all these combine to produce the appearance of the garden of some old French chateau. On the other hand, on the banks of the Harlem Mere, in the North Park, sylvan nature reigns in almost primeval wildness. Here and there in the park are broad, level meadows, divided by stretches of thick wood. The Ramble, with its labyrinth of winding paths, its rustic bridge, its cave, and its miniature water falls, is an ideal Arcadian spot, while the lawn tennis ground presents a fin de siècle contrast. Then there are over thirty buildings, put to almost as many different uses, from the monkey house in the menagerie to the lofty tower of the Belvedere, which seems like a picturesque corner of a Rhine castle. As further evidence of the amount of work that has been done to perfect the park, and of the variety of its contents, it may be stated that it can boast of nine sheets of water, forty eight bridges and archways, nine miles of drives, five miles of bridle path, and nearly thirty miles of walks; that it has nineteen gates, and that over half a million trees have been set out within its limits.

The list of statues to be found in Central Park is a long and rather curiously mixed one. Daniel Webster, Alexander Hamilton, FitzGreene Halleck, S. F. B. Morse—these names are well worthy to be thus commemorated. It is not inappropriate that the marble image of Columbus, the discoverer of the New World, should stand in the chief pleasure ground of its metropolis. Nor can there be any objection to the ideal figures—that of Commerce, the cleverly modeled[6] Indian Hunter, and the memorial to the soldiers of the Seventh Regiment who fell in the civil war. But strangely enough, all the other statues in the park are those of foreigners. The German residents of New York presented the busts of Humboldt and Schiller. Citizens of Italian birth erected the bust of Mazzini, while sons of stern Caledonia contributed the statues of Burns and Scott. From South America came the equestrian bronze of Bolivar, and the list of monuments is completed by those of Shakespeare and Beethoven. Great men as all these worthies were, and laudable as is the desire of their fellow countrymen to do them honor, it is somewhat unfortunate that the erection of a statue in Central Park should have come to be the recognized method of giving expression to this feeling. If the process is continued indefinitely, the park will become so thickly dotted with the monuments of foreigners that the statues of Webster and Hamilton may have to be removed to make room for the images of the deceased poets and scientists of England and France, Finland and Kamskatka.

Of this tendency to cosmopolitanism the Mall seems to be headquarters. Halleck (the poet, not the general), is the solitary American represented in its statuary. The visitor may listen there to imported music discoursed by a band principally composed of imported musicians, or stroll to the terrace to admire the most ambitious ornament of the park—the Bethesda fountain, which, although designed by a New York artist—Miss Emma Stebbins—was modeled in Rome and cast in Munich.

In its vegetation, too, Central Park has a cosmopolitan tone. Much has been done to make it a sort of Jardin d’Acclimatation for the trees and shrubs indigenous to other climes. The commissioners’ efforts in this direction have had good results in varying its flora with exotics whose foliage or flowers make them pleasing to the eye as well as interesting to the botanist. They have not always been equally fortunate, however, and have been criticised for an apparent partiality to foreign trees in preference to natives of sturdier growth and better suited to the climate. It is not every European[7] plant that will flourish here. For instance, six years ago a splendid row of English hawthorn bushes lined a long stretch of the park’s western edge between Sixtieth and Seventieth Streets, and in May bore a wealth of the white blossoms that take their name from the month. They are there no more, killed by the severity of our winters.

Asia, and especially Japan, have contributed some valuable additions to Central Park’s woods and shrubbery. The most conspicuous of these is the Rose of Sharon, whose pink and white blossoms are the park’s chief floral ornament in the latter days of summer—for it is in spring that most of the other shrubs and creepers flower.

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In the spring, indeed, Central Park reaches its acme of natural beauty and artificial attraction. In the spring its drives are thronged by the equipages of the Four Hundred who later in the year are scattered over two or three continents. In the spring the trees and meadows are clothed with a fresh garb of green, and the Park policeman in a new suit of gray, the cynosure of admiring nursemaids. In the spring the wistaria, the honeysuckle, the jasmine, and the guelder rose make the landscape gay with color. In the spring the dogwood, the most beautiful and characteristic of our lesser trees, sends down its falling petals in a snow white shower. In the spring the New Yorker may be pardoned if for once he feels positively poetical as he witnesses in Central Park the annual miracle of nature’s rejuvenation.

But more observers’ eyes, probably, are turned upon the driveways and their wonderful parade of vehicles than upon the panorama of wood and meadow. Such a sight as the wheeled procession that pours through the entrance at Fifty Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue cannot be found elsewhere in America, and is indeed only matched by the displays of Rotten Row and the Champs Elysées. Other American cities admittedly look to New York as their leader and mentor in the matter of fine horseflesh and smart equipages. The very latest and handsomest products of the carriage builders’ skill are here to be seen whirling along behind teams whose value represents a small fortune. There comes the banker’s victoria, drawn by a pair of horses whose clock-like gait and well fed aspect of sleekness show that they appreciate their position in the establishment to which they belong. Behind this comes a trim, light phaeton; then a family party in a barouche; these predominating types of vehicle being interspersed with the tall and ostentatious four in hand, the more unconventional buckboard, the natty dogcart, and the[9] democratic park coach, whose passengers take in all the beauties of the scene at twenty five cents a trip.

The bridle path, too, on a sunny afternoon in May, is a spectacle to be remembered. Its pictures come and pass more swiftly than those of the drive, where moderation of speed is a necessity, and is promptly enforced, in the rare cases of its infraction, by the mounted policemen. And, by the way, these sublimated graycoats are themselves worthy of a second glance. Their animals are a really beautiful and well groomed set—most of them bays—and the riders’ horsemanship is of such uniform excellence that a stranger in the park can hardly distinguish one member of the mounted force from another. And in their patrol over fourteen miles of driveway and bridle path their duty is by no means a sinecure. Their courage and promptitude have often been tried by the accidents caused from time to time by untrained horses or reckless or inexperienced drivers and riders. At the season and the hour when it is most frequented, the bridle path is no place for the careless or unskilled horseman. As much space has been given to it as can well be spared, but its width is so comparatively small that at some of the bends serious accidents might easily occur. The rule against riding more than two abreast is a highly necessary one.

The separation of the drives and the bridle paths is a point in which convenience has been subordinated to other considerations. If they lay close together throughout their length, instead of winding through the park on wholly divergent lines, the enjoyment of both riders and drivers would be increased. A radical alteration in the plan of the park, however, would be necessary to effect such a change.

Nearly a quarter of Central Park is occupied by its various bodies of water. These have their ornamental and their practical side. The latter is of course represented by the reservoirs that receive the principal portion of the water supply brought down by the Croton aqueduct. There is a smaller double basin (now being deepened) in the center of the park opposite Eightieth Street, overlooked by the Belvedere, and the main reservoir that fills nearly the whole of the space between Eighty Sixth and Ninety Sixth Streets, and forms the division between the North Park and the South Park. That this big pond, pretty nearly half a mile in length and in width, adds nothing to the attractions of the park, few who have walked or ridden along its border will maintain.

Of the ornamental waters the Lake—so called par excellence—is the chief. The effect with which irregularity of outline may be used to add to apparent size is well exemplified by comparing this with the reservoir. Take a boat on the upper part of the Lake, near the foot of the Terrace, row under the bridge across the strait into its lower expanse, and continue to the furthest extremity of the creeks that open into it, and you will hardly guess that the whole sheet of water measures but twenty acres, while the Croton reservoir covers more than a hundred. You will also be likely to think that you have found a remarkably pleasant place for a row, especially if your expedition is[10] made in the dusk of a summer evening, when the red lanterns that glow dimly in the bows of the boats make a picturesque scene which is often pronounced to be “just like Venice” by those who have never been in that city of watery streets.

The other lakes are the Pond, near the Fifty Ninth Street entrance, on which ply the swan boats; the Conservatory water near Fifth Avenue and opposite Seventy Fourth Street; and three in the North Park—Harlem Mere, in the northwestern corner, and the two miniature lakelets called the Pool and the Lock.

The swan boats are by no means the park’s only attraction especially designed for children. There are the swings and merry-go-round of the carrousel, and the little carriages that are drawn up and down the Mall by well trained goats. The menagerie, too, is a source of never failing wonder and amusement. There is always a crowd, in which young people predominate, watching the monkeys, gazing with something like awe at Tip, the huge elephant who has murdered more than one of his keepers, or throwing peanuts and similar esculents to the more docile pachyderm whose quarters are in the neighboring cage.

The enjoyment of the children would be greater yet if the grass covered lawns were not forbidden territory to them. In a few places, indeed, they are allowed to play upon nature’s green carpet, and the privilege might well be extended without injury to the park.

Of the two great divisions of the drama, tragedy is today surprisingly similar to what it was in the days of the ancient Greeks, while comedy has in the mean time been the subject of a remarkable evolution. That evolution has proceeded with especial rapidity within recent years. To find the best and noblest exemplifications of tragedy we have to go back two centuries to the master works of Shakespeare. A few exceptional comedies there are of Sheridan’s or Goldsmith’s, whose popularity has not diminished with the lapse of time, though many generations have come and gone since they were penned. But they may be counted upon the fingers of a single hand, and only serve to emphasize the rarity of comedies that can hold the boards for more than a few seasons.

The development of comedy, and[12] especially of its more farcical branches, is, indeed, the chief feature of recent dramatic history. Attribute it to a reaction from the increased tension of modern business life, or assign what sociological cause you will, the fact remains that the general demand is for plays whose aim and object is to amuse. It cannot be maintained that this tendency is restricted to the less educated class of theater goers. On the contrary, it is at houses that are especially frequented by people of wealth and fashion that the supremacy of comedy is most assured. Melodrama is still the most drawing card in the theaters patronized by the lower million.

The advance of comedy has been multiform. Farces of greater ingenuity and more sustained brilliance of workmanship are written by the playwrights of today than by their forerunners. They are interpreted upon the boards by more finished artists, and with a stage setting that constantly becomes more complete and costly. The comedian has a higher professional and even social standing now than a generation ago, and he may secure a much greater degree of renown, with its financial accompaniment of ample earnings. And all this arises from the workings of the old law of supply and demand. Every art that can contribute to the embellishment of its presentation becomes the handmaid of comedy. Music is pressed into its service, and the result is that characteristic phase of latter day theatricals, the burletta.

There was a time, and not so very long ago, when the predecessors of Francis Wilson and De Wolf Hopper were set down as “low comedians,” and relegated to an artistic rank slightly superior to that of the circus clown. Every one knows the contrast in the position of the modern apostles of Momus. Attend the theaters, read the newspapers, listen to the comment of the club rooms, and you will speedily be convinced that they are the theatrical lions of the hour, that among all the constellations of the dramatic firmament their planet is in the ascendant. Nor is there anything in this state of affairs to justify the pessimistic philosopher in an outcry against the alleged decadence of the stage. The popular taste for comedy is neither a degraded nor a perverted one, and the success of its leading exponents has been won upon their merits.

The comic star rises to the zenith by an ascent as difficult and laborious as that which leads to high rank in any other profession. Ars est celare artem, and the apparently easy spontaneity with which he develops the humor of a stage situation is the fruit of conscientious study and persistent practice. There are no more painstaking actors than the two typical burlesquers who as the Regent of Siam and the Merry Monarch have during the recent months reigned successively at the Broadway Theater, New York.

Francis Wilson, who recently succeeded his brother potentate, has worked his way up from the lowest rounds of the theatrical ladder. His first appearance was with Sandford’s minstrel company in a sketch called “The Brians,” which was played in Philadelphia. Young as he was—only a boy in his teens—Wilson made something of a hit. This was enough to secure him plenty of remunerative engagements with minstrel troupes, as a member of which he traveled all over the country. He was ambitious, however, for work of a higher order, and to secure a foothold upon the legitimate stage he undertook a minor part in a company that appeared at the Chestnut Street Theater, in Philadelphia. Here again his talents declined to conceal themselves under a bushel. In the role of Lamp, a broken down actor in “Wild Oats,” he carried with him upon the stage an old foil, the last relic of better days, and from this seemingly unpromising article he managed to extract so much quiet humor that the audience was convulsed and the star of the piece entered a formal complaint at this interference with his supremacy.

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The following years saw the young actor steadily advancing in his art, but experiencing various ups and downs of fortune, which wound up with the “stranding” of his company, Mitchell’s Pleasure Party, in San Francisco. Next he reappeared in Philadelphia—let us hope that he was not obliged to reach it on foot—as a member of the McCaull troupe, with which he played in his first comic opera, “The Queen’s Lace Handkerchief.”

From this point his career has been one of uncheckered prosperity. He was speedily recognized as a comic opera star of no ordinary luster. In such standard parts as that of Cadeaux in Erminie he achieved a reputation and a popularity that finally led him to organize a company of his own, with which he has even eclipsed his previous successes in “The Oolah” and “The Merry Monarch.”

De Wolf Hopper’s popularity has[14] been won still more rapidly than that of his brother comedian. He is the youngest of our successful actors, as well as one of the most original in his methods, but he has been upon the boards long enough to gain a thorough dramatic training and a varied experience. It was his enthusiasm for private theatricals, and his success in them, that led him upon the professional stage—in spite of the fact that he had been educated for the law. He was only twenty when, in 1880, he appeared as the leading spirit of the Criterion Comedy Company, which had a fair measure of prosperity, presenting such standard plays as “Caste” and “Our Boys.” When it disbanded he was successively with Edward Harrigan in “The Blackbird,” and at the Madison Square Theater under the management of Daniel Frohman. At this latter house, in the parts of Pittacus Green in “Hazel Kirke,” and Oliver Hathaway in “May Blossom,” he gained the approbation of metropolitan theater goers to a degree that was greatly enhanced during the next five years, which he passed as a member of the McCaull opera company. His last season with that organization was marked by a success as Casimir in “Clover” that showed an advance upon anything he had previously done. “Wang,” which was so notably well received at the Broadway Theater during the past summer, was his first independent venture.

There are those who cherish the idea that the continued success of actors like Messrs. Wilson and Hopper is largely due to the prestige of their reputation and the indulgence shown by the public toward established favorites. They tell us that it matters little what may be the merits of the piece or its staging, the star is sure to have a following sufficient to fill the box office with a golden stream. He might almost as well dispense with the libretto altogether, they say, for as soon as he opens his lips to speak the audience roars with laughter.

So far as it denies the necessity for care and labor, thought and skill, in the preparation and presentation of a farce, this theory is fundamentally mistaken. It has again and again been proved that no names upon the playbill, however eminent, can make a poor play successful. The theater going public may not be infallible,[15] but it is too discriminating to accept an unpalatable article because it bears a title of repute. The later popularity of “The Oolah” has obliterated recollection of the fact that on its first night its reception was not enthusiastic. The critics thought and said that Wilson had made a mistake. But the comedian set himself at work to improve the piece, cutting here, adding there, and interlining and changing until in a hundred small but yet not unimportant points it was a different and a better play. This is merely a single example of those expenditures of thought and care that escape the hasty critic, and many similar incidents might be cited. For instance, the remarkably flexible voice of which De Wolf Hopper makes such effective use has received almost as careful training as a prima donna’s.

It would hardly be fair to the theatrical situation of the day to picture it only as a regime of farce comedy. The burlesque is indeed the most characteristic phase of the fin de siècle dramatic development, but it is not by any means sole monarch of the stage. The avenue that leads to the applause of the world[16] of culture is still open to interpreters of the art that can call forth tears as well as laughter.

No better proof of this can be given than the marked favor with which Madame Modjeska has been everywhere received during her comparatively brief career upon the American stage. It is true that she had already gained a wide reputation in Europe when she abandoned her profession and came to the New World with her husband, Count Bozenta. They had in view the establishment of a colony of their Polish fellow countrymen in Southern California. The scheme was probably somewhat Utopian. At any rate it was abandoned, and the countess, under her earlier name of Modjeska, fitted herself for the English speaking stage.

San Francisco was the scene of her debut, and “Adrienne Lecouvreur” the play. She has since acted in all the leading cities of America, besides making two visits to London. Her repertory includes a wide range of pieces of the highest intellectual order. As a delineator of Shaksperian heroines she is unsurpassed, and her appearances with Edwin Booth in the great dramatic classics have been among the most notable events of recent seasons. The intensity of her Juliet, the grace and dignity of her Portia, the pathos of her Ophelia, and the Arcadian naïveté of her Rosalind have borne witness to her rare endowment of histrionic talent. Among other plays in which she has taken the leading part are “Camille,” “Mary Stuart,” “Juanna,” “Frou-Frou,” “Odette,” and “Richelieu.” In the last named, which she played in conjunction with Booth, she scored one of her most notable successes as Julie de Mortimer.

Long as she has been upon the stage of two continents, Madame Modjeska’s impersonations of Juliet or Beatrice have all the fresh charm of youth. With exceptional skill in the portrayal of strong emotion she combines a lightness of touch and a graceful refinement that are peculiarly characteristic. The fact that she has never succeeded in removing from her English speech the last faint trace of a foreign accent, is to many of her parts rather an added interest than a blemish.

A tired horse ambled slowly up to the solitary adobe house, or rather hut, that meets the sight of the dusty traveler who journeys between a certain station on the Southern Pacific railroad and the famous Indian station at San Carlos. One hundred miles of dusty road that wound over a naked, sandy plain sparsely dotted with hideous cactus, a stretch of the desert on either side, and on the horizon walls of gray mountains treeless as the desert itself—these were the uncheerful surroundings of McCoy’s ranch. Worse than a prison, more remote than a Siberian mine, lonelier than the grave, here two human souls, father and daughter, had lived for more than twelve years, and during that twelve years they had been away from that adobe oasis, the girl at least, not one single day, and the father never longer than it would take him to ride over to the mountains for a short hunt. It was a watering station on the stage road. An artesian well had been sunk there in the early days. Like every other work of man it had to have its human slaves, and from the day the last adobe had been laid these slaves had been McCoy and his daughter Sis. The latter was a child of six when she was lifted out of the ox wagon at the door of the house. She was now a girl of eighteen.

What a life hers had been! One unvarying monotony of cooking and of washing, of chopping wood and feeding the horses and of looking anxiously one day up the road for the stage to come down and the next day down the road for the stage to come up so that she might have dinner (a pretentious name for a meal that consisted always of bacon, eggs, coffee and hot bread) prepared for the stage driver and what unfortunate companions in misery he might be transporting to or from the agency. These, alas, gulped down their food as hastily as possible and hastened away at once, only too anxious to get the thing over with. That was all she saw of them. Once in a while she caught sight of a muffled figure in an ambulance that stopped for water for its thirsty mules and knew that it was a woman because it did not get out and swear at the heat and dust, an officer’s wife probably—ah! how she longed to speak to her. The rough freighters often camped there. This was the sum total of the girl’s experience with beings of her kind save one.

That was the man who sat carelessly erect on the tired horse that ambled up to the adobe house. Lieutenant Jack Harding was he, of Uncle Sam’s —th regiment of cavalry. And what a man he was, to be sure! Handsome as a Greek god, stalwart as a Norse warrior, reckless, brave, accomplished, as gentle as a girl until aroused, then as wild and defiant as an Apache, he was a Bayard in the eyes of most women and a demi-god in the estimation of poor Sis. He had stopped over night at the watering station six times in four years. Sis dreamed of his coming months before he appeared, and dreamed, too, of his going months after he went. She worshiped him from the moment she first saw him. That was all. She had read many books, for her father had taught her to read, and Jack Harding served in turn as the hero of each novel she became possessed of, and, of course, (O dear little trait of woman’s nature) she as the heroine.

Lieutenant Jack jumped from his horse as lightly as though a ride of fifty miles were a mere bagatelle, and walked smilingly up to the door.[18] Just as he reached it Sis came bashfully to the doorway.

“Hello, Sis,” said the lieutenant cheerfully.

“O——,” replied Sis. She never could talk to him.

“Dad home?”

“Nope.”

“Hunting?”

“Yep.”

“Well, I’ve come to make my party call for the last time I was here. Got anything to eat?”

“Only bacon and eggs.”

“Good enough for a prince—if the prince is as hungry as I am. All right, get them ready. I’ll go and take care of Noche. Come, Noche—want some water, old girl?” He led off the horse, and Sis turned from the doorway to the kitchen. As she did so she stepped just for one moment into a little room that, were she a lady, she would call her boudoir, though it was but little larger than a good sized piano box, and looked searchingly at her own face in a bit of broken looking glass. What did she see? No thing of beauty, I assure you. This girl had not been dowered by God with that divine gift that makes every woman who possesses it a queen. Far from it. But so ignorant of the world was she, so much an utter stranger to the appearance of others of her sex, that she did not know that she was remarkably homely. Freckle faced, pug nosed, red haired, rough and worn with work, she was in appearance positively ugly. She had often asked her father whether or not she was good looking, and he had invariably replied “Yes.” But he always said it in such a way that poor Sis began at last to suspect that she was not really as beautiful as the heroines of Scott’s novels (she knew the descriptions of them by heart.) Still it might be, and she hoped—a thing that a woman does almost as easily as she forgives.

The supper was eaten in the usual wondering silence on her part and the running fire of nonsense on the part of the lieutenant. He accused her of being in love with “Peg-leg,” the mule driver, and was cheerfully unconscious of the fact that his words tortured her heart until she almost broke down and cried before him. He told her all the news of the post and the latest jokes on the officers in an endeavor—a vain one—to make her laugh. People who have lived ten years in a desert do not laugh. At last it was over, and she cleared away and washed the dishes. He smoked his pipe the while, wondering how in the world she came to be so homely, wondering how she managed to exist in such a place, and coming to a mental conclusion as to how long he himself could stand such a life before committing suicide. Then he went out and took a stroll on the sandy desert. Old McCoy was not in sight, and though it was moonlight it was hardly probable that he would return that night. He congratulated himself, too, that Sis had not been brought up to the ideas of good society, else he would have to make his bed in the hay that night and leave the house, double barred and locked, to Sis. He even thoughtlessly muttered to himself, “What a wonderful protection a homely face is!” Then he went back to the kitchen to talk to Sis a while before going to bed. As he entered a sight met his astonished eyes that almost made him burst with laughter. It was nothing more nor less than Sis arrayed in a gown that would have been an absurdity in caricature. Green satin trimmed with red ribbons and a red sash, formless, shapeless, it was her pitiful attempt to appear beautiful. Her great hands hung from the sleeves like baskets from the branches of an apple tree. Her red face and hair looked redder still by the contrast with the gaudy colors of the dress, and she stood in the habitual slouching attitude so characteristic of her. Yet there was something in her gray eyes that told him it was a supreme moment in her life—the wearing of this dress—and he did not laugh. Indeed, for a moment he almost felt sad. He tried to sit down as unconcernedly as possible, and busied himself filling his pipe. He did not dare to look at her. He hoped she[19] would do something or say something, but she did not. She stood there silent, intense, looking at him so earnestly that it was but too manifest that she was trying to read his thoughts. He must do something.

“Where did you get that dress, Sis?” he said as quietly as he could.

“Dad gave it to me,” she answered. “He always promised me a satin dress, and so last Christmas he sent and got the satin. I made it. This is the first time I have worn it before any one.”

She spoke as though the words were choking her. She seemed to be nerving herself for something unusual. She was.

“Tell me,” she cried, almost fiercely, “tell me honestly, am I beautiful?”

He tried not to do it. He felt like a cur, a second afterwards, for having done it. But he could not help it, do what he could to control himself. He laughed aloud.

“O don’t—don’t—don’t——” she almost screamed. Then she fell on the floor in a green and red heap and wept. Jack had seen women weep before (a number of them had wept at different times when he had come to say “good by”), but never before had he seen such a torrent of tears as this. There was no stemming it, though he tried very hard. It seemed an age before it ceased, and then it seemed another age that she sat there motionless with her face in her hands as though she was trying to hide it. He felt horribly nervous. It took him sixteen matches, as he afterwards said, to smoke one pipe. Finally she broke the silence. Her voice was calm enough as she asked:

“What is a beautiful woman like?”

He did not answer in words. It was just a little hard to speak at all. He unbuttoned his blouse and took from the inside pocket a photograph and handed it to her. She held it fiercely in her two great rough hands and gazed at it steadily for a long time. Poor woman, she learned what beauty was, and she learned of the love of this man whom she worshiped. Then she got up, handed back the photograph to its owner and walked silently and slowly from the room.

It was hard for Jack Harding to sleep that night. He got into a fitful slumber along towards morning, and he had not been sleeping for an hour when he found himself standing awake in the middle of the room feeling for his revolver in the gray light of the early dawn.

“Nothing but a shot could wake me like that,” he said to himself, and hastily pulling on his clothes and taking his revolver in his hand he went through the house. The fire had been built and breakfast, already cooked, was waiting for him. “I guess Sis didn’t sleep much either,” he thought. He knocked at her door but received no answer. “Milking the cow, I guess,” he thought, but there was beginning to be a horrible dread in his heart. He ran hastily out of the house, and there—there under his own window lay Sis, again a green and red heap, but there was red on the dress now that was not ribbon. She had shot herself in the breast. He ran to her and picked her up. He carried her into the house and swore at himself for never having had the energy to study a little surgery in all the long years of his army idleness. Presently she revived a little and he heard her murmur faintly: “Tell dad good by—tell him I can’t help him any longer.”

“Oh, Sis!” he pleaded, “why did you do this?”

“Because you laughed at me,” she answered.

“But I did not mean it. You are beautiful, Sis, indeed you are very beautiful.”

“Oh no, I’m not,” she said. “I know what beauty is now.”

He could say nothing for a time. He hardly knew why he said what he did when he spoke.

“Sis,” he asked her gently, “tell me, why did you want to be beautiful?”

[20]

“Because—because I loved you,” she answered slowly and with a sob.

And when her father got home that afternoon and walked gayly into the little adobe house, he found them still together, one dead—one weeping.

The completion of the new building of the American Museum of Natural History marks the second step toward the realization of one of the most colossal schemes ever formed for the promotion of science. The plan will not be fully carried out until the whole of Manhattan Square, on a part of which the present edifice stands, is covered with a structure of imposing extent and immense capacity, which is to become the great headquarters of natural science on this continent, and to rank on at least an equality with any similar institution in the world.

Natural history is a department of knowledge that should be of especial interest to the inhabitants of a country where nature displays her wonders on so tremendous a scale and her riches in such exhaustless variety. And indeed America’s contributions to that branch of science have already been great. Of this the names of Alexander Wilson, Charles Lucien Bonaparte, James E. DeKay, James Dwight Dana, and others no less noteworthy, will serve as sufficient evidence.

Scientific societies were among the earliest developments of American intellectual life, and in our leading cities they have received a constant and growing support. Oldest of all is the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, which issued scientific works as long ago as 1769. In 1780 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences was organized in Boston, and in 1812 the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science began its useful existence. New York was later in entering the field. The Lyceum of Natural History, the germ of the present establishment, was originated in 1817. In 1869 its collections were destroyed by fire, but the disaster proved to be the beginning of its expansion. Some prominent and public spirited members of the society, realizing the importance of securing for it safer and more extended quarters, took steps to establish it upon a broader basis as one of the recognized institutions of the metropolis. The American Museum of Natural History was incorporated by the Legislature, and an ample and well situated plot of ground, covering four entire city blocks, was assigned to its use by the municipal park department, which has also paid for the erection and maintenance of the museum building.

Of the immense structure designed by the incorporators of the museum, an interior wing, about one twentieth part of the whole mass, was the first erected. The corner stone was laid by President Grant in June, 1874, and the building was opened in December, 1877. Its external appearance is by no means unattractive, although in its design architectural beauty was subordinated to practical considerations of light and arrangement. Its collections are displayed in three great halls, one of which has its floor space almost doubled by a capacious balcony. Above these is an attic story, containing the library of the institution and a number of chambers set apart as lecture rooms, laboratories, and the like.

The board walk that runs diagonally from Seventy Seventh Street and Central Park to Eighty First Street and Columbus Avenue—the two points at which visitors usually approach the museum—passes, midway, the present entrance, whose[22] unpretentious aspect is a most decided contrast to the solid magnificence of the newly finished front. It leads directly to the first great hall, on the ground floor, which is mainly occupied by the Jesup collection of American woods. This is an assemblage of specimens of trees indigenous to North America, wonderfully complete and well arranged. Each is cut so as to display the bark and the polished and unpolished timber, with a colored map that shows at a glance the geographical distribution of the species. In most instances an entire section of the trunk is exhibited, and on the west side of the hall there are two colossal specimens, worthy to serve as round tables for King Arthur, which may prompt the unobservant visitor to exclaim, “Those must be the Big Trees of California!” Such is not the case, though both of them hail from the Pacific coast, being respectively the Yellow and the Sugar Pine. A specimen of the Sequoia gigantea is in an adjoining case, where it attracts less attention because it is but a comparatively small fragment of the trunk of one of those famous monarchs of the vegetable kingdom.

In the same hall, in cases that stand along the center of the room and in the window alcoves, are some bird groups that receive a plentiful share of admiration. They deserve it, for as specimens of accurate and artistic taxidermy they have rarely been equaled and never excelled. They reproduce feathered life and its surroundings with a fidelity that bespeaks thorough knowledge, remarkable skill, and almost infinite patience. There are birds in every attitude—perching, swimming, walking, and even flying—each in a setting that very picturesquely shows its habitation and habits. The uninitiated visitor can hardly persuade himself that the foliage, the herbage, and the flowers that he sees through the glass can be the imperishable product of an artificer’s ingenuity, and not the work of nature herself. Some of the best of the groups are the robins, with their nest among the pink blossomed apple boughs; the grebes, swimming in a happy family upon a glassy imitation of water; the laughing gulls[23] with their nest in the bent grass; the Louisiana water thrush, domiciled under an overhanging bank; the cat birds, the clapper rails, and the ruffed grouse, these last so life-like that the visitor can almost fancy he hears the brown leaves rustle beneath the feet of the chickens. Great credit is due to Jenness Richardson, the museum’s chief taxidermist, and Mrs. E. S. Mogridge, who jointly prepared this beautiful series of exhibits.

A specimen that calls for a word of notice, as one of the most valuable in the museum, stands on the right hand side of the entrance to this lower hall. It is an awkward looking bird of medium size, dark plumage, and disproportionately large bill, and its label designates it as the Great Auk. It is, in fact, one of the very few extant relics of a species that has within the memory of living man disappeared from the earth. There are but three others in this country—one in the National Museum at Washington, one in the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Science, and one in the collection belonging to Vassar College. The money value of a specimen of such rarity is hard to fix precisely, but it undoubtedly runs into the thousands of dollars.

The second floor—the main story of the building—is principally devoted to cases of stuffed birds. These multitudinous rows of single specimens, each perched upon its neat stand of cherry wood, are, of course, less picturesque than the grouped figures, but are nevertheless of great interest and value. The martial aspect of the eagles, the curious structure of the pelicans and secretary birds, and the bright plumage of the flamingoes, the peacocks, and the argus pheasant attract attention and admiration.

Here, too, are the osseous remains of the late lamented Jumbo, to whom has fallen the rare privilege of achieving a double immortality; for while his pachydermatous hide, stuffed with straw, is still a feature of the “Greatest Show on Earth,” his skeleton stands majestically on the visitor’s right hand as he enters the second hall of the museum. Sea lions, walruses and other marine monsters are also to be found on this floor, besides a few stuffed groups. One of these last shows a family of screech owls, with their nest deep in a hollow tree. Another—one[24] of the best in the museum—represents a scene in the tree tops of Borneo, and includes five fine specimens of the orang-utan, or Wild Man of the Woods, the great simian that disputes with the African chimpanzee and gorilla, the honor of being the brute’s nearest approach to man. Playing among the branches and eating the fruit of the durian, we see here a group that shows the orang-utan (we follow the spelling adopted by the museum) at various periods of its life and growth. There are a baby, a young female, a full grown male, and two veterans—one of either sex—with long, black hair and hideously wrinkled faces.

Ascending to the gallery above, we find a large and varied collection of implements of savage tribes and relics of prehistoric man. A huge case of skulls, whose owners lived and breathed thousands of years ago, is a ghastly reminder of the continuity of human history. Implements of stone and flint from France, from Denmark, and from the Mississippi valley are silent witnesses of the days before the discovery of the art of working iron. There are also a couple of notable groups—one of opossums and one of muskrats. The latter is a singularly faithful reproduction of nature. It shows a muskrat swimming by the bank of a pond, whose glassy surface is blurred by the ripples that mark his course. White and yellow lilies float on the water, from which rises a muskrat house, opened at the side to show one of its inmates lunching upon a reed stem. The sandy bank of the pond is pierced by galleries from which there peeps a young rat.

From the ceiling, in the center of the hall, there hangs a huge Indian war canoe, which once bore the warriors of the Bella Bella tribe, in British Columbia, over the waters of Queen Charlotte’s Sound. Though capacious enough to carry a small regiment, it was made from the wood of a single tree.

The third floor of the museum is devoted to collections of shells and minerals, which include a wealth of interesting specimens. There is a sheet of itacolumite, or flexible sandstone, from North Carolina, so arranged that its power of bending can be tested by turning a screw;[25] there are stibnite (antimony ore) from Japan, galenite (lead ore) from Missouri, gold quartz from California, calamine from New Jersey, as well as chalcopyrite, marcasite, and a host of other minerals of strange name and form. On one small tray are grouped reproductions of the world’s most famous diamonds, showing the exact size and appearance of these little pebbles for which dynasties have been overthrown. One of them is labeled “the Koh-i-noor, value $1,000,000.” It is safe to say that Queen Victoria is not offering the original for sale at that price. And if the Koh-i-noor, which weighs 125 karats, is worth a million, what must be the value of the Great Mogul diamond, of 297 karats?

Further down the same row of cases are amethysts, beryls, agates, and other semi-precious stones. Among these is a curious section of an agatized tree from Chalcedony Park, Arizona. It was mineralized by the waters of a hot silicated spring, the silica replacing the wood as it decayed, particle by particle.

In the center of the hall stands a remarkably perfect skeleton of a mastodon, the huge prehistoric elephant that once roamed over Europe and North America. This specimen was found in a peaty swamp near Newburgh, New York, in 1879. Compared with the bony framework of Jumbo on the floor below—the two monsters were separated, perhaps, in order to prevent jealousy between them—the mastodon is shorter in stature, but considerably longer. He stands 8 feet 5 inches from the ground, while his length “over all” is 18 feet, and his immense curved tusks measure 7 feet 5 inches. Near the entrance there is the skeleton of a moa, the great extinct ostrich of New Zealand, and at the further end of the hall that of another animal that existed in the dawn of man’s history—the great Irish elk, found in a peat bog near Limerick.

The raised map of New Hampshire, which stands in an alcove on the left hand side of the entrance, is the product of an immensity of care and labor. It is constructed to a scale of a mile to the inch, the elevation being exaggerated about five times, or to a scale of a thousand feet to the inch. It is a good illustration of the value of this sort of map in giving a graphic and comprehensive idea of the topographical and geological formation of a country.

On the wall on the other end of the hall are two large tablets of triassic rock from Massachusetts, showing the foot prints—or “au-toe-graphs,” as James Russell Lowell once ventured to call them—of some huge reptile, and of tiny insects and shellfish.

Throughout his inspection of the museum’s contents, the visitor will have noticed that every inch of available space has been occupied, and that the exhibits are in some cases cramped for lack of room. The opening of the new building will effectually remedy this, and provide ample accommodations for the collections[26] and their probable augmentation for some time to come. Its halls are now being fitted up with cases. Its appearance is imposing, and not devoid of a solid and substantial style of architectural beauty. Its general character is Romanesque. The front, which faces Seventy Seventh Street, is of a rough, light reddish stone, with a lofty and rather heavy looking roof of red tiles. It is approached by two wide flights of stone steps, connected with a spacious arched portico by a bridge that passes over a basement entrance below—a very convenient and symmetrical arrangement. Like the older building, the newly finished structure has unusually ample window light, and is altogether well adapted to the purpose for which it is designed.

NO BARGAIN.

Tennyson’s lines on the Duke of Wellington may well be applied to the monument that Brooklyn has set up to commemorate her greatest citizen and the foremost of all American preachers. The recently unveiled statue of Beecher could hardly be better placed than at the junction of two main arteries of traffic, and facing the City Hall. It stands at the heart of Brooklyn, as in another sense Beecher stood, during his life, at the heart of Brooklyn and of the nation. Its location is in keeping with the character of the statue, and with those sides of the great man’s nature which it especially typifies. It should, perhaps, have been set so as to face away from the City Hall, rather than toward it. It is certainly somewhat unfortunate that that which meets the eye of most of those who see it should be the back of the statue, draped in the folds of a heavy cloak.

The monument itself, as may be inferred from the mention of John Quincy Adams Ward as its designer, is one that shows intelligent and conscientious work besides much technical skill. It is animated by a definite conception of its subject, and partakes of the character of an ideal group as well as that of an actual likeness. The subsidiary portion is of course wholly ideal; while the central figure itself is something more than a reproduction of the form and features of its original. Those who remember Mr. Beecher only in the last few years of his life may be inclined to think that the lines of the statue’s face are too deep[28] and emphatic, that its expression has too much positiveness and strength, and too little gentleness and benignity. There is truth in this criticism, if criticism it can be called. The sculptor prepared for his task by taking a death mask of Mr. Beecher’s face; but from the more rounded outlines of the preacher’s later years he deliberately went back to show him as he was in the prime of life, in those stirring times when he led the vanguard of freedom’s forces. The statue is Beecher as he will live in the grateful memory of posterity, rather than as he lives in the affectionate recollection of surviving friends. It is the Beecher of history.

Indeed, the designer has struck the very keynote of Beecher’s immortality. He has given us the man who voiced the cause of emancipation[29] in the days when it was the protest of the minority against a great wrong firmly intrenched in the possession of power; the man who faced anti-abolition mobs in New York and the prejudice of a nation in England; the man who all through his life seemed to delight in facing unjust opposition and in fighting the battle of the weak against the strong.

He was born during the war of 1812, a perilous crisis in our national history. To quote from the memoir compiled by members of his family, “he carried war in him as a birthmark, but with him it was war against wickedness and wrong.” He was an abolitionist in his undergraduate days at Amherst, where his first attacks upon human slavery were made in the college debating society. Then, as a young minister in an Ohio River town, he was brought into close contact with the institution, and saw its actual horrors. He returned east to Brooklyn to lift up in that city a voice that presently made itself heard from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He would accept no compromise, and fought with all his powers against that offered in 1850 by Henry Clay. “For every free State,” he cried, “it demands one State for slavery. One dark orb must be swung into its orbit, to groan and travail in pain, for every new orb of liberty over which the morning stars shall sing for joy.”

He knew full well the strength of the forces arrayed against him. “An Abolitionist,” he said later in life, “was enough to put the mark of Cain upon any young man that arose in my early day, and until I was forty years of age it was punishable to preach on the subject of liberty. It was enough to expel a man from church communion if he insisted on praying in prayer meeting for the liberation of the slaves. If a man came to be known as an anti-slavery man it almost preluded bankruptcy in business.”

Several times angry crowds gathered near Plymouth Church and threatened to attack it, but Beecher cared nothing for personal danger. When the irrepressible conflict between liberty and slavery was reddening the plains of bleeding Kansas, he took up a collection in the church to buy rifles for the free soilers. Some of them were sent through the enemy’s lines in Missouri in boxes marked “bibles,” and though this was done without his knowledge, “Beecher’s bibles” became a proverbial synonym for improved firearms.

When the flame first kindled in Kansas spread to blaze forth into the war of the Rebellion, none realized more fully than he the stern duties of the hour. Beecher was away from Brooklyn when the news came that Fort Sumter had been attacked. On reaching home he was greeted by his eldest son with the question, “Father, may I enlist?” “If you don’t I’ll disown you,” he replied.

He threw himself heart and soul into the work of arming for the defense of the Union. Plymouth Church became a rendezvous for regiments passing to the front, and its pastor’s house at 124 Columbia Heights a veritable storehouse for military goods. He was largely instrumental in raising and equipping three regiments for the Union army. The third of these, which he organized almost unaided, was the Long Island Volunteer regiment, afterward enrolled as the Sixty Seventh New York. In this his son, Henry Barton Beecher, held a lieutenant’s commission.

Indeed, Beecher’s enthusiasm outran the government’s unreadiness. Lack of necessary funds compelled the army authorities to delay the acceptance of his volunteers; and in the summer of 1862, after McClellan had made his fruitless attempt to reach Richmond, Beecher gave voice to his impatience at what seemed to him the inactivity of the authorities at Washington. He hated half measures, and believed that the nearest way to peace lay through a vigorous prosecution of the war.

In June, 1863, he sought to find, in a brief visit to England, rest and[30] recuperation for bodily and mental powers exhausted by the strain they had endured. Those were the darkest days of the war. Two years of campaigning, and vast expenditures of blood and treasure, had done little or nothing to break down the rebellion. Vicksburg was defying the desperate efforts of Grant, while in the East Lee, at the head of his veteran army, was pressing forward to invade Pennsylvania and outflank Washington. All the world looked upon the United States as on the eve of splitting asunder. In England the sympathy of the laboring men was with the North, but the upper social and official classes were solidly on the other side. Even such a man as Gladstone declared that “Jefferson Davis had created a nation,” and only a few tribunes of the people like John Bright and Richard Cobden publicly pleaded the cause of freedom.

With his love of battling against unjust opposition, it is not strange that Beecher was drawn into a crusade against the prejudices that he found prevalent in England—a crusade undertaken without premeditation, but one whose results proved it to be one of his most notable services to his country. It was begun in the Free Trade Hall at Manchester, where he faced a great and hostile assemblage, secured a hearing by sheer pluck and persistence, and then, by his magnificent oratorical power and the conscious justice of his cause, won a victory that was afterward repeated in the other chief cities of England and Scotland. His speeches turned the balance of British sentiment, and warned the government from the path that might have led to intervention in the struggle.

“I believe I did some good,” Beecher himself said, in speaking of his missionary work in England. A New York journal of that time put it more strongly. “The administration at Washington,” it remarked, “has sent abroad more than one man to represent the cause of the North and press it upon the minds of foreign courts and citizens; but here is a person who goes abroad without official prestige, on a mere private mission to recruit his health, and yet we doubt whether his speeches in England have not done more for us by their frank and manly exposition of our principles, our purposes, and our hopes, than all the other agencies employed.”

The value of Beecher’s work in England was fully recognized by President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton. With these leaders, whom he had never hesitated to criticise when he believed it his duty to do so, he now entered into warm relations. It was he who was invited to deliver the address at the raising of the old flag over the regained Fort Sumter.

His active participation in public affairs continued up to his death. His part in the election of 1884 is of course fresh in the memory of readers—so fresh, indeed, that it can hardly be reviewed without intrenching upon the prejudices of present day partisanship.

Henry Ward Beecher was a great man—one of the greatest and most remarkable men of his day. His personality was so large, his gifts so varied, his mental and moral composition so multiform, that a volume would be needed to give a complete character sketch of the man. We can only attempt within the limits of this article to bring out the two main elements of his character that seem to have inspired Mr. Ward’s conception of his subject. On the one hand is the positive, almost militant expression that typifies Beecher’s fearless championship of the oppressed; on the other his universal sympathy, his unselfish kindliness, and his especial love for children, betokened by the figures beside the pedestal. His heart was as great as his brain. He was intensely human. Artificiality he hated, and dissembling and deception he could not understand. He was sometimes called a great actor, but sincerity was his very breath of life. “Some men,” he once said, “are like live[31] springs that bubble and flow perpetually, while others are like pumps—one must work the handle for all the water he gets.” And rare indeed are such live springs of imagination and eloquence, of intellect and of affection, as that which welled in Beecher’s own heart. “He was quite as likely,” says one of his biographers, “to burst out into splendid eloquence amid a small group of chatting friends, or even to a single listener, as before a vast audience. One would as soon suspect the Atlantic of holding back a particularly grand roll of surf at Long Branch until people should come down to see it, as to imagine Mr. Beecher keeping a fine thought or a striking figure till he had an audience.”

Or again, as Oliver Wendell Holmes says in his essay on Beecher’s English speeches: “He has the simple frankness of a man who feels himself to be perfectly sound in bodily, mental, and moral structure; and his self revelation is a thousand times nobler than the assumed impersonality which is a common trick with cunning speakers who never forget their own interests. Thus it is that wherever Mr. Beecher goes, everybody feels, after he has addressed them once or twice, that they know him well, almost as if they had always known him; and there is not a man in the land who has such a multitude who look upon him as their brother.”

When Beecher was a man, he was a man; when he was a boy, he was a boy. Brought up in the rigid atmosphere of an old time New England parsonage, there was nothing sanctimonious or unhealthy about his boyhood religion. Plain living and high thinking was the regime of his youth, but withal he was a warm blooded, high spirited lad. At school Hank Beecher, as his playmates called him, was a leader in outdoor sports, and at college he was an enthusiastic athlete. Dr. Holmes called him, later in life, “the same lusty, warm hearted, strong fibered, bright souled, clear eyed creature, as he was when the college boys at Amherst acknowledged him as the chiefest among their football kickers.” Strangely characteristic was a document that he drew up on leaving the school at Amherst that bore the high sounding title of Mount Pleasant Collegiate Institute. It was a covenant between him and his chief schoolboy “chum,” wherein Henry W. Beecher and Constantine F. Newell formally undertook, “in the presence of God and his holy angels,” to be “real, lawful, and everlasting brothers”—an agreement that was faithfully kept, in spite of long separations, until the death of Beecher’s boyhood friend in 1842. Another touch of nature that may be cited from the annals of his early career was his trial sermon at Lawrenceburg. No less than a hundred souls—an unprecedented assemblage—had gathered to hear the young college graduate, who is said to have been so nervous that his address was a total failure—rather a contrast to the flow of noble thoughts clad in impressive language that afterward held many a vast audience spell bound.

His forty years’ ministry at Plymouth Church will always remain a unique landmark in the annals of the American pulpit. It was in June, 1847, that Beecher, then in the prime of early manhood, received an invitation to become the first pastor of the newly formed Congregational church, which had indeed been organized only the day before, with a membership of twenty one. Coming to his charge four months later, the first thing he did was characteristic. He had the pulpit cut away, and a simple desk set in its place, upon a broad platform. He wanted to draw nearer to his audience—literally as well as figuratively. He wished to “get at” his hearers—to grasp them closely. He was a fisher of men’s hearts and souls. Of the wonderful powers that made his preaching so remarkable in its effectiveness and so world wide in its fame it is hard to give a precise analysis. Among the component elements were a vividly creative imagination, a mind richly stocked[32] by reading and observation, a ripe judgment, a deep sympathy, a remarkable adaptability to occasions and situations, and an unfailing earnestness and enthusiasm. He was an accomplished elocutionist, with the natural advantages of a commanding presence and a voice of great power and flexibility.

From its small original nucleus, Plymouth Church expanded to be larger than any other similar body in the country, with a membership of fifteen hundred. Scores came to it from widely variant sects, and found in its broad and liberal Christianity a common ground whereon they could stand together and work shoulder to shoulder. It has often been said that nowadays churches are filled with women, almost to the exclusion of their husbands, brothers and fathers. Such was not the case with Beecher’s congregation. Men always flocked to hear him, and felt themselves irresistibly drawn toward the sunlight of his strong nature.

Intense as was his interest in the growth and success of Plymouth Church, it was to him a means, and not an end in itself. He sought to make not a prominent church, but one active and powerful in all good works. The success of its schools and missions, its meetings and societies, was the outward evidence of the inspiration it received from the master mind around which it was focused.

Lesser men have ventured to criticise Beecher as deficient in theology. Such criticism implies inability to understand the great preacher’s breadth. He was thoroughly grounded in theological lore by his father, who was one of the leading controversialists of the day. In Lyman Beecher’s home dogma and doctrine reigned supreme. “Of him I learned,” his son says, “all the theology that was current at that time. In the quarrels between Andover and East Windsor and New Haven and Princeton—I was at home in all these distinctions. I got the doctrines just like a row of pins on a paper of pins. I knew them as a soldier knows his weapons. I could get them in battle array.” After graduating at Amherst, he studied at the Lane Theological Seminary, of which his father had become president. He entered into Dr. Beecher’s controversy against Unitarianism in Boston, and the subsequent conflict between the so called old and new schools of Presbyterianism, of which latter his father was the protagonist.

But the more he saw of these doctrinal battles, the less he believed in their real utility and importance. “I will never be a sectary,” was a resolve that he formed very early in his independent ministry. “Others,” he once said, “may blow the bellows, and turn the doctrines in the fire, and lay them on the anvil of controversy, and beat them with all sorts of hammers into all sorts of shapes; but I shall busy myself with using the sword of the Lord, not in forging it.” His religious sympathy was as wide as humanity, and his ardor for the good of mankind partook of the divine, for to quote his own words again—and the thought they express is a fine one—the love of God for man comes “not from a ‘law’ or ‘plan of salvation,’ but from the fullness of His great heart.”

[33]

MY PRETTY LIBRARY VIS A VIS.

Seventy five years ago the earthly property of the house of Vanderbilt consisted of a sandy farm on Staten Island, and a sail boat that plied up and down New York Harbor. These modest possessions have since grown until they now form the immense estate which, held together as a sort of family trust by the sons of the late William H. Vanderbilt, runs far into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The entire previous history of the world cannot show a parallel to this financial romance of nineteenth century America. The gathered treasures of the Lydian Croesus and the Roman Crassus would sink into insignificance beside the bond laden safes of the Vanderbilts, and Midas, whose magic touch turned stones into gold, was, in comparison with these latter day rivals, a mere plodding novice in the art of multiplying riches.

It is not enough to cite, as the cause of this marvelous accumulation of wealth, the wonderful abilities and remarkable good luck of its founder, the “Commodore.” Difficult as it is to make a great fortune, it has often been proved that it is a still rarer achievement to increase one inherited from its maker. And so vast have been the additions to the estate left by the first millionaire Vanderbilt, that his bequests, great as they were, have become overshadowed by the acquisitions of his son and grandsons. The late William H. Vanderbilt made twice as many millions in seven years as did the Commodore in the whole course of his long career of business and speculation. The former’s sons are adding to the family “pile” at a rate which though less sensational is still rapid, and of necessity gathers momentum as the “pile” and its power of earning interest become greater. Miserliness is one of the last faults of which they could be accused, but there is no doubt that their expenditures, ample as they are, amount to but a comparatively small share of the revenue that rolls in from their colossal investments.

“To what extent is public discussion of the private affairs of individuals legitimate?” has become a question of contemporary interest and importance. The ultra inquisitiveness of the daily press has produced a feeling of revulsion against the excesses in this direction of which the “personal journalism” of the day must plead guilty. Attempts have even been made to restrain the progress of modern intrusiveness by means of the law, as being an invasion of the constitutional privileges of the citizen. Whether such a right can be established by writ or injunction is doubtful. But if a man cannot invoke the courts to keep the details of his private life from the wagging tongues of a tattling public, yet a gentleman, among gentlemen, will find his right to individual privacy universally recognized. It is not our purpose to pry into the personal affairs of a family that enjoys the respect of all its fellow citizens, with the possible exception of a few wild eyed socialists to whom the word “millionaire” is as a red rag to an ill tempered bull. But as the mention of political leaders is inseparable from an intelligent discussion of national affairs, so also is it legitimate and proper to discuss the growth of a vast fortune that has become apart of the history of modern finance, and to canvass the tremendous possibilities involved in its possession. The possessors themselves would readily admit that in the control of these possibilities they are, in a certain[35] sense, trustees for the people at large—though not in the sense insisted upon by the visionaries who, in their hostility to individual ownership, would destroy the foundations upon which society rests.

There is but one parallel to the marvelous inheritance of financial ability that has distinguished the Vanderbilt family. That one is to be found in the house of Rothschild, whose colossal fortune has had much longer to grow, and has been fostered by the support of most of the crowned heads of Europe. In spite of these facts, the united wealth of all the branches of the Rothschild family is estimated at not more than half as much again as that of the four Vanderbilt brothers. The landed possessions of the Astors, preserved intact for four generations and augmented by the unearned increment of New York’s development, hardly afford a parallel case. The rising generation of the Gould family has yet to prove its ability to manage a fortune which was probably[36] as great as Commodore Vanderbilt’s at the time of the latter’s death, but has since been far surpassed by the acquisitions of the Commodore’s successors.

Seventy five years ago, as has already been stated, Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt’s grandfather and namesake was captain of a Staten Island sail boat. In 1817 he took the bold step of putting upon his route one of the new fangled vessels that went by steam. It paid him well, and the enterprising young man—he was then twenty three—branched out rapidly. He appeared on Wall Street with a scheme which took shape as the Nicaragua Transit Company. The capital of the concern was placed at the ambitious figure of $4,000,000, to which the future railroad king apparently contributed little except his persuasive eloquence and his wonderful administrative ability. This latter talent was employed so effectually that the young financier, who acted as president of the company, soon grew to an importance that dwarfed all his colleagues into utter insignificance. The enterprise was finally wound up with little profit to the stockholders; but the Commodore stepped from its ruins to more extensive ventures in the same line. During the rush to California his steamers divided with those of the Pacific Mail Company the traffic of the Isthmus route to the far Western gold fields. Others crossed the Atlantic, and at one time he had more than sixty vessels in commission.

But he was one of the first to foresee the coming subordination of steamboats to railroads, and to realize the immense possibilities of the latter system of transportation, which was then hardly out of its infancy. Gradually abandoning his marine interests, he sought a firm footing upon land by buying up the stock of the Harlem Railroad. Getting a controlling interest, he used his power to inflict merciless punishment upon[37] the Wall Street speculators who ventured to interfere with his plans, and to meddle with the securities of his road. From the comparatively insignificant Harlem, he went on to the New York Central, the nucleus of the far reaching highways of steel that are now known as “the Vanderbilt system of railroads.”

When the Commodore died, in January, 1887, in his eighty third year, he left two sons. The younger, Cornelius Jeremiah, was the nearest approach to a black sheep among his numerous posterity. This statement must not be interpreted too severely, for together with utter lack of financial ability, “young Corneel” possessed many amiable traits of character, and retained to the last the friendship of some of the foremost of his contemporaries, notably Horace Greeley. His father, who regarded his peccadilloes with unrelenting severity, bequeathed him only the interest upon the sum of $200,000. After other legacies amounting in all to about $15,000,000, the remainder of the Commodore’s accumulations were left to his other son, William H. Vanderbilt.

The man who thus, at the age of fifty six, inherited a fortune estimated at seventy five millions of dollars, was perhaps the most remarkable member of a remarkable family. He was born during his father’s early days of comparative poverty, on Staten Island, and brought up there under a household regime of rigid strictness. For years after the Commodore became a power in the financial world, William H. lived the prosaic life of a plain Richmond County farmer, and the multiplication of the father’s millions brought no luxury or ostentation to the homestead of the son. The Commodore had undoubtedly determined his choice of an heir and successor long before he gave his son any encouragement to count upon the prospect of great wealth. He tested the young man’s capacity for railroad management by having him appointed receiver of a little bankrupt line on Staten Island. The experiment was so successful that William was promoted to be Vice President of the Harlem road, a position in which he proved himself invaluable to his father and to the property. Thereafter he kept pace with every forward step of the Commodore and was a very important factor in building up the prosperity of his undertakings. As Vice President of the consolidated New York Central and Hudson River he performed an amount of work which, as some of his friends think, contributed to his death—a comparatively premature one in a family distinguished for longevity.

In many minds millions breed envy, and it is only natural that while William H. Vanderbilt’s wonderful ability has been universally recognized, his personal qualities should have been misrepresented. Four hasty and injudicious words of his seem to have made a deeper impression upon the public mind than his many notable acts of generosity and public spirit. The circumstances under which that famous epigram, “the public be d——d!” was uttered, are thus narrated by Henry Clews, in his interesting volume of reminiscences, which has also been the authority for other facts cited in this article:

William H. Vanderbilt never sought notoriety for his acts of munificence, but they were neither few nor small. He voluntarily paid to his brother Cornelius an annuity five times as large as that named by his father’s will. He presented each of his sisters with half a million in United States bonds. He added $300,000 to the million given by the Commodore to the Vanderbilt University at Nashville, Tennessee. He bore the expense of bringing the obelisk that now stands in Central Park from Alexandria to New York—which cost over $100,000. He gave $500,000 to the College of Physicians and Surgeons. His will distributed another million among various charities.

That will, which disposed of the greatest fortune ever yet bequeathed, was a remarkable document in more ways than one. It followed the Commodore’s policy of maintaining the bulk of the family wealth practically intact and united, and at the same time it satisfied the participants in the distribution, and was commended as politic and equitable by public opinion. Ten million dollars and one of the Vanderbilt houses on Fifth Avenue were given to each of the testator’s eight children. Then, after a long list of smaller legacies to relatives, friends, employees, and charitable and religious institutions, the residuary estate was equally divided between the two elder sons.

William H. Vanderbilt’s family consisted of four sons—Cornelius, William Kissam, Frederick W., and George—and four daughters—Mrs. Elliott F. Shepard, Mrs. William Sloane, Mrs. H. McK. Twombly, and Mrs. W. S. Webb. All of them were—no doubt fortunately for themselves—born and brought up while their father was a comparatively poor man, and in their childhood they knew little of the luxury of wealth. Never was there a better ordered household than the severely simple one where these eight children received a training that has been of inestimable value to them. Rarely has so large a family turned out so notably well. The four sons are, mentally and physically, excellent specimens of the American gentleman.

There is a saying that it takes three generations of wealth to make a gentleman. There is about as much truth in this as in some other accepted sayings. It is doubtful whether three generations of wealth do not unmake as many gentlemen as they make. Millionaires’ sons and grandsons do not usually compare favorably, either in brain power or culture, with their fathers and grandfathers. We have all heard of the rich man who declined to let his son travel abroad, not because he objected to letting his boy see the world, but because he was unwilling to allow the world to see his boy. In the admirable manhood of Cornelius Vanderbilt and his brothers we see not the exemplification of a rule so much as an agreeable exception to the customary order of social evolution.

Cornelius Vanderbilt was forty years old when the sudden death of his father, on the 8th of December, 1885, raised him to the head of New York’s greatest moneyed family. That headship is not merely an empty phrase, it may be remarked, for the wealth of the Vanderbilts, though not held in common as that of the Rothschilds is said to be, is yet kept together by strong bonds of family alliance, and is practically controlled as a unit by the elder brothers. Entering the world of business in his teens, as a clerk in the Shoe and Leather Bank, Cornelius was always, like his father, a hard worker. He left the bank to fulfill the duties of a subordinate position in the office of the New York Central, and worked his way up the[39] ladder until, at his father’s death, he was ready to take the vacant place at the head of the management of his great railroad interests. To the duties that this position entails his attention has been unremitting. Not only does he deal with large questions of general policy, but he gives personal attention to details that many would consider trifling—for the reason that no one else can attend to them equally well.

There are few more public spirited men than Cornelius Vanderbilt. His charities, as well as his wife’s, are numerous and unostentatious. He takes an especially deep interest in all movements for the benefit of boys and young men. Of the New York Young Men’s Christian Association he is an active supporter, and its branches for railroad men are largely his own creation. He gives to these worthy institutions something more valuable than money contributions—he gives them a share of his time and his personal effort, and is a frequent attendant and speaker at their meetings. He also gave to the Metropolitan Museum of Art one of its finest and most valuable paintings—Rosa Bonheur’s famous “Horse Fair.”

Mr. Vanderbilt is a churchwarden of St. Bartholomew’s, the handsome Episcopal house of worship on Madison Avenue. He succeeded to the office at the death of his father, who had held it for many years, and whose name is now graven on a bronze memorial tablet on the wall of the edifice. He is active in the work of the church, and a liberal and cheerful giver to the missions connected with it.

In his home life, too, Mr. Vanderbilt is most happily situated. He is a model husband and father, and is very fortunate in his family relations. He was married eighteen years ago to Miss Alice Gwinn of Cincinnati, and has four children. The eldest, who is named William H., after his grandfather, is a Yale student, and a very promising boy.

His New York residence, at the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty Seventh Street, was built for him by his father, and is considered one of the handsomest houses in the country. Its well chosen pictures and extensive library show the cultured mind of its owner, whose tastes are as refined and intellectual as his habits are severely simple and unostentatious. Still, he is far from being an ascetic, and enjoys the good things of life, as he has a right to enjoy them. His cottage at Newport, The Breakers, is one of the finest of the summer capital’s palaces. His holiday trips abroad are spent amid the social gayeties of Paris and London or the art treasures of the historical cities of Italy.

None of the Vanderbilt brothers is actively interested in the speculations of Wall Street. Great as is the power they might yield in the battle of bulls and bears, they prefer, wisely indeed, to stand aloof from the fray and to devote themselves to the management of their vast and substantial property. It is fortunate for the public that their great moneyed possessions are in hands where they have been proved to be a benefit and not a menace to the body politic.

[40]

A MATTER OF CONSCIENCE.

By Elliott E. Shaw.

I think I must have been dreaming these last few hours. It is all so strange. I wonder if it is always so terrible to do what is right! I don’t believe she ever suffered before in her life. The look that came from those dark eyes of hers when I pushed her away and began to speak will haunt me to my dying day. She almost fainted. Well, it is all over—and there is left for me—nothing but the remembrance of her love and the one thing that I shall ever have to my credit on the books of heaven.

Waiter, some brandy—was that brandy that I just swallowed?—it was? How long have I been at this table? What? Twenty four hours? Ah! I remember now that you are not the first waiter who brought me brandy, nor yet the second, and I think you tried to get me to go home and get some sleep. It was kind of you—but I have no home—and I cannot sleep. I can never do anything more in this world but remember—remember.

By heaven, it was hard to do! But she will see some day that I was right, and perhaps years from now when she is a woman—a mother, perhaps, with a red cheeked boy in her arms repeating his innocent prayers—she may think of me and forgive me. And I may be dead, then. And if I am not dead, I’ll—I’ll be a broken, haggard old man with[41] a chain on my leg and a brand on my shoulder just as I have one now on my soul.

How she cried! I felt like a brute. Ah, I know that feeling well, but it is strange that I should have despised myself so for the first decent thing I have done since I was a laughing boy! How I love her—I who have laughed so at love. Thirty eight years of cynical disbelief against one year of absolute love. Thirty eight years, eleven months, and thirty days of disreputable life against one day of self sacrifice. That is my record. And what a sacrifice it was! To give up the woman one loves and make her despise you, that she may not suffer.

How happy we could have been, but for——it was happiness to me just to sit beside her and watch her at some little womanly act, to see her smile, to know that her soul was as white as the feathers of a swan, and to say to myself, “This woman actually loves me—me, a”—pshaw, I don’t like to say the word even to myself. How sweet she was! She used to put her little hand on my head and stroke my hair and ask me what it was that worried me so much (for with her woman’s intuition she soon learned that there was something that troubled me) and I would laugh and tell her that it was the fear that some day she might cease to love me. Then she would kiss me and tell me that I need never fear such a thing as that. Then she would call me foolish and laugh and kiss me again. I can feel her faint breath on my brow now.

I am sure I could have made her happy, even though I am what I am. If I could have married her I would have guarded her as carefully as the Creator guards the angels. She would never have learned even the alphabet of the black side of human life. We would have been rich and respected and happy—oh, so happy! But that man—that man with the gold rimmed spectacles whom I see everywhere, frightens me. I can feel the atmosphere of Scotland Yard about him, although he looks almost benign. If I could ever catch him looking at me, I should be satisfied that he is not what I fear. But although he seems to be everywhere I go, he apparently pays no attention to me—and therefore I know that he has been looking at me, and has turned away as suddenly as I have turned to look at him. It was the only thing I had to warn me. It may be after all that he has no interest in the capture of an escaped—but I could not run the risk, for her sake. After all, I am well disguised. I have changed a good deal in a year. It is nearly a month since I first noticed him, and he has evidently been unable to make up his mind yet. I suppose, too, that it is a little hard for him to believe that I could ever have been introduced into the society of the most respectable people in all New England, and be engaged to the daughter of a millionaire. Ha! Ha! These English detectives are slow—but, confound it! They—are—most—disagreeably—sure. Well—I don’t care about it now. It is almost over.

It has been a strange story. To come here a hunted criminal—a convicted one, too—with my ill gotten money in my pocket and my identity a secret—to have been introduced to good society through a chance acquaintance—to have been introduced by that same acquaintance to a woman I could actually love—what is more wonderful still, to win that woman’s love—to be on the point of marrying her and then to fear arrest—to fear far more than that—to fear breaking her heart! It has been a strange story, all of it. I did something, though, that very few men could have done—very few, indeed, of those who have never known a temptation and never done a wrong. I gave her up, that she might not be unhappy—that she might not be disgraced as she would have been some day—for after all, I am certain that my time has almost come. I can wear the hideous clothes of a convict—I can bear disgrace, for I am used to it—I can stand the hard, unceasing, degrading labor, and the disgusting[42] food—but I cannot disgrace her—I cannot!

And I did it all yesterday. I went to her. She greeted me with a loving smile, the memory of which will solace me in the long years of suffering. She was entertaining, with the aid of her sister, some intimate friends. They were all delighted to see me. Ah, how happy people must be who are respectable! She came to me with outstretched arms as I entered the room, and I pushed her roughly away. Oh, it was agonizing—she burst into tears and threw herself into the arms of her sister. I could not tell her that I was a forger, a professional criminal, but I told her that I was an adventurer—that I did not love her, and that I had intended to marry her merely for her money. I told her, too, that I had learned that her father was on the point of bankruptcy (it was a lie, of course, all of it) and that I wished to be released from my engagement. I said it before them all. I acted splendidly. It broke her heart, it disgusted the rest, it almost killed me—but, thank heaven, it saved her future. Then I mockingly took my leave.

And since then I have not slept, nor eaten, nor felt the effect of the brandy I have poured down my throat—and what is more, I have not cared whether that man with the gold rimmed spectacles was watching me or not. I have done what was right—I have actually done what was right once in my life, thank God!

Ah—there—is—that—man—again! And—he is coming toward me. There are—other men with him. He is looking at me now—deliberately. He knows me. It is all up. Come on, Avenger, come on. I welcome you with both my outstretched hands. Where are the irons?

The mining camp of Nugget Bar, with its twenty or thirty tents and cabins, did not present a particularly inviting scene to the anxious gaze of Julius Anderly, as he urged his tired beast, with its conglomerate burden of camping utensils and mining implements, over the last half mile of his journey. The mountains seemed to cower down as low as possible before the blaze of the setting sun, and their rugged sides and bald tops were marked with shadows and sun pictures, quaint, curious, and fantastic.

The scene was wildly picturesque, after its own primitive style, and Julius Anderly was rather disconcerted by the novelty of its rough grandeur; but he was more disconcerted by the group of some half dozen men he discerned lounging in front of what he rightly supposed was the only hotel in the camp.

As he drew nearer he was quite positive that the big burly man with the bushy beard would prove anything but an agreeable companion; he was probably one of those men he had been told about who always carried a loaded pistol in a convenient pocket, and who regarded a refusal to drink whisky with him as an insult sufficiently deadly to justify said pistol’s immediate and destructive discharge upon and against the person of the audacious abstainer.

And the portly gentleman, who wore a battered “plug” hat, and was seated upon an empty claret case, had a marked magisterial bearing, more autocratic than reassuring.

The landlord, tall, thin and lazy, who occupied the doorway, was the least ferocious in appearance. The other members of the group seemed to Julius to be only passively dangerous—safe as long as they were let alone.

The big burly man who formed one of the group in front of the “Golden Nugget,” and whom we know to be Hank Purdy (designated by certain envious and despicable residents of Nugget Bar as “Windy Purdy”), paused in the narration of the details of a sanguinary combat between himself and six stalwart Apaches, alleged to have occurred in some remote section of the West at some remote period, and interjected the word, “Tenderfut!”

As the term fell from his lips at the instant his eyes fell upon Julius, who had now approached quite near, we cannot do otherwise than consider the term as applied to the latter.

Yes, Julius was undeniably a tenderfoot steeped in all the infamy that the term implies. The newness of his outfit, his awkward manner of strapping the same to the animal’s back, and his own genial and unsuspecting countenance, all united to insult every acclimated Californian, and particularly the group before which he now paused.

Julius was short, rather fat, and benevolent looking; with a big head, slightly bald, and a smooth, round face and blue eyes, expressive of utter and perfect confidence in all mankind.

He stood irresolute a moment, and then, with an appealing look upon his face, said, tentatively, “How do you do, gentlemen? I presume this is Nugget Bar.”

Now according to all preconceived notions of Julius, the tall, thin landlord, who was apparently very lazy, and whose name, by the way, was Sam Turner, should have been bluff and hearty looking, and should have at once replied in the bluff, hearty manner of landlords (in the books Julius had read), “Right ye air, stranger, and who mout ye be?”

[44]

But the owner in fee simple of Nugget Bar’s sole hostelry was shamefully ignorant of the social requirements of a man in his position; indeed he was distinctly permeated by an air of social irresponsibility, and he only said, in a very deliberate way, without evincing the slightest curiosity regarding a possible patron:

“Ya-a-s, I presume ’tis; leastwise what’s left uv it.”

Again spoke Julius, with the unuttered appeal for comradeship still his predominant facial expression:

“Well, I’m Julius Anderly. ‘Jule’ mother always calls me at home, and that’s way back in Ohio, you know.”

The company remained unmoved by this piece of family intelligence, with the exception of a little dark man, lacking, physically, an eyebrow, and mentally, a happy disposition, who volunteered the remark that he “wunst had a cousin die in Ohio.” Julius ventured to lean against one of the supports of the wooden awning and continued:

“Things have been going pretty bad with our folks back there for some time. Pa died—let me see, this is July—three years ago last March, and after that the support of ma and the girls fell to me, which was about all pa had to leave, except the home. I guess we’d pulled through all right enough if the firm I had been keeping books for for over ten years hadn’t up and failed—went clean under and hadn’t a cent left.”

The various members of the group here expressed to each other, ocularly, their contempt for any man who “kept books,” all except the little dark man, whose face plainly expressed an inward conviction to the effect that the failure of that firm was due solely to Julius’s defective method of keeping said books.

It was rather discouraging, but Julius continued: “And there I was out of a job, which was pretty bad, I call it. Times were hard all round there and I couldn’t seem to get in anywhere else.

“We heard a good deal of talk about Californy, how so many were striking it rich here—I b’lieve that’s what you call it when a man finds a lot of gold—and we thought, that is ma and the girls and I did, that perhaps I’d better come out here, even if it was a long ways off, and see if I could find a gold mine or buy an interest in one or something. We sat up nights and talked it over and read a whole lot about how to come and what to do, and finally ma mortgaged the house for twelve hundred dollars, and I started out here with a thousand—round by the isthmus, you know.”

Another ocular expression of contempt from all parties for a man who would make the trip from the States in a boat instead of pushing straight across the continent as they had done; the little dark man showing by the same means his belief that there was some secret and cogent reason for that route being chosen.

“Well, I got to San Francisco, and the first person I got acquainted with there was a very kind gentleman named Walker Smith, who had known of my folks back in Ohio. He knew all about mines and owned a great many himself. I told him what I was after, that I’d come out to make a little money, and as a friend of his up at Sacramento had a valuable mine that Mr. Smith thought he could buy, I gave him five hundred dollars to go and buy it for me.”

Julius was visibly affected at this point, and in a most gentle manner, intended to be brutal in the extreme, called to his burro that had strayed a few yards away and was leisurely cropping the scanty vegetation, to “come up there.”

Thus having given vent to his pent up emotion (though the animal was utterly deaf to the command), Julius went on:

“Well, that was over six months ago, and I’ve never seen anything of Mr. Smith since that day I gave him my money—all in gold, too.”

This time the expressions of contempt were not confined to looks, but broke forth audibly from all sides. Only the little dark man remained silent, and he nodded his head in a very knowing manner, thereby suggesting[45] that he attributed to Julius a voluminous catalogue of atrocities, which he could specify if it became necessary; and furthermore that he caviled at the others for their deplorable lack of insight into character.

Apprehending that he had placed Mr. Walker Smith in a bad light before these gentlemen, Julius made haste to defend him.

“Yes, and there were some men in San Francisco that I’m sure were enemies of Mr. Smith, and they tried to make me believe he was dishonest and was lying about the mine; but I didn’t mind them, because he had told me just where the mine was and everything about it; why, he even showed me a piece of gold that had been taken from it. At last I made up my mind that he had been murdered and robbed of my money, so I’ve come up this way to find some gold for myself. But you can’t tell me,” he added, after a second’s reflection, “that Smith was dishonest. He knew of ’most all our folks.”

Having thus disposed of the matter of Mr. Smith’s probity, Julius began unstrapping his outfit, and by his general demeanor gave the others to understand that he had at last found a home and friends.

This time the limited vocabulary of the group would not admit of any adequate expression of their contempt, so they were obliged to resort to looks again, the little dark man intimating, by a peculiar expression of mingled horror and distrust, that this was positively the most insinuating villain he had ever met.

“An so yu think this yur’s ’bout the place whur yu kin make yer pile, do yu?” queried Hank Purdy, as he emptied the ashes from his pipe by rapping it against the palm of his left hand.

“Well, they told me down below that there was gold up here and that I was to be careful and not be taken in. And perhaps you gentlemen will tell me where to dig—kind of advise me, you know.

“I’m very anxious to find some gold in a little while—I don’t care for so very much, only a few thousand dollars—and I don’t want to dig very deep for it, ’cause I’m not used to hard work. And besides I’ve got to get it quick, for I must start back home before fall, or ma and the girls will think I’m sick or something.

“Just tell me some place where I can get it quick; some place close around here, if you know any.”

Mr. Purdy was the first of the party to recover his mental equilibrium after the preferment of this extraordinary request, and lost no time in stating emphatically that he would be something which could only be expressed here by a long dash, in the event of Mr. Anderly not being about the freshest thing he had ever seen.

“An’ so yu hain’t got no more’n a couple a days to spare, an’ yu’d like to make a snug little pile and git out a here by ’bout day arfter tomorrow, would yu?” again queried Mr. Purdy.

“Why, isn’t that a little soon?” asked Julius.

“Not a bit uv it. People air comin’ in an’ goin’ out a here every day er so. All they hav’ to do is to jes scratch eroun’ a little mite, ’n they’re sure to turn up a whole pile a nuggets.”

“No? You don’t mean to tell me so!” exclaimed the now radiant and delighted Julius.

“Fact; you betchu!” asseverated Mr. Purdy. “Leave ’t the jedge there if ’taint.”

The “jedge,” he of the damaged head gear, claret nose and judicial bearing, confirmed Mr. Purdy’s statement with regard to the abundant natural resources of Nugget Bar, in a manner admitting no doubt of his sincerity, so that Julius did not require the concurrent statements of the other members of the party, which were nevertheless given.

Julius now felt his troubles to be at an end. A few days more and he would be a comparatively rich man. He expressed his astonishment that fortunes were picked up so easily.

“Ya-a-h, minin’ ain’t what ’t chused to be,” went on Mr. Purdy. “Why, when I was first out, ther was four uv us a prospectin’ up on[46] the divide one time, ’n she set in to snow fer all git out, ’n we got lost ’n wandered eround ther fer ’leven days, all uv us on foot, ’n not a blamed horse in the crowd. The on’y thing we had to eat was snow and stewed saddle, yessir, fact. We cut up that (dashed) saddle ’n biled ’er ’n used to chew on’t fer hours ’t a time, ’n she saved all our (dashed) lives too. Nowadays these yur people kim in yur ’n git it jest fer pickin’ it up.”

This tradition of Mr. Purdy’s had come to be looked upon as apocryphal, inasmuch as he had never been able to explain satisfactorily how the party had obtained the saddle, since they were all on foot and had no horse. His reply to any question touching upon the source of that appetizing article was always conceived in a spirit of the profoundest irritation, and delivered with vehemence, disgust, scorn and contempt. But the present recital being solely for the delectation of Julius Anderly, this defect was not touched upon.

Julius was duly impressed by the incident and said as much, and again expressed a willingness to be directed to some spot close at hand where untold gold, easy to access, was waiting to be put to good use by deserving mortals.

“Wal,” said Mr. Purdy, “I s’pose the jedge there knows a more good places to find gold eround yur than a’most any ether man. I ekspects he’s prob’ly the best man fer yu.”

The judge, who was usually drunk, and commonly thought to be incompetent on that account, had got himself elected as Justice of the Peace by keeping the coming election and his candidacy a secret from all save his most intimate friends, and so long as he had nothing to do he was permitted to do it.

With the worried air of a man who controlled the affairs of the universe, and withal, a look of pretended sagacity, the judge opined that there was a “splen’d place to dig out there,” with a sweep of his right hand comprehending most of the western hemisphere.

Mr. Purdy, at this striking proof of the soundness of his judgment, assumed a triumphant expression and said, “Ther! wha’d I tell yu?”

Julius gazed blankly out over the bar and up the gulch, and down over the trail he had traveled, and then with the utmost delicacy, and with all due deference to the dignity of the bench, suggested that perhaps the direction given by the judge was not sufficiently definite to be of any practical utility; but he was none the less hopeful for all that.

Mr. Purdy was on the point of requesting the judge to confine himself to some given spot, when the face of Mr. Turner lighted up with the fire of inspiration. He said: “Now look a here, Anderly, they’s a spot right out back a this here shanty where I think you’d find whuchu want. I been a goin’ to dig there myself fer a long time now, but I’ll jest turn ’er over to you, an’ by gun, you can have whuchu find there.”

Mr. Turner did not state that the spot he referred to was where he had projected a cellar in which to store surplus provisions; that, if there had existed any means of getting said cellar there otherwise than by hard work, he would have had it there long ago; and that there was about as much likelihood of finding elephants’ teeth there as gold. But, nevertheless, this all passed through his mind.

“But, my dear sir,” said Julius, “you are not laboring under the delusion that I want to take any man’s mine and use it to my own advantage, I hope. I couldn’t think of taking what another man had found. I just thought some of you could kind of advise me.”

The absurdity of supposing that Mr. Turner would labor under any circumstances, not even excepting a delusion, was so apparent to the judge that he was moved to smile knowingly; but at an indignant look from Hank Purdy he straightened himself up and stared hard at the mountains, as if he were possessed of some recondite knowledge concerning their origin and manner of construction.

[47]

“Wal, I admit it’s mighty gen’rous in me,” said Mr. Turner, with a sublime look of self abnegation upon his honest face, “but I tell you we’r’ none uv us mean around these here diggin’s, not if we know it; and ’sides thet, I got a dozen or so places jest as good as thet ’t I kin go to any time, so I guess you jest better go to work there t’morrow an’ git whuchu kin out uv it.”

Julius was profuse in his earnest expressions of gratitude, but Mr. Turner waved him off and magnanimously said it was nothing—which was quite true.

Then Julius had his supper and was shown to the back room, where he was to pass the night.

Upon Mr. Turner’s explaining his object in inducing Julius to dig back of the hotel, whereby he was to be a new cellar the gainer, he was unsparingly praised for bringing about his object by this poetical idealization of a cold, hard reality, in the mind of Julius, and then the gentlemen drank something, the little dark man, as he ordered his without any water, wishing every one to remember, when Julius Anderly’s true character became known, that he had warned them against him from the first.

As they drank to the completion of the new cellar, Julius was heard in his room, musically entreating some person, evidently a female, to lay her brown head upon his breast, which vocal effort was not favorably received, especially by the little dark man, who muttered, as he ambled off toward his tent, that they “didn’t want no layin’ of heads on breasts around there.”

The next morning found Julius digging laboriously in the hard ground back of the hotel, within the space marked off by Mr. Turner, with a song upon his lips and the firm conviction in his breast that in a few days he would be on his way to Ohio with the money that was to make ma and the girls comfortable.

All day long he worked assiduously, never pausing to note the looks of contempt and ridicule that were cast upon him by the passing miners who were working up the gulch with pick, shovel and pan.

That night Mr. Turner’s cellar was half done, and Julius was as hopeful as ever, confidently remarking to Mr. Purdy that he would surely find the gold tomorrow, as he was getting the space narrowed down now. He jubilantly dilated upon the manner in which he would apply his fortune, not forgetting to mention that the whole party were to have a big supper at his expense—which caused the judge to regret, momentarily, that the whole thing was a practical joke upon the Easterner.

Julius rose betimes the following morning, and again proceeded to work, as confident that the sun would set upon him a rich man that night as he was that a temperance movement was the one thing needful in Nugget Bar.

That afternoon about four o’clock, as the usual group were gathered in front of the “Golden Nugget,” indolently discussing various abstract moral and social problems, of which this story does not take cognizance, and Mr. Turner was inwardly congratulating himself on the imminent completion of his cellar, Julius Anderly suddenly appeared around the corner of the house, his pick and shovel on his shoulder. He had the air of a man who had finished his day’s work.

“Well, I suppose I’ll have to leave you in the morning,” he said. “There’s a party of miners from up the gulch going down, and I can go with them; I found the gold all right enough, thanks to you, Mr. Turner, and my other friends here.”

“You wha-a-t?” screamed Mr. Turner, evidencing more energy than had ever before characterized any remark of his made within the hearing of any of the assembled residents of Nugget Bar. “You found wha-a-t?”

“Why, I’ve found the gold, you know,” answered Julius, slightly bewildered by the general paralytic attitude of the group, and by this unexpected and unprecedented display of energy on Mr. Turner’s part.[48] “I’ve got a whole pile of gold round here—found it just as you said—and a man that saw me says I may go down with his party tomorrow.”

Consternation was written upon the faces of all the group. Consternation? Yes, and wild alarm, terrified surprise, and incredulity and anger and sheepishness, and many other emotions too numerous and heterogeneous to admit of specification. With one accord they dashed off to the scene of Julius’s labors.

Yes, there was a pile of golden nuggets, just as they had been taken from their strange, unthought of hiding place, where some fanciful freak of nature had stowed them—a most convincing proof of nature’s whimsicality.

There was no doubt but what a rich pocket had been struck, and yet the good citizens of Nugget Bar, and especially those who had lately served Julius in an advisory capacity, seemed prone to discredit the evidence of their sight and touch, and handled the precious fragments as if they were something intangible.

And in the midst of all the flurry and excitement stood Julius, radiant and joyful, his cherubic face wreathed in a quiet smile of contentment, and not one bit excited or surprised, because had not these rough but honest men told him he would find a lot of gold there, and he had found it as a matter of course?

Resuscitative measures were now in order, and were inaugurated at Julius’s expense. Nugget Bar ate and drank late and deeply that night, but as Julius left next morning with the party “down below,” most of it was up with its aching head and bitter tasting mouth to see him off, and the little dark man was heard to remark that he had told them so from the first, and now he supposed they were satisfied—which they were not.

The landscape in the rear of the “Golden Nugget” was soon terribly disfigured by Nugget Bar picks and shovels, and Sam Turner’s cellar was enlarged to proportions that no self respecting cellar would be guilty of assuming; but I never heard that Nugget Bar found another pocket there.

I.—Columbia College.

While the highest prestige of age and renown attaches to those of our American universities that are located in lesser towns, the tendency of recent times seems to be rather toward the development of fully equipped educational institutions in the great urban centers of population. Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, it will generally be admitted, still stand foremost, but New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore have built up universities whose subordination needs to be qualified in some particulars—for the scientific department of Johns Hopkins and the medical branch of the University of Pennsylvania rank at least as high as those of the older colleges, while Columbia’s rapidly increasing wealth has enabled it to advance with greater rapidity than any of its sisters. Established in prerevolutionary times, generously fostered by the State, by the Trinity Church corporation, and by private munificence, the development of New York has so augmented its revenue that it has now become a university in the fullest sense of the term, and possesses among its schools three that are unequaled in the United States.

From the time it was chartered, in 1754, until 1857, its extensive college grounds were situated on what is now one of the most crowded commercial districts of the city—that between College Place and the North River. It was chartered under the name of King’s College, and was supported and controlled by Church of England influences. For this reason it was disfavored by other religious denominations, and a hard struggle existence ensued until the corporation of Trinity Church came to the rescue, by granting it the tract of land already mentioned and enabling the college to erect its first buildings.

Misfortune was again encountered at the breaking out of the Revolution. The college was regarded as a nest of Toryism, and the committee of public safety essayed to suppress it by ordering the buildings to be prepared for occupation by the troops. Under this misuse the college had been reduced to a state almost requiring recreation, when in 1784 the Legislature reincorporated it under its later name. In 1857 the site was removed to the present location at Madison Avenue and Forty Ninth Street.

The five departments of Columbia College are those of Arts, of Mines, of Law, of Political Science, and of Medicine, and in addition there is an annex for women, known as Barnard College, in honor of the lately retired president, Frederick A. P. Barnard. The schools of Law, Mines and Medicine are the leading ones of the country.

The School of Arts provides the usual classical education, at a cost to students of $150 for the annual fee. There are a number of free and prize scholarships, and seven three year fellowships of $500 per annum. There is also a post graduate course of wide scope.

Seven parallel courses of engineering are pursued in the School of Mines, the fee for which is $200 for each of the four years of study; and there is besides a post graduate course of two years for the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy. The work done in this department is of the most exact and thorough character. A feature of it is the regular excursions of parties of students under the supervision of their instructors into the foundries and work shops of the city, or to the scene of some large field construction for the[50] purpose of “carrying the chain” and of surveying.

The School of Law, since its organization in 1858, has sent forth the major portion of the great legal lights of the country. The course occupies three years, at an annual fee of $200, which, in common with the fees of the other departments, may be remitted at the discretion of the Faculty.

Political science furnishes another department extending over three years. At the end of the first year the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy is conferred; that of Master of Arts at the end of the second year, and at completion the student receives the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Barnard College, organized a few years ago, is kindred in scope to the School of Arts, and requires an equally severe entrance examination for qualification to matriculate. Already in its short history it begins to evince a high standard of scholarship, and bids fair to take a leading position in the ranks of college annexes for women.

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All the foregoing, except the last named, are located on the ground between Forty Ninth and Fiftieth Streets and Madison and Fourth Avenues. The remaining branch, the College of Physicians and Surgeons, has lately, through the royal munificence of private individuals, been enabled to secure a splendid extension of its facilities. The late William H. Vanderbilt in 1885 presented to the college the sum of $500,000, with which an ample site was purchased at Fifty Ninth Street and Ninth Avenue and suitable buildings erected. This princely gift was followed by another from the donor’s daughter, Mrs. W. D. Sloane, who, with her husband, built, and equipped, at a cost of $250,000, the Sloane Maternity Hospital, controlled by the college. Yet again, the four sons of Mr. Vanderbilt established a free clinic, known as the Vanderbilt clinic, which also called for an expenditure of a quarter of a million dollars. Though since its foundation in 1807 the P. & S., as it is popularly called, has been the leading school of medicine of the western world, these superb examples of philanthropic liberality have placed it in a position to compare with the foremost schools of Europe.

The income of Columbia is mainly derived from the rentals of extensive grants of real estate received from Trinity Church and the State. These holdings are situated both in the crowded districts of trade and the neighborhood of wealthy residence, and their values have largely increased with time.

As guardian in chief of this vast estate and director of the progress of a modern university, the president of Columbia needs to be a man of rare qualifications. High scholarship he should have as the head of a learned institution, and rare business ability he must have as the manager of the various interests intrusted to his care. The college is fortunate indeed to have at its helm one who so eminently combines the qualifications of the scholar, the gentleman, and the practical man of affairs as does Dr. Seth Low.

Unlike the majority of colleges, Columbia provides no living quarters for its undergraduates, who, separating each day to their widely distributed homes or lodgings, enjoy nothing of that unique existence known as “college life,” so dear to the recollection of the alumnus. This does not, however, banish an intense college spirit, fostered by Greek letter fraternities, literary societies, many subdivisions of athletic organization and scores of little cliques or clubs, like so many branching roots of a noble loyalty.

The college, on its removal to its present site, consisted of a now venerable and imposing building, in style approaching the Colonial, and occupying the center of a full city square, admitting of extensive grounds and an ample campus. On this space there have from time to time been erected various additional buildings for the accommodation of the fast growing schools, until now the original structure is almost completely surrounded with these modern edifices, a compact mass of impressive appearance and great capacity. The buildings of the medical school combine the results of modern ingenuity in the attainment of the most perfect convenience with pleasing architectural effects.

II.—The University of the City of New York.

A noteworthy Gothic structure of white freestone, situated on the once aristocratic Washington Square, is the principal seat of the University of the City of New York. To the many pleasing associations of the past that cluster around this locality, the University building contributes the lion’s share. Besides lending its academic dignity to the spot, its studios and apartments were long the abiding place of the leaders of the artistic and literary coteries of the city. It is memorable, too, as the scene of the world famed achievements of two of the University’s professors—Professors Samuel F. B. Morse and John W. Draper, the[52] former of whom here invented the recording telegraph, and the latter first applied photography to the representation of the human countenance.

The origin of the university was philanthropic. In 1829 seven prominent New Yorkers—bankers, merchants, and professional men—met to consider the establishing of a liberal university, designed to comprise a graduate division for the pursuit of advanced studies, and an undergraduate division devoted to classical and scientific courses. Calls for subscriptions met a liberal response, and the college was speedily launched. The building, which was erected in 1835, is now occupied by the Department of Arts and Sciences, the Schools of Law and Pedagogy, besides the chairs of several post graduate courses in line with the intentions of the founders.

A medical department of high rank dates from 1841; it is situated in an ample building in East Twenty Sixth Street, opposite Bellevue Hospital, where practical instruction is obtained by the students. Among its noteworthy features is the Loomis laboratory, occupying a five story wing, which was erected at a cost of $100,000. This money was received from an unknown donor, through Dr. Alfred L. Loomis, one of its best known professors; and among the conditions of the gift was the strange proviso that the name of the giver should be kept secret.

Some of the branches of the university are liberally endowed; others are supported by the fees of the students. Among the latter is one whose recent establishment is indicative of the breadth of plan contemplated by the governors. This is the School of Pedagogy, ably presided over by Dr. Jerome Allen.

The Chancellor of the University is Dr. John Hall, who succeeded Dr. Howard Crosby in the office. The institution does efficient work in all its branches, and has been eminently successful in the achievement of the founders’ design—“to diffuse knowledge.”

III.—The College of the City of New York.

The third of the great general educational institutions of the metropolis is entirely distinct from the one last described, in spite of the confusion between them that exists in the minds of many New Yorkers[53] who should be better informed. The similarity of name is certainly misleading, and for that reason a little unfortunate.

The College of the City of New York is a public institution in the fullest sense of the term. It is a supplement to the municipal system of common schools, and with those schools is under the control of the Board of Education. It was established in 1848 by the authority of the Legislature; its first class matriculated in the following January and graduated in 1853. It was not, however, until 1854 that the Legislature bestowed upon the Free Academy, as it was then called, full collegiate powers and privileges as regards conferring upon graduates the usual degrees in the arts and sciences. In 1866 it was admitted to the circle of the State’s colleges that are scrutinized by State Regents. At the same time was adopted the modern and more dignified name that it has since borne.

The curriculum at this institute is divided into three courses, the classical, the scientific and the mechanical, each occupying four years, and preceded by a preparatory course of one year. The classical course gives especial attention to Latin and Greek, but includes one modern language. The scientific course comprises mathematics and the modern languages as the leading subjects of study. The mechanical course differs from the scientific in that it gives more prominence to the applications of mechanical science, and calls for practice in the workshop and the chemical laboratory during the whole course. There is also a post graduate course in civil engineering, extending over two years.

The College of the City of New York has always been a target for[54] the assaults of politicians, and many attempts have been made to secure its abolition on various pretexts. Through all of them, however, the institution has triumphantly marched, and under the presidency of General Alexander S. Webb it has gained increased scope and efficiency with every year. It has long been remarked that the names of its graduates are more than ordinarily prominent among the leaders of post graduate departments elsewhere.

The College is situated at Lexington Avenue and Twenty Third Street. The buildings are constructed of brick, and are valued at $225,000. They contain a library of 26,180 volumes, a natural history cabinet of 7,500 specimens, and scientific apparatus to the value of $28,000.

On the accession of General Webb in 1869 the College had on its rolls 27 instructors and 447 students, at a cost to the city of $125,000 a year. At the present time there are 44 instructors and 1,450 students, while the increase of the annual expense has been but $23,000. The faculty has comprised some famous names: Horace Webster was the institution’s first president and professor of philosophy, and Gerardus B. Docharty its professor of mathematics. Charles Edward Anthon was professor of history and belles lettres from 1852 until his decease in 1883. Other notable names on the roll are those of Oliver W. Gibbs, General William B. Franklin, John C. Draper, Russell Sturgis, and R. Ogden Doremus.

New York’s system of public education has received severe, and unfortunately not unjust criticism, which has been called forth by defects in the common schools, and especially by their inadequate seating capacity. The advanced department of the system, however, is recognized as a model of efficiency. Its very completeness and success have often been used to emphasize by contrast the imperfections of the common schools, to whose pupils it offers gratuitously the benefits of a collegiate course and collegiate degrees.

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THE JAPANESE NOVELTY STORE.

Healthful outdoor sports and exercises have in the last few years grown to a remarkable vogue and popularity in this country. Their cultivation has indeed been one of the most notable social developments of the past quarter of a century. England has led the world in the various branches of athletics, and the general participation in them by her people has done much to make the English race distinguished among nations for the best standard of physical development.

But already we are fairly dividing the honors with her. In yachting we have built the boats and reared the sailors that have outsailed, time and again, the best yachts England has ever produced. American riflemen and American oarsmen have held their own against the best talent of England. Even in cricket, their great national game, picked teams of Englishmen have been met and vanquished by transatlantic invaders. Of running, walking and bicycling records America holds her share, and of those for short distances she has the great majority. In high jumping, throwing the hammer and putting the weight, American athletes are in the lead. Tennis and polo are newer games here than in England, but our standards in them are of the highest. Baseball is peculiarly our own, and it has been developed to a wonderful degree of scientific skill reached by no other outdoor sport.

“The pleasure of exercise,” says Dr. Holmes, “is due first to a purely physical impression, and secondly to a sense of power in action. The first source of pleasure varies, of course, with our condition, and the state of the surrounding circumstances; the second with the amount and kind of power, and the extent and kind of action. In all forms of active exercise there are three powers simultaneously in action—the will, the muscles and the intellect. Each of these predominates in different kinds of exercise.” The Autocrat discusses the relative merits of walking, riding and rowing, concluding with the statement that rowing “is the nearest approach to flying that man has ever made or perhaps ever will make. As the hawk sails without flapping his pinions, so you drift with the tide, when you will, in the most luxurious form of locomotion indulged to an embodied spirit. You can row easily and gently all day, and you can row yourself blind and black in the face in ten minutes, just as you like. It is in the boat, then, that man finds the largest extension of his volitional and muscular existence.”

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In a later edition of the “Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,” from which the foregoing quotation is made, Dr. Holmes adds in a foot note: “Since the days when this was written, the bicycle has appeared as the rival of the wherry. The boat flies like a sea bird with its long, narrow, outstretched pinions; the bicycle rider, like feathered Mercury with his wings on his feet.”

These are eloquent tributes to boating and to cycling, and well deserved they are; but after all, for refined sport in its highest development one must turn to that most exhilarating of all pleasures—horseback riding. That this view is held by those whose income is sufficient to warrant the indulgence of their tastes is evidenced by the enormous growth in horsemanship in America within the last few years. It is hardly too much to say that it is now regarded as quite as important in a social sense for young men and young women to be proficient in riding as in dancing. Rowing, yachting, swimming, and tennis, it is true, share its popularity in the midsummer months, but riding is an all the year round sport—a sport that in the cool months of spring and fall, and the colder months of winter, has no rival among all the forms of outdoor exercise. And, indeed, I know of no other pleasure on a brisk, cool day that gives the physical invigoration, the keen enjoyment, and the ruddy glow to be obtained from a gallop in the park. But to get the fullest pleasure the rider must be well mounted and well trained in his art. He should have his own horse—an animal with light, springy action and graceful movement, one that pleases the eye, too, for pleasure comes not alone from a sense of exercise. Furthermore, the rider and his horse should be on good terms. The latter, if an animal of good temper and intelligence, is sure to do his part well when the proper overtures are made to him—when he is treated kindly and wisely, and is made to understand clearly what he is expected to do. With such an understanding between rider and horse each enters into the sport with spirit and zest, with a mutual confidence and mutual desire for an exhilarating dash that rewards each alike with—as Dr. Holmes says of boating—“the most luxurious form of locomotion indulged to an embodied spirit.”

This degree of pleasure is not within the compass of the novice—not within the grasp of the man of[59] bad temper and coarse mental composition, who hasn’t the confidence and love of his horse—not within the bounds of possibility to him who rides a school horse, which is, as a rule, little more than a hack—a horse in appearance, to be sure, but not a horse in the finer instincts and finer feelings of the carefully bred and well cared for animal.

The school horse, which is ridden by riders of all grades, by men of varying moods and widely different tempers, is sometimes treated kindly, but more frequently abused, and is too often pushed to the point of exhaustion—such a horse soon loses its spirit, and forgetting its better nature settles down into a plodding, unintelligent machine.

To become an expert oarsman one must give months, even years, to practice. This holds true of all sports in which one wishes to excel, and yet the average man evidently thinks, from the assurance he displays in sallying forth to ride, that he can without any training mount a horse and forthwith become a perfect horseman, when the only equipment he has for the undertaking consists of his two legs which enable him to sit astride the saddle. But this does not constitute riding in its true sense. That is an accomplishment to be acquired only by the most painstaking training and long practice. When one sees the men—and women too, for that matter—who, having had no training and possessing no knowledge of the horse, yet insist upon attempting to ride, he is reminded forcibly of the old adage that every man thinks he can run a newspaper or keep a hotel. So it is with horsemanship. If the novices who venture into Central Park on horseback and out upon the road could see themselves as the true horseman sees them, they would perhaps conclude that riding is an accomplishment in which they are wofully deficient.

But the ridiculous features in the riding of the novice are of little importance as compared with the danger to the rider and a greater[60] danger to others, for it is the horse of the novice, for the most part, that makes riding on the Central Park bridle path, or any crowded thoroughfare, so hazardous. Anything that gains the stamp of social approbation is sure to be taken up by a veritable army of would-be fashionables. This latter set, which in a city like New York is a numerous one, moved by an intense eagerness to “do the correct thing,” immediately takes it up and makes a “fad” of it, regardless of such considerations as fitness or lack of fitness for the thing attempted. But fortunately for horsemanship this superficial class does not constitute the great body of riders in the metropolis. Horsemanship has taken too firm a hold of the intelligent and wealthy portion of the community, who as a rule do things well, to be in danger of such declension. It has awakened an interest that has prompted the establishment of not less than half a dozen large training schools and several riding clubs, of which many of the best citizens of the city are members. The work of the training schools—and all of them are kept busy—includes individual instruction during the day and class riding in the evening. A few years ago but one or two riding schools had been established in New York, and their recent increase shows how rapidly horsemanship has gained in popularity. The riding teachers, and each school has a number, are almost without exception drawn from the best European institutions of the kind. With such instructors the schools of New York are turning out as fine riders as the English or French academies. The number of enthusiastic equestrians and equestriennes who own their own horses and ride with painstaking care to perfect themselves in the accomplishment, is growing larger every year. Class riding has become one of the[61] most enjoyable evening recreations of New York during the winter months. Every night in the week different classes fill the big riding academies and ride to the accompaniment of music. The classes are led by professors of the school, and are put through many fancy figures, which are varied with plain riding, sometimes the gallop, sometimes the sitting trot and more frequently the rising trot. On special nights jumping and exhibition riding of the most difficult sort are given. There are galleries for spectators in all the schools, and these are usually filled by friends of those in the ring. Class riding in the Park is very popular, and during the spring and fall excursions into the country in the cool of the day, returning by moonlight, after dining at some suburban hostelry, are frequent and highly pleasurable to the participants.

Central Park, on a September afternoon, when the expensive equipages of the wealth and fashion of the city are to be seen on the East Drive, presents much the appearance of Rotten Row. This similarity has been greatly enhanced by the increased number of fine riders—men and women—who fly gayly along the bridle path that skirts the favorite drive.

Riding is almost universally commended by physicians, and their indorsement of its health giving qualities has certainly contributed to the firm hold it has upon a great and growing constituency. The passion for outdoor exercise that has so thoroughly taken possession of American men is shared fully by their young wives and sisters. It is doubtful if any other form of sport in the open air appeals to them with anything approaching the same force. They have not the physical strength necessary for rowing and the active games whose votaries are animated by the reckless enthusiasm exhibited, for instance, in the gentle game of football. But they can ride, and ride well, and with quite as keen enjoyment as their brothers. Another cause, perhaps, of the pastime’s rapid growth in popularity among women lies in the fact of the wonderful improvement in riding habits. The old time habit, with its tremendous skirt, was an enormity—a thing to transform a handsome woman into a being so ill proportioned and so ungainly that it is a wonder she ever had the courage to disfigure herself with such an outrageous garb. But the habit of today is a thing of beauty and a joy forever—when the right girl wears it. There is, perhaps, no costume in which a good figure appears to better advantage than in the latest style of snug fitting, short skirt habit.

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If the art of more skillful tailors figures to any extent in luring fair woman into horsemanship, then much honor to the tailor, though he be, as tradition has it, but one ninth of a man. The fact that more women ride now than formerly is good enough reason why more men are at present enthusiastic riders; for where the girls are there shall the men be also.

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A LIFE’S SPECULATIONS.

His friends called Radnor Hunt a cynic. He laughed lightly when accused of being cold and unresponsive, and declared that he must have imbibed the trait unconsciously from the nature of his work, for winter landscapes were his specialty. But now and then when he was alone, in the little studio over the stable in Fifty Fifth Street, where he worked by day and slept by night, he would look at himself in the mirror over his dressing case and—laugh again, such a hard, bitter laugh, that sometimes he shuddered on hearing it, and glanced fearfully around him as if dreading to see the author of the sound.

“I, a cynic, a woman hater!” he would mutter, putting his hand above his eyebrows and leaning forward to peer more closely at himself in the glass. “Bah! how blind the world is! Who would believe from this what rages here?”

And with a quick motion he would sweep his hand across his face and place it for an instant over his heart. Then, as if in utter disgust with himself, he would hastily turn out the light, fling himself on his bed, just as he was, and sleep thus till morning.

And yet Radnor Hunt was reckoned a moderately fortunate young man. He had come to New York knowing no one, and now, after a two years’ residence, he had had a picture in the Water Color which brought him orders for three others, while half a dozen periodicals were always ready to pay well for his “pot boilers,” the pen and ink work which Radnor despised.

He was an only child. His father had been a country doctor in a Connecticut town, who, contrary to the usual rule, had been proud of his son’s artistic tastes and had encouraged him in them. This, instead of being grateful for it, Radnor frequently recalled with bitter regret.

“If he had only laughed at my first attempt, taken my paints away from me and put me to some business,” he would sigh. “Then perhaps——”

But here he usually broke off his reflections, while a strange light would come into his eyes. It was in this mood that he frequently sprang up from his work to jam his hat fiercely over his brows and go out to take a long walk that was utterly aimless.

Mr. and Mrs. Hunt had both died within a few months of one another the winter before Radnor left home. He was twenty three then, and that summer he had passed with his cousin, Mrs. Stilton Barnes, in the Adirondacks. Mrs. Stilton Barnes was a Philadelphian who lived south of Market Street and who had at once conceived a great fondness for the handsome young relative whom she met for the first time in thirteen years at his mother’s funeral.

Radnor well remembered having worshiped her at a respectful distance when he was a small boy. She was then a happy hearted girl just leaving her teens behind her, and with her head too full of lovers, one of whom might turn out to be a husband, to pay much attention to the little fellow in knickerbockers whom she often caught looking at her with unveiled admiration in his great blue eyes.

Now positions were reversed. Camilla Hunt had become Mrs. Stilton Barnes, the wife of the well to do jeweler. The plumpness that had been the beauty of her youth had transformed itself into a buxomness that positively shocked Radnor[66] when he first beheld it. He wondered how he could ever have found this woman charming and—here she was becoming really enthusiastic over him.

“My dear cousin,” she exclaimed, “why did you not let me know what I was missing? Why, you would have been a treasure indeed at my Friday evenings last winter,” and she would put up her lorgnettes for another survey which sent the blood surging to poor Radnor’s cheeks and made him look handsomer than ever.

Camilla Barnes was thoroughly candid and outspoken. Before she left Cheltenham she told Radnor that if she had had the slightest idea that he had developed into such a presentable specimen of humanity she would have had him out of that sleepy old town long before.

“It’s too late in the season to do anything now,” she added, “but I must insist on your spending the month of August with us at Lorimac. We shall then have plenty of opportunity to talk over the future.”

Nor would she go away until Radnor had given his consent. After all, she was his cousin, and if she chose to extend to him the hospitality of a hotel, why should he not accept it, as he would have done at her own home?

Radnor’s pride was the most notable element in his make up. It was indomitable, unyielding. Even as a boy it permeated his life, and made him miserable whenever in his studies he fell short of the high standard he had set for himself.

But for the reasons given he finally decided to accept his cousin Camilla’s invitation. If he could have read the future and foreseen the consequences of that Adirondack visit, he would have shunned the place as a plague spot.

At least this was what he told himself almost always when he recalled it. At other times he felt that he would not have had the experience left out of his life for all the joys that the entire span of three score and ten might have in store for him.

Even before this period he had gained some fame and a little money as an illustrator of children’s books, and now that the last tie that bound him to Cheltenham was severed by his mother’s death, he decided that he would take the step which the nature of his work rendered almost a necessity—settlement in some city close to his markets.

However, this could now easily be deferred till fall, and meantime he had the estate to close up, and then the month with Mrs. Barnes would doubtless do much toward the shaping of his plans.

Radnor had traveled but little, still he possessed that quality of adaptiveness that made him seem easy and at home wherever he was. His mother had been a Bournie, of Huguenot descent, and of the most delicate refinement. Radnor inherited this quality from her in very large degree, tempered with the rugged persistency and vigor of his father.

Her cousin’s arrival at the Lorimac House created all the sensation Mrs. Stilton Barnes could have wished. With the tact of a true diplomatist she had said but little about him beforehand. Expectations too fully roused, she well knew, were almost invariably doomed to disappointment. So she had merely told a few of her most particular friends that she expected a cousin of hers from New England.

“A young artist,” she added, “who has recently lost his mother, so I shall not be expected to give him a gay time.”

Men, of course, were scarce at this distance from the cities. There were any number of boys in their teens, and several dudes, who spent almost as much time as the ladies in devising new combinations of sash and hat bands, outing jackets and shirts. This fact had been uppermost in Camilla Barnes’s mind when she asked Radnor to come to Lorimac. She felt that he would tower head and shoulders above all the other males at the hotel.

“And who knows but he may make[67] a rich catch?” she even whispered to herself.

It was a reversal of things, she knew, this exploiting of a man, but then the very uniqueness of the process added zest to it for this woman whose nature craved excitement of this sort above all other things.

When Radnor’s train came in she walked across the road to the station to meet him. She had seen to it that he took the express, which would bring him to Lorimac just before the supper hour, when everybody was on the piazzas, looking out for the new arrivals.

“You are very welcome, Radnor,” she said, when he came up to her amid the crowd.

She gave him both her hands, forcing him to drop his valise while he took them for a moment. Then they walked across to the hotel together, and while he registered, Mrs. Barnes tapped her jeweled fingers together and glanced half carelessly around the great office, with its big fire place in one corner and the many groups scattered about. And she saw in that apparently casual glance all she wanted, and knew that the first impression Radnor had made was an extremely favorable one.

That evening, however, she introduced him to no one. They sat together in a remote corner of the piazza, talking over old times, the future, the walks and drives around Lorimac.

Radnor said but very little. It was not necessary. His cousin was fond of talking, and she certainly found Radnor a most attentive listener. The only fault she had to find with him was that he did not ask questions enough. There were dozens of pretty girls in the dining room at supper time, in a few of whom it might be supposed he would have some little interest. But he always allowed Camilla to speak of them first, except in one instance, and then he asked about a young lady whom she did not know and had not observed.

“She came up on the train with me,” Radnor explained then, and Mrs. Barnes made a resolve to find out the entire facts about the new comer before she went to sleep that night.

This was not difficult to do. Pleading fatigue from his journey, Radnor went to his room before ten, leaving his cousin to join a group of ladies who each evening occupied the same corner of the drawing room, and gossiped—gossiped of all that went on before their eyes, and of much else that never went on at all, with indefatigable zeal.

“Oh, didn’t you see her?” exclaimed Mrs. General Barentham when Mrs. Barnes mentioned the matter. “Ah, of course, you were absorbed in that charming cousin of yours. I trust you are not going to make a practice of keeping him entirely to yourself. But about Miss Bellman; you must have heard of her coming. She is that New York girl who is so immensely wealthy in her own right, and with it all is so sublimely beautiful. Did you ever, Mrs. Penford, see more exquisite coloring?”

“Never,” was Mrs. Penford’s emphatic acquiescence.

“And such repose of manner,” went on Mrs. Barentham.

“Are you sure about that heiress part of it?” inquired Mrs. Barnes earnestly. “You know how often these rumors get out without one particle of foundation.”

“Oh, that is perfectly trustworthy, my dear,” rejoined the general’s wife. “The Bellman estate in New York is one of the best known of the vested interests in the metropolis.”

“With whom is she here?” Mrs. Barnes now wanted to know.

“With her uncle’s family, the Grants; very distinguished people, too. The McBrintons know them, so I suppose we shall all be presented tomorrow.”

It was very seldom that Camilla Barnes’s conscience troubled her, and on this particular night it was not that which kept her awake long after she had sought rest. The single instance of Radnor’s manifestation of interest in the girls of the Lorimac, the exalted position[68] financially occupied by Olive Bellman, the coincidence of their having come up on the same train—these three facts combined kept Camilla’s brain in busy ferment for many hours.

“But I must be cautious,” she kept reminding herself. “I must make haste very slowly. I wonder how long they are going to stay—how much time they will give me?”

She was introduced to the Grants the next morning by Miss McBrinton, while the ladies were all gathered with their fancy work in a shady corner of the piazza. Olive was included in the presentation, but she seemed scarcely to heed the ceremony.

She had no work in her lap, but sat there with one hand on the railing of the piazza, while her eyes were fixed most of the time on the hills across the lake.

Radnor had gone by himself for a row. Mrs. Barnes never ventured on the water except for a few minutes in the evening. She had told him where to look for her when he came back. Everything had turned out so far exactly as she had planned. She hoped he would not stay out too long. With this one thought she returned to active participation in the discussion of Mrs. Dorrington’s nursemaid, who insisted on calling herself a governess, and hence declared that she had a perfect right to sit at the first table with the others.

Olive rose presently and walked towards the front door, where she remained standing for a while, evidently drinking in to the full the exquisite view of the lake from this point.

“My dear,” called her aunt, “you are in the sun. Let me send for your hat.”

“Don’t bother, Aunt Elizabeth. I was just going up stairs, and I’ll get it myself.”

The girl disappeared, and at that moment Mrs. Barnes caught sight of Radnor returning in his boat.

And the same thing happened during the next two days. It seemed as if fate had decreed that the two were not to meet.

But Camilla had ascertained that the Grants were to remain through the month, and she endeavored to possess her soul in patience, feeling that after all this was the very best of beginnings.

“How like him she is,” she said to herself more than once, when noticing traits in Olive that made her seem different from the other girls. “They say that men always find their ideal in their opposites, but then it is the exceptions that prove the rule.”

Of Olive herself she never once spoke to Radnor, but then so far as the girl’s position and prospects went there was no need for her to say a word. By nightfall of the day succeeding her arrival the facts were known throughout the hotel. Radnor had played two or three games of billiards with General Barentham, and the general was almost as great a gossip as his wife.

It was not until the third evening that the meeting took place, and then, oddly enough, it came about without the agency of Camilla at all, and while she was working hard to compass it in an entirely different way—seated in the writing room with Mr. McBrinton trying to persuade him to join her in getting up a launch party.

Radnor meanwhile was in the parlor, entertaining a large company of boys with stories of his bicycling experiences. It was while thus engaged that Mrs. McBrinton touched him on the shoulder and asked him if he would not make up a hand at whist.

When Mrs. Barnes came in a few moments later she caught her breath quickly on beholding her cousin seated vis-a-vis to Olive Bellman at the card table.

After that the acquaintance progressed as rapidly as she could have desired. Nearly every morning found the two on the tennis courts, where they were the most evenly matched pair of players that the Lorimac had seen that season. Then in Olive Radnor found as enthusiastic a lover[69] of the water as himself, and the afternoons were devoted to exploring tours around the shores of the lake.

Mrs. Grant or Mrs. McBrinton generally accompanied them on these expeditions, and it was odd to hear them sing Radnor’s praises among themselves.

He was naturally chivalric towards all, and the little attentions he bestowed on the chaperones were so self evidently spontaneous and disinterested that the hearts of the old ladies were completely won.

Mrs. Barnes felt as though she were on wings. It was a real effort for her to keep her exultation under. Indeed, even now she never trusted herself to mention Olive’s name to her cousin.

Thus affairs went on till the last week in August, when the grand Venetian Carnival was held on the lake. General Barentham took the greatest possible interest in the celebration and was determined that the Lorimac House should outdo all competitors in the grand procession. He constructed a Lohengrin swan boat out of his naphtha launch, and after begging and entreating for three days, almost on his knees, succeeded in obtaining Olive Bellman’s consent to be the Venus who should sail in it.

“But you don’t want a Venus, General Barentham,” she protested. “Venus belongs to Tannhaeuser. You want a Lohengrin if you are going to have a swan boat.”

“I want nothing of the kind,” the general responded. “I want you, and I am going to have you,” and in the end he triumphed.

Radnor was selected to be Olive’s companion in the launch and do the steering in the dress of the Swan Knight, while the engineer, concealed as deftly as possible by the counterfeited wings, was tucked away in the stern. General Barentham was here, there and everywhere, managing the rest of his flotilla, and the guests of the Lorimac not in the “show,” as Radnor insisted on terming it, were accommodated on the steam launch Meteor.

The procession started at four o’clock to make the tour of the lake, and the plaudits that greeted the swan barge everywhere were loud and prolonged. But the engine of the launch worked badly, and once the engineer was forced to run ashore to see what he could do at easing matters.

This put them behind, and when they started on again it was already beginning to grow dark.

The wind was rising too, and presently the boat was tossing in quite a sea. Radnor took off his coat and insisted on wrapping it around the “Venus,” and they both cowered behind the windward wing of the Swan to escape as much as possible the pelting rain that now began to descend.

Not a very romantic situation truly, but nevertheless Radnor found in it his perilous turning point. Olive was so brave, so patient, so confident in his ability to bring them safely into port, showed to him, in short, a side of her character that had not yet been presented to him, that—well, he went down before it as so many men before him have done before their fates, and when he helped a wet, bedraggled Venus out of the boat at the Lorimac pier he realized that the sooner he got out of the Adirondack woods the better for his peace of mind.

It had all come on him like a lightning stroke, or, as he preferred to compare it himself, with the swiftness of the flash in night time photography. He had gone on so joyously, so confidently, with no thought beyond the contentment of the present.

“But why should I not go on and be happy?” he asked himself that night as he tried calmly to review the situation.

To be sure there were Miss Bellman’s millions, contrasted with his own poverty. The world would be sure to talk, but then he would wait and work, and perhaps some day he would feel that the gulf between them was not too wide to be spanned by their clasped hands. And with[70] this ravishing possibility for his last waking thought he fell asleep.

He woke early, and with the new hope strong within him, he felt he could not endure the confinement of four walls until his customary rising time. He dressed and went out to walk beside the lake, which now reflected back the overshadowing hills from a mirror-like surface that it seemed could not be the same on which the swan boat had been so rudely tossed but yesterday. He had never seen the Lorimac so peaceful; all was quiet in the early morning; even the birds seemed to have hushed their music for the moment. There was not a sound but the tiniest lap of the ripples against the stony shore at his feet and—yes, here was a jarring discord overhead as his walk brought him just beneath the summer house.

Two French nursemaids were sitting there, talking in their own language, in which Radnor was well versed.

“See there!” one of them exclaimed. “Here he comes now. Madame Barnes arranged it well, did she not, that they go off in the swan boat? Such a fortune is not to be trapped every day, and as she couldn’t marry it herself, she wanted to have it in the family somewhere. It’s the talk of the house how she’s been playing off the handsome cousin for the——”

But by this time Radnor was out of hearing, his cheeks flaming with indignation, his teeth set fiercely together, his fingers tightly pressed against his palms.

So he had been a puppet in the hands of the scheming Camilla. “A very docile and obedient little puppet,” as he told himself, for he had gone and done the very thing expected of him.

As he would have scorned and loathed another man who would have deliberately lent himself to such a scheme, he now scorned and loathed himself, all innocent as he was. And his cousin Camilla? He felt that he could not bring himself even to see her again.

The common talk of the house, forsooth! Aye, this was easily believable, for had he not heard it with his own ears from the very nursemaids? The Bournie pride rose tumultuously in Radnor’s breast. He wanted to get away from Lorimac, from men and women, from himself, from everything that could remind him of his humiliation.

His walk had now brought him to the fence which separated the hotel grounds from the forest adjoining. Placing his hands on the topmost rail Radnor vaulted lightly over and plunged into the underbrush, taking a certain sort of satisfaction in trampling down the low bushes that lay in his path.

For an hour he roamed on, by some instinct always holding the lake in view. It seemed that he must keep in motion or be overwhelmed by the wild, maddening thoughts that were surging through his brain.

He could liken himself only to Tantalus, about to drink of the life giving draught, to have it dashed from his very lips. But in his own case another cup had been substituted—a cup so bitter and revolting that, strong man as he was, he shuddered at the realization of its existence.

When or why he turned around he knew not, but presently he found himself approaching the hotel again. As soon as he caught sight of its outlines he paused, half determined to strike off into the deeper woods. And at that instant he heard his name called.

It was his cousin Camilla. She had been out looking for him, and now came forward, keen anxiety on her face and in her voice, as she exclaimed: “My dear Radnor, what has come over you? I have been really concerned about you. Here it is almost ten and you have not been to breakfast yet. A maid said you had come into the woods, and you can imagine how eager I was to find you when I ventured here myself.”

She held up her gown, to the trimming of which a many forked twig had fastened itself, shaking it at him[71] suggestively. But he neither answered her smile with another, nor made any motion to disengage the dress. His face took on a hard, stern look Camilla had never seen on it before, and if Radnor had not been too fully preoccupied to notice it he would have been interested in observing the fading out of the smile on hers and the creeping into its place of a strange expression of commingled fear and defiance.

There was a moment’s pause, the silence broken only by the stirring of the leaves overhead in the gentle breeze that had just sprung up, and by the shrill voice of one of the Carew boys calling out—“Love, fifteen,” on the tennis grounds. Then Radnor spoke.

“Why did you do this, Camilla?” he said. “No,” he went on hurriedly, as she opened her eyes in real or assumed mystification. “You need not waste time in asking what. I shall tell you all. You wanted me to marry rich, deliberately planned to have me do it, as any silly match making mother with a daughter to get off her hands would have done, and now the whole scheme is the talk of the servants’ hall and the sculleries. I am sorry to have to disoblige a lady, but under the circumstances I must make my adieux to you at once.”

He lifted his hat and struck off towards the hotel.

“Radnor, you are mad,” Camilla called after him, but he never turned his head; and it was the talk of the house for the rest of the day that Radnor Hunt and his cousin had breakfasted separately.

But the gossips had a yet richer feast in store. Radnor left on the noon train, and—how it got out no one exactly knew—but it was rumored for a fact that he had insisted on paying his own bill. Mrs. Stilton Barnes took her departure almost immediately afterwards, and the following week the Grants left for Au Sable Chasm, Miss Bellman of course accompanying them.

All this, as has been explained, happened two years previous to the opening of the present account of Radnor Hunt. He had gone straight from Lorimac to New York, and plunged into work with desperate earnestness. And so well had he succeeded that, starting in the metropolis without a friend, he had now not only a comfortable income, but would have been warmly welcomed at a dozen homes had he chosen to accept the invitations he received.

He was even chary of companionship with his own sex. It seemed as if his faith in the entire human species had been shaken, and while his fellow artists and the literary men with whom he came in contact, all liked him, none ever succeeded in becoming more than an acquaintance.

And thus, lonesome as a hermit, Radnor lived on, taking his successes without enthusiasm, for there was no one else to reap the benefit of them. He suffered as one without hope, for no matter now what fame or riches he might attain, he felt that after what had happened he could never make any attempt to secure the only thing in the world that was precious to him.

Sometimes during his long solitary vigils in the studio he would try and plan how things might have gone if he had not chanced to understand French. Already before the Carnival he had received an invitation to call if he made up his mind to settle in New York. He might have been very intimate at the great house on Madison Avenue by this time. He passed it now and then in his walks, and once he met Olive just as she was crossing the sidewalk to step into the carriage.

She smiled as she bowed, and turned partially as if she expected he was going to stop, but he walked on rapidly, and always after that avoided the avenue whenever possible.

The first summer after his settlement in New York he spent in Europe, traveling and sketching; the second he went to Labrador with a scientific expedition. From this he had now returned, as the early[72] October frosts were sending the reddened leaves skurrying to earth, and the out of town sojourners were hurrying back to their city homes.

Radnor experienced a strange feeling of gladness when he caught sight of the uneven roof lines of the Knickerbocker town as he steamed up the bay. And yet he expected no one to meet him, and anticipated taking up the old life just where he had left off.

Nevertheless this sense of odd contentment abided with him all through the turmoil and confusion of arriving, and sent him for the night to one of the new palace hotels instead of to his lonely quarters in the studio.

Had time cured the old wound, he asked himself? But no; he knew that could not be, and he expected to wake up the next morning his old self again.

But the morrow found him still with the same inexplicable buoyancy of spirit, and the business friends whom he called on during the forenoon congratulated him on the great good his trip had done him. Among the orders he received was one for a sketch in Central Park, and early in the afternoon he went up to the city’s great pleasure ground to refreshen his memory of it.

It was Saturday, and children were everywhere. A crowd of them of all sizes were eagerly gathering around the Lohengrin boats as Radnor strolled along the path that skirts the pond.

The swan-like craft sent the young man’s mind backward with a rush; and yet in his present mood he did not try to stem the current of thought. On the other hand, he astonished himself by stepping aboard one of the boats for a sail. A nurse with three young charges occupied the seat with him, and had her hands and eyes fully occupied in keeping them all out of the water. Radnor took pity on her at length, and offered to take one of them, a little girl, on his knee.

This arrangement delighted the child, to say nothing of relieving the nurse, and presently the little thing began to prattle away to Radnor as though he were an old acquaintance.

“I’ve seen you before,” she presently announced, turning her gaze from the water in front of them to look up earnestly into his face.

“Oh, I guess not,” he answered, smiling down into the deep blue eyes, the brows of which now began to knit in perplexed thought. “I never saw you in my life before today, so how could you see me?”

“Yes, I did!” she persisted, “and it was in a boat with a swan to it just like this.”

Radnor started. What could the child mean? She was certainly not over six. It was not possible she could remember that Lake Lorimac incident of two years before.

“Where was it?” he asked. “Here in Central Park?”

“Oh no, it was in a picture, and Cousin Olive wouldn’t tell me where the boat was, but she was in it too, all dressed in white and—why, then you must know Cousin Olive. I wonder if you like her as well as I do. Only she was cross—almost, when Flo and I found that picture. It was all wrapped up and—oh dear, she told me never to tell anybody and it would be all right, and now I’ve told you. But you won’t tell, will you?”

Radnor, however, was not compelled to make a promise. The boat at this point reached the landing stage again, and the nurse carried all her charges ashore with small ceremony, the “polite gentleman” seeming scarcely to notice that they were gone.

He sat there perfectly still while the boat made another tour of the lake. He was recalling incidents which he had thought never to recollect again. One of them, that of the photograph Miss Carew took of the swan boat just before they started. So Olive Bellman had kept this secretly as a treasure, not as a forbidden object. Radnor had met Mr. Grant more than once and had been asked why he did not call. What if—well, what if there were two sides to the picture, and money were to stand[73] in the way of the happiness of the one who possessed it because of pride in the other?

How should he, Radnor Hunt, deal with the problem?

This was the question that kept the young artist’s thoughts active as he strode homewards that afternoon. The air was coming on chill as the sun dipped towards the west, and the dead leaves blew up about him spitefully as he walked rapidly along, but somehow it seemed to Radnor, as one struck him in the face now and then, as if they were not the withered remnants of a dead summer, but the hopeful blossoms of a dawning spring.

CHAPTER I.
INSPECTOR SANDOFF.

Victor Sandoff, the Inspector of that famous and dreaded branch of the Russian police known as the “Third Section,” was seated in a cheerful room at his headquarters. These, for the sake of secrecy, were located in the second floor of an old building which stood on a narrow and little frequented street not far from the Admiralty Place. The house was guarded day and night by police spies, and a secret entrance in the rear permitted Sandoff to enter and depart at will. As the history of Sandoff is a somewhat remarkable one, a few words concerning him will not be out of place at this point.

He was a man of tall and slender build, with a light beard and mustache, deep blue eyes, a ruddy complexion, and an expression that had a charm all its own. It betokened a strong individuality and a rare depth of character. At the time when this history opens he was just thirty years of age, and though possessed of a fortune that yielded an ample income, his time was devoted to the service of the Bureau of Police. He had already made his name dreaded among the revolutionary classes of St. Petersburg, and more than one unhappy prisoner immured in the Fortress dungeons, or plodding the snows of Siberia, owed his arrest and conviction to Victor Sandoff. He found a keen zest in the pursuit of criminals. In devoting his life to this work he was actuated by motives which none could question, for his father, Colonel Sandoff, who was Minister of Police at St. Petersburg during a long period, had been brutally assassinated ten years before, presumably by the Nihilists whose enmity he had incurred.

Though the assassins were never discovered, Victor Sandoff became more attached to his chosen profession each year, partly from a desire to avenge his father’s death indirectly—for he had lost hope of finding the real criminals after this lapse of time, and partly because he had inherited a natural aptitude for police work, his grandfather, as well as his father, having been identified with that branch of the ministry in his time. Sandoff was well educated and possessed a fluent knowledge of French and English, as well as his own language. He was well fitted to assume the high position that was his in the social and military circles of the Russian metropolis. He had wealth, for the fortune left him by his deceased mother yielded an annual income of thirty thousand rubles. But only on rare occasions was he seen in the clubs or salons of St. Petersburg, for the present state of Russia kept the Bureau of Police constantly on the alert. If Victor in his own heart preferred the gayer side of life he made no sign. He was untiring in his labors, and possessed the full confidence of the Czar and of the ministry.

He had an uncle in St. Petersburg with whom he was not on good terms owing to causes which will appear later. This was Count Sandoff, his father’s brother, a man sixty years of age, who divided his time between the clubs, the gaming table, and his yachts. He was reputed to be wealthy, but though ostensibly the owner of a mansion on the Court[75] Quay and a country house on the Gulf of Finland, his losses at cards had covered his property with mortgages to the full extent of its value. Count Sandoff was living on the edge of a volcano into which he was liable to be precipitated at any day.

To return to Victor. His position in St. Petersburg was a peculiar one. As chief of the terrible Third Section his power was almost unlimited. He had his own force of men, and every month a large sum of money was placed to his credit in the Bank of Russia for current expenses. He was directly responsible to no one but the Minister of Police. His assistant and confidant in the affairs of the Third Section was Serge Zamosc—himself a very clever police agent. Zamosc was a short, spare man, and always wore his face smooth shaven, the better to assume needed disguises. He was about forty years old, and had been in the service for nearly one half of that period. It was he who ferreted out information for Sandoff, and then acted upon it according to the latter’s instructions.

On this particular evening Inspector Sandoff was in a complacent frame of mind as he sat smoking a fragrant cigar and sipping vodka and water from a glass standing on the table beside him. He was momentarily expecting to hear of an important arrest that would bring no little credit to him and his department. Felix Shamarin, a leader of the revolutionary party, and the publisher of its most incendiary newspaper, had long evaded the utmost vigilance of the police, who had been endeavoring to arrest him for a dozen offenses of which he was believed to be guilty or cognisant. Victor Sandoff’s men had at length discovered that he had found a refuge in a densely populated part of St. Petersburg, lying between two of the canals that intersect it. Since early morning the cordon of police had been tightening its lines about the locality in which Shamarin was supposed to be hiding, and it was almost impossible that he could escape.

As he sat and waited for the expected news, Sandoff’s thoughts went back to a previous encounter he had had with the set of Nihilists to which Shamarin belonged—an encounter so remarkable that every incident of it was indelibly graven upon his memory. He leaned back in his chair, contemplating the bluish haze of cigar smoke that dimmed the ceiling, and dreamily reviewed the scene as it passed before him.

At an early hour one morning, a little more than a year before, he had gone, with four of his men, to an obscure quarter of the town to raid a house believed to be the headquarters of Shamarin’s seditious journal. An entrance was forced, but the police encountered a more stubborn resistance than they had expected. There was a fierce fight, and in the struggle Sandoff’s forces became divided. The leader himself laid low two of the men who sprang upon him, and a third antagonist turned and fled before him. Sandoff’s blood was up, and, his zeal outrunning his discretion, he pursued the fleeing Nihilist along a dark passageway, at the further end of which the fugitive was lost to sight. Stumbling blindly forward in the almost total darkness, Sandoff passed through a doorway. Instantly the door closed behind him, and he heard the sharp click of a key turning in the lock.

The sound told him the peril of his situation. He turned and grasped the handle of the door, but could not budge it. He felt along the wall—for there was not a ray of light—and to his dismay found that he was in a small, square room, with no means of exit—no avenue of escape from the cruel and unscrupulous men who held him prisoner.

As minutes passed by his hope of rescue grew fainter and fainter. The sounds of strife gave way to a complete silence. His men must have been outnumbered and overpowered by the Nihilists, and it would be hours before his absence would be discovered by the police and reinforcements sent to ascertain what had become of him. Before that time[76] his fate was sure to be sealed. He could expect no mercy from his relentless enemies, who would wreak upon him a terrible vengeance for their losses in the fight with the police.

Sandoff had almost abandoned himself to despair when he heard a slight sound that seemed to come from the wall behind him. He was nerving himself to meet what he supposed must be his executioner, when a soft voice whispered:

“Make no noise as you value your life!”

A hand grasped his arm, and drew him toward a secret door that had opened in the wall of his prison. A faint gleam of light shone through it, dimly revealing to Sandoff’s astonished eyes the figure of a woman.

Mindful of her injunction, he followed her noiselessly through the secret doorway into a narrow passage. She led the way around several corners and down a winding flight of stairs, finally pausing in a small paved court hemmed in by lofty brick walls.

The light here was still too dim to reveal her face, but her figure was slight and her voice was of singular sweetness.

“I have saved your life, Victor Sandoff,” she said to him, “and at great peril to my own, as you will believe. Some day I may exact a similar favor of you. Will you grant it if that time ever comes?”

Sandoff was influenced by the tinge of romance that invested the situation. He was deeply grateful to the woman who had saved him, so he readily promised to grant whatever she might ask him.

“Swear it!” she said, and without hesitation he took the required oath.

Then she led him by more than one barred and bolted gate to a street on the canal bank, and left him there, vanishing without a word and as mysteriously as she had come. He knew his surroundings, and quickly made his way to the nearest police bureau, gathered a force of officers, and returned as speedily as possible to the house from which he had just escaped. All was quiet there. Sandoff’s four men were found lying in the hallway, bound and gagged, and all of them more or less severely wounded. The Nihilists, who had no doubt taken alarm on discovering Sandoff’s escape, had fled from the house, and disappeared in the mazes of the great city.

It was a year ago that these things had happened, and though Sandoff made diligent inquiry through his men as to the identity and whereabouts of the girl—for he was convinced that she must be very young—he never discovered the slightest trace of her. Tonight, under the fragrant influence of his cigar—which may have been stronger than usual—he found himself wondering vaguely if the fulfillment of his oath would ever be exacted, and trying to recall the girl as she appeared to him that night.

From this train of reveries he was aroused by footsteps in the hall. Then came a sharp rap on the door. As the command to enter left Sandoff’s lips Serge Zamosc stepped into the room, followed by a short thick set man, muffled to his ears in a great coat. Zamosc’s manner gave evidence of excitement. He glanced at Sandoff, and then turned to his companion, who stood awkwardly in the center of the floor with his eyes downcast and his hands pulling nervously at his fur coat.

“This is the Honorable Inspector,” he cried impatiently. “Now speak! Tell him what you know. If you have brought me here for nothing, it will fare ill with you.

“I found this fellow in the street a few moments ago,” he added to Sandoff. “He insisted that he had something of importance to communicate, and as he would have nothing to say to me, but insisted on seeing you, I thought it best to let him have his way. Possibly he brings some news bearing on the Shamarin affair.”

Sandoff turned to the man, whose dress and appearance showed him to belong to the lower classes.

[77]

“Well, what is it?” he said kindly. “I am Inspector Sandoff.”

“I—I beg pardon, your honor,” stammered the fellow appealingly. “I—I must see you alone.”

“Very well,” replied Sandoff. “That is easily arranged.”

He led the man into the adjoining apartment, which was the middle one of the suite of three rooms which formed the headquarters of the Third Section. A third room adjoined this, and like the one into which Sandoff had just ushered his visitor, it had a few chairs, a table, and a cot, and was lighted by a small barred window high up in the wall. These two rear apartments had witnessed many a tragic scene, for here prisoners were often brought for secret examination, and sometimes confined for a day or two. The walls were thick and the doors massive.

When Sandoff had shut off communication with the front room by closing the door, he turned questioningly to the stranger, who was sitting on the edge of a chair, with a very pale face.

“Is it true, your honor,” began the man finally, in a weak, quavering voice, “that a reward of five thousand rubles is offered for information that will cause the arrest of Felix Shamarin, the Nihilist?”

The fellow spoke the last words glibly enough. He had evidently committed them to memory.

“Ah!” thought Sandoff, “an informer?

“Yes,” he said aloud, “it is true that such a sum will be paid—not for any indefinite information, though. We have already located our man within a certain radius. Who are you, and what do you know?”

“My name is Poussin,” replied the fellow. “I have come to claim the reward. Felix Shamarin is in hiding at the house of one Lyapin, a locksmith, who dwells on the bank of the Fontana Canal, near the Ostroff bridge. He intends to escape before the break of another day, so you must lose no time if you wish to take him.”

Sandoff’s eyes sparkled.

“Are you sure this information is correct?” he asked.

“You can rely on it,” said Poussin. “I am in a position to know. But I trust that your honor will keep my share in the matter a secret,” he continued imploringly. “If it were known, my life would not be worth a kopec.”

“Have no fear,” said Sandoff. “If you are betrayed it will be your own doing. As for the reward, you will get it in good time, provided your information proves to be correct.”

He was interrupted by a sudden rap on the door, and when he walked over and opened it slightly he saw the face of his man Ivan, whose duty it was to stand guard in the hall.

“Beg pardon, your honor,” said the servant, “but a lady is outside demanding to see you. I told her that you were busy, but she would take no denial. She insists on speaking with you, and refuses to go away.”

“What does she look like?” asked Sandoff, wrinkling his brow. “Has she ever been here before?”

“Not to my knowledge,” replied Ivan. “Her face is covered with a thick veil, but she appears to be young.”

Sandoff hesitated for an instant. The wrinkles deepened on his forehead, and his hands trembled slightly as they rested on each side of the doorway.

“I will see her in a few moments,” he announced abruptly. “Give her that message, Ivan, and bid her wait in the hall.”

As Ivan went back to the front room, Sandoff closed the door and turned to Poussin.

“You must excuse me for a moment,” he said. “Some one is waiting for a private interview with me. I am going to put you in here,” leading the way to the rear apartment, “and as my agent Zamosc will be with you, I must caution you to be silent and to make no reply to any questions he may ask you,” for it was Sandoff’s custom to permit the identity of informers to be known to none but himself.[78] “I know better than to open my lips,” returned the fellow shrewdly, and the reply thoroughly satisfied Sandoff. He left his companion and passed through to the outer room. Zamosc was sitting there by the desk, perusing a newspaper.

“I must ask you to retire to the rear room for a little while,” said Sandoff hurriedly. “You heard Ivan state that a lady wishes to see me. I think I know what she wants. It is some personal affair that should have been arranged at my house, but since she is here I may as well see her.”

“Don’t apologize, I beg of you,” replied Zamosc. He walked quietly back and entered the rear room, where Poussin was already seated.

Sandoff followed him, and then returned to the front apartment, closing both doors. He walked to the hall door and threw it open. “You may come in,” he said. “I am at leisure now.”

With a soft rustling of skirts a woman entered. She glided to the center of the room without a word, and quickly removed her cloak and veil.

Sandoff was thrilled with amazement and admiration. His eyes were riveted upon the slender figure standing opposite him—so close that he could have touched her by extending his hand. He had seen many beautiful women in his time, but never one to match this young girl—for she was scarcely more than twenty. Her hair was of a rich golden brown, her eyes gleamed with a slightly darker shade of the same color, from beneath long drooping lashes; her cheeks were faintly tinged with a hue like the early bloom of a peach, and the ivory whiteness of her neck and throat was only equaled by the pearly rows of teeth that showed through her parted lips as she breathed quickly and deeply. She wore a close fitting dress, made of dark material and richly trimmed with sable fur.

The two stood in silence for a moment, and then, meeting Sandoff’s eye, the girl blushed.

“You don’t know me?” she said abruptly. “Do you remember the night of the 30th of December, one year ago——”

The sweet voice, the accent, revealed the truth to Sandoff instantly.

“Yes; I remember now,” he said gravely. “It was you who saved my life.”

“And you remember the promise you made me?” she continued.

Sandoff inclined his head. He was greatly troubled by this visit, now that he began to guess its import. Yet he had no thought of breaking his oath.

“What can I do for you?” he said. “Speak! Don’t be afraid.”

The girl’s eyes sought the floor for a moment, and then were turned to Sandoff entreatingly.

“It is not for myself that I have come here tonight,” she said. “I want you to save the life of a friend—as I once saved yours. Unless he can leave the city before daylight he is lost. Only one thing can aid him, and that is a passport.”

“His name?” demanded Sandoff quickly. “Tell me his name!”

The girl sank upon a chair and buried her face in her hands. She sobbed audibly for an instant, and then looked up appealingly through her tears.

“His name,” she replied in a broken voice, “is Felix Shamarin. He is my brother. I am Vera Shamarin.”

CHAPTER II.
THE TRIUMPH OF COUNT SANDOFF.

The effect of the girl’s brief words upon Sandoff was startling.

His face suddenly assumed the color of ashes; he retreated to his desk, and stood there supporting himself by one hand and looking down at Vera Shamarin with an expression that was hard to define—a glance of mingled horror and pity.

The girl sprang forward and threw herself at his feet.

“Save him! Save him!” she cried incoherently. “He is my brother—all that I have in the world. If he is taken they will send him to Schlusselburg[79] or to Siberia—or perhaps even worse.”

Sandoff drew back a little.

“Do you realize what you are asking of me?” he said. “Do you know that I could have granted you anything rather than that?”

He spoke in a low tone and signified to the girl to be equally cautious. But she was in no mood for reasoning.

“Your oath! Remember your oath!” she cried. “You dare not break it. You must save my brother, as you have sworn to do. It cannot imperil you, for none will ever know how he escaped. Give him such a passport as you give to your own agents when they are sent out of Russia on police business. He will be perfectly disguised, and the manner of his escape will never even be suspected.”

She looked at Sandoff, and seeing no trace of pity or of yielding on his stern features, she sank back on the chair and gave way to a flood of tears, her slender frame shaking with emotion.

Sandoff fixed his eyes vacantly on the floor. He was passing through a tremendous mental struggle. He could easily do what this girl asked of him—but only at the cost of his honor. He did not fear that his treachery to the government would be discovered—his power was too absolute for that—but he knew that the sting of conscience would be always with him; that he would ever be reminded by that self accusing mentor of his unfitness to retain his high position and the confidence of the Czar. But on the other hand his word was binding. He had sworn to aid this girl to his utmost power—had taken the oath with a full knowledge of the straits into which it might some day lead him, remote as such a contingency seemed at the time. Moreover, her tears and her beauty now moved him to pity. He deplored the fact that one so young and fair should be connected with the revolutionary party.

As he thus reviewed his unpleasant situation, a clock on his desk struck the hour of ten, and the girl rose quickly to her feet.

“If you intend to save him you must lose no time,” she sobbed. “Your police are drawing closer every moment, and he dare not leave his hiding place without means of getting away from the city. Do you think that it cost me nothing to save your life a year ago? You are mistaken. My act was discovered, and I was cruelly beaten. But for my brother I should have been killed. Do you still hesitate? If you care nothing for your oath, I appeal to your pity. Help me, I implore you, and I shall be grateful as long as I live. If you will send my brother safely out of Russia, I promise you that he shall never return. My influence over him is great, and he will do what I ask. Oh, help him—help him for my sake——”

Her voice failed her. She stood before Sandoff with her hands outstretched, and the tears coursing down her cheeks. He was visibly moved by her misery.

“Have no fear, your brother shall be saved,” he said gently. “I will keep my promise, even at the sacrifice of my honor. In return I ask of you two things—that Felix Shamarin shall never return to Russia, and that none shall know what I have done tonight.”

“Yes, yes, I promise,” she whispered brokenly. “You may rely upon it.” She caught his hand and covered it with kisses, but Sandoff quickly withdrew it, and, turning away without a word, seated himself at his desk. For a few moments he wrote briskly, glancing from time to time at the clock, while Vera’s eyes followed every motion of his own.

Finally he laid aside his pen and handed her a folded paper.

“Here is a passport for your brother,” he said quietly. “It is made out fictitiously, of course, but none will question the signature, and if he is properly disguised there will be no risk, either to him or to me. At midnight a through train leaves the Moscow terminus for Berlin.[80] Let him take it, if possible. But are you sure that he can pass through the police lines in safety—my men are very close to Lyapin’s house?”

The girl started violently. “Ah, you know where he is concealed?” she cried. “You are the most noble—the most generous of men. Yes, he can pass through in safety; there is a way.”

She tried to say more, but her voice choked with emotion. She hastily donned her cloak and veil and approached the door. Sandoff preceded her.

“God bless you, Inspector Sandoff,” she whispered.

The door opened and closed. Her light footsteps echoed through the hall and down the staircase. Then all was silence.

When she had gone Sandoff remained standing a moment by the door, pressing his hands to his forehead as though he would stifle the conflicting thoughts that were struggling for mastery in his brain.

Then he picked up a glass of vodka from the table, and swallowed a little of the strong spirit. The composing effect of this was instantaneous. He walked steadily across the floor and threw open the door of the middle room. An expression of relief appeared on his face as he saw that the apartment was empty, and the rear door as he had left it.

“My fears were groundless,” he thought. “Zamosc is the last man to pry into private affairs.”

He opened the back room and called the occupants out.

“I regret being compelled to keep you waiting so long,” he said in apologetic tones. “My visitor was very importunate.”

“It makes no difference,” said Zamosc; “but I am glad that you are here all the same, for I have an important engagement, and must leave at once. It is already half past ten. What about this stupid fellow whom I brought here?” he added in a low tone. “Does he know anything of the Shamarin affair?”

“Nothing new,” replied Sandoff. “He tells me that Shamarin is concealed within half a mile of the Ostroff bridge on the Fontana Canal—a piece of information which we have known for the past two days. By the way, if anything turns up before morning, let me know. I shall remain here all night.”

“Very well,” said Zamosc.

He passed out of the room, and his quick, firm footsteps were heard descending the stairs.

Sandoff turned to Poussin, who was seated on a chair, fumbling with his cap.

“Follow me. I have something to say to you,” he commanded.

He passed into the front room with Poussin at his heels, and, stopping before a ponderous iron chest in one corner, unlocked and opened the lid. He took out a roll of bank notes—a portion of his private fortune, received that morning from his bankers—and, approaching the table, counted out six thousand rubles in full view of Poussin, who watched the operation with sparkling eyes. Then he passed them into the fellow’s hand.

“Here is the reward for your information, and an extra thousand besides,” he said. “Put the money away, and say nothing to any one of what has occurred tonight. Do you understand? You must keep the information about Shamarin strictly to yourself. If you disobey me you will probably lose your money and your life, too. Stay, you had better not return to your home tonight. Go to some other quarter of the city. That is all. Remember my warning!”

Poussin stuffed the bank notes into his pocket with a trembling hand. His eyes were fairly bulging from their sockets at the unprecedented sight of so much money. He would have fallen at the feet of his benefactor, but Sandoff’s manner forbade any such demonstration.

The latter was tempted for an instant to ask the fellow if Zamosc had remained in the back room with him all the time, but a second later he changed his mind. He had implicit faith in his agent, and felt[81] ashamed of the momentary suspicion that had crossed his mind. He opened the door, and Poussin shuffled out, half crazy with joy, and went slowly through the hall and down the stairs.

Sandoff paced the floor a couple of times, and then, drawing his chair up to the lamp that was burning cheerily on his desk, he lit a fresh cigar and picked up one of the evening papers. The clock unceasingly ticked off the minutes, and the street without, at first enlivened by the occasional tread of a passer by, soon became entirely deserted.

On this same evening, and while Victor Sandoff was reading the St. Petersburg papers at the headquarters of the Third Section, his uncle, Count Sandoff, was engaged in a similar occupation in his luxuriously furnished library of his stately residence on the Court Quay. A touch of gout had confined him to the house, and his right leg was propped on a couch surrounded by soft pillows. Consequently he was in an unusually vile temper, and this frame of mind was aggravated by the merry and continuous tinkle of bells from the sleighs that were speeding swiftly over the ice covered waters of the Neva, and along the frozen surface of the Quay.

Count Sandoff was a short, portly man, some sixty years of age. His features, once handsome and aristocratic, had become coarse and bloated by reason of many years of constant and excessive dissipation. As already stated, the count was on bad terms with his nephew Victor, and the cause of this estrangement shall be explained.

When Victor’s mother died—shortly before the assassination of her husband—she left to the latter her fortune, the income to be used by him during his lifetime, and the principal to revert to Victor at his father’s death. But the property was not legally tied up, and knowing this, Count Sandoff, who needed a large sum of money to retrieve recent losses at the gaming table, applied to his brother for a loan of one hundred thousand rubles from his deceased wife’s estate. Colonel Sandoff refused the request absolutely. He was a man of honor, and knew how little chance there was of the money being returned. Moreover, some years before, when the position of the brothers was reversed, a similar request on his part—though for a much smaller sum—had been indignantly refused by the count, who could easily have spared the money at that time.

From this point dated the coolness between the brothers; and when, after the death of his father, Victor came into possession of his inheritance, the count’s animosity toward his nephew deepened. He envied the young man the possession of so much wealth, which he fancied should, at least in part, have belonged to him. Indeed he went so far as to enter into a conspiracy with one of Victor’s own men—a very ambitious and unscrupulous fellow—with a view to accomplishing the downfall of his nephew by whatever foul means the course of events might offer. Up to the present time nothing had been accomplished, in spite of the count’s influence, which by the way was considerable. The name of his assistant in this nefarious plot was Serge Zamosc.

Perhaps the count’s thoughts were dwelling on the family feud this evening, for his face wore a bitter expression as he pored over the columns of the paper. Finally he flung the sheet aside with a muttered curse, and reached for a bell cord with the intention of summoning his servant. But before he could touch it a shadow fell across the doorway, and Serge Zamosc entered the room with an ease of manner that showed him to be a frequent and unannounced visitor.

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” said the count curtly. “Sit down. Nothing new, I suppose? Have a glass of wine?”

“Yes to the first question, no to the last,” replied Zamosc quietly, as he settled himself in an easy chair by the count’s side.

[82]

“What! Has your clever brain discovered a plan?” demanded the latter, suddenly becoming animated. “Do you mean to say that I shall succeed at last—after all this time! Don’t keep me in suspense. Explain yourself.”

“Softly, softly,” replied Zamosc. “I said nothing of the sort, did I? But let us suppose that I had succeeded—that I had discovered a sure and speedy way of accomplishing your object. Would you in that event be prepared to carry out the agreement you made some time ago?”

“You are concealing something,” growled the count in reply. “Why don’t you come to the point, Zamosc? You know how impatient I am. But stop—I will answer your question. In case you had really accomplished what you suggest, I would keep my word to the letter. I would see to it that you were appointed Inspector of the Third Section, in place of my nephew, and I would give you in addition the sum of ten thousand rubles.”

“But could you get the property into your hands?” said Zamosc. “The government, you know——”

“Yes, I know,” replied the count coolly. “The government usually confiscates the property of condemned criminals, but there are exceptions, and this would be one of them. I have already made my way clear for that, and I am sure of receiving at least one half of my nephew’s wealth—if not more.”

“Enough!” rejoined Zamosc. “Just sign this paper, will you?”

He passed the document to the count, who read its contents with a wrinkled brow. Then, after a brief hesitancy, he took a pen from the table, dipped it in ink and wrote his signature at the bottom.

“You watch the loopholes sharply,” he said, handing the paper back.

“True,” replied Zamosc, “else I should not be where I am. But now to business,” he added. “The supposition I mentioned a few moments ago is not a supposition at all, but a reality. I have in my possession proof that will send Victor Sandoff to Siberia for life, and that, too, without any risk to us, for the proof is genuine. We have been spared the trouble of concocting a conspiracy.”

The count rose up, heedless of the pain in his gouty leg.

“Is this true?” he cried sharply. “Pardon me, Zamosc, but your story seems incredible.”

“It is true,” replied Zamosc. “Wait a moment. I will convince you.”

He left the room and returned shortly, followed by the man Poussin, who had been waiting in the lower hall. They drew their chairs close up to the count, and Zamosc related hurriedly the events of the evening—how he had overheard, by placing his ear to the crack of the door, the whole conversation between Inspector Sandoff and his fair guest, and how he waited outside until Poussin appeared and then compelled him by threats to confess the story of his bribery, and finally to accompany him to the house of the count.

As link after link in the chain of evidence was revealed, the count’s brutal eyes glowed with delight.

“Yes, we have him at last,” he cried. “But I would not have believed it of him, Zamosc—I swear I would not. He has thrown himself away for a woman—played right into our hands.”

“Yes,” replied Zamosc, glancing at the clock. “He is lost. And now for action. There is no time to lose. Shamarin must be arrested, first of all—the Moscow terminus will be the place for that—and then we will surprise the inspector at headquarters.”

“Yes, yes, that is a good plan,” exclaimed the count eagerly. “But you had better let the gendarmes make the two arrests. Go around to the first station on the Nevskoi Prospekt. You will find Captain Nikolin in charge. He has men there, and will act at once—a very necessary thing, for it is half past eleven o’clock now.”

[83]

“True,” said Zamosc, “and the train for Berlin leaves at midnight. Before morning the affair will be accomplished, and within a month, at the furthest, I shall expect a fulfillment of your promise, my dear count.”

“And you shall not be disappointed—if my influence counts for anything. Good night, and success to you.”

“Good night,” rejoined Zamosc.

He hurriedly left the room, taking Poussin with him, and a moment later the two were striding hurriedly along the Court Quay in the direction of the Nevskoi Prospekt.

Although the St. Petersburg newspapers seldom obtain any information concerning the movements of the police—at least not until it is several days old—no less than two of the morning journals announced, in their issue for January 11, that Felix Shamarin, the Nihilist, and his sister, had been arrested on the previous night at the Moscow terminus, and that Inspector Victor Sandoff was apprehended an hour later on a charge of aiding the aforesaid Felix Shamarin in his attempt to escape.

The assassination of the Czar could hardly have created more surprise and consternation throughout the city, and when the true facts became known, as they did in time, much pity was felt for Sandoff, and not a few expressed the opinion that he could not have acted differently under the circumstances.

But pity and public opinion have nothing in common with the Russian government. In spite of the high rank of the offender, Victor Sandoff was brought to trial three weeks after his arrest, convicted, sentenced to a term of ten years at hard labor in the Czar’s Siberian gold mines, and sent off post haste to begin his term of banishment. He attempted no defense, nor would any have been possible. The testimony of Zamosc and Poussin was beyond question, and the passport that had been taken from Shamarin was a still more damning bit of evidence.

Felix Shamarin and his sister had left St. Petersburg on the way to Siberia ten days earlier—for the devoted girl, despite her youth and beauty, was sentenced to share his punishment for the part she had played in his attempted escape. Neither of them was aware of Sandoff’s arrest. They believed that his perfidy was responsible for their own fate, and their hearts were full of bitterness and hatred toward him. Nor did Sandoff in turn know what had become of the Shamarins. All information was refused him. He rightly attributed his downfall to Serge Zamosc, but he was ignorant of the connection between the latter and his uncle, Count Sandoff. Not for an instant did he suspect the truth.

Two weeks after Sandoff’s conviction, the papers briefly announced that the ministry had appointed Serge Zamosc to fill the vacant office of Inspector of the Third Section, and a short time later it was rumored in club and social circles of the city that his Imperial Majesty the Czar had been graciously pleased, for family reasons, to permit one half of Victor Sandoff’s estate to revert to Count Boris Sandoff. So all the actors in the Shamarin affair received their reward. Zamosc attained the height of his ambition and the sum of ten thousand rubles, Count Sandoff replenished his bank account and entered on a fresh course of dissipation, and the rest—went to Siberia.

CHAPTER III.
THE GOLD MINES OF KARA.

In the background a murky, leaden colored sky. Outlined against it, ranges of low hills scantily clad with stunted larches and pines and whitened by a light fall of snow. At their base a stream, narrow and rapid, brawling between scattered rocks and huge shapeless mounds of gravel and sand. In the foreground a straggling village of whitewashed cabins and long barracks of unpainted[84] logs, with a few more pretentious houses with tin roofs, and a black, weather beaten log prison, in the open space before which stand a group of Cossacks in sheepskin boots and dark green uniforms, leaning moodily upon their Berdan rifles.

Such was the scene on a dreary January morning in that portion of the Siberian gold mine settlements known as Middle Kara.

Within the gloomy prison the convicts have answered to the morning roll call, and are now taking their breakfast of weak tea and rye bread. A moment later the heavy doors are thrown open and the mournful procession files out, a haggard, toil worn group of men, wearing long gray overcoats with yellow diamonds on their backs. The Cossacks shoulder their rifles, surround the convicts front and rear, and at the sharp word of command from the officer in charge, the column is moving briskly up the dreary valley to begin another day’s relentless toil.

A sad and hopeless place is this valley of the Kara River, lined at intervals, for a distance of nearly twenty miles, by the prisons and settlements that constitute the Czar’s convict mines. The mines themselves consist of a series of open placers, stretching at irregular intervals along the Kara River—a river in name only. From these placers the convicts extract yearly, by the sweat of their brow, about 3,600 pounds of pure gold—all of which goes into the Czar’s private purse. The misery and suffering of the unfortunate beings who are condemned to spend their days here in hard labor, is not unknown to the civilized world. It need not be dwelt upon further.

Among the group of convicts who marched up the valley in the gray wintry light of this particular morning was one whose figure had not lost its straightness, nor his face its look of conscious pride, in spite of the wretchedness he had endured for two long years. But his features were haunted, nevertheless, by an expression of suffering that might have defied recognition from any who knew Victor Sandoff in the days when he was the famous Inspector of the terrible Third Section. Two years had come and gone since his arrest and conviction—one year of monotonous journeying across Siberia, and one year of toil, day by day, in the gold placers of the Kara River. He had nothing to look forward to but a long vista of slavery—terminated, perhaps, by an unmarked grave among the Siberian hills, or at the best by a return to Russia in poverty, disgrace and degradation, to spend the remainder of his life shunned by all men. Strange irony of fate, that this man whose signature had sent many a poor wretch to Siberia, should come at last to the same place! Many of those by whose side he worked from day to day owed their arrest and conviction to him, but none knew him, nor did he know them. The gray convict garb makes its wearer only an indistinguished unit in the army of slaves.

His thoughts—and terrible they must have been at times—Victor Sandoff kept well beneath the surface. His face was always grave, impassive, set in that rigid expression which sometimes awed his companions, and impressed even the rude Cossacks.

On this morning his keen blue eyes had a far away look as he plodded over the frozen clods of snow, for it was two years to a day since the fateful 10th of January that had witnessed such a change in his life, and he could not help recalling the series of events that had wrought his undoing—the visit of Zamosc and Poussin, the interview with Vera Shamarin, and the abrupt entry of the gendarmes into his room with the terrible order of arrest.

Thus absorbed he failed to note his surroundings—the squads of mounted Cossacks who galloped by or were seen at a distance, winding over some barren hill top, the eager mutterings of his companions, and the excited interest of the guards who had the convicts in charge.

[85]

At sunrise that morning, while he was yet lying on his hard bed, half awake, half asleep, he had heard the dull boom of a cannon echoing through the valley, and now when a second report thundered among the hills, he glanced up, curious to know what it meant.

A brief exchange of words between the Cossack officer and one of his men—who were marching close by—gave him the wished for information.

“There goes another gun,” said the latter. “The fugitive must be still at large.”

“They will soon capture her,” returned the other, with a harsh laugh. “It is seldom that a man gets five miles away from the valley—what can a woman hope to do?”

A woman, then, had escaped! Sandoff was conscious of a vague hope that the poor creature might elude her pursuers—a hope that he knew could never be realized. It was a frequent thing for convicts to break away from the mines, but they either perished from cold and hunger or were ultimately brought back to endure aggravated miseries in expiation of their offense. The knowledge of this deterred many who could easily have accomplished a temporary escape. What would have been the use? It was five thousand miles to St. Petersburg, and a good thousand to the Pacific coast. Every foot of the way was beset by incredible perils.

The scene of the day’s toil was reached after a march of an hour—for it lay three miles from the settlement. Without delay the men were put to work under the keen eye of the overseer, while the Cossacks stacked their rifles and built fires, about which they gathered, stamping their feet and clapping their arms together, for the weather was bitterly cold and the snow was beginning to fall thickly from the leaden sky.

With pick and shovel the convicts delved into the stratum of clay and gravel beneath which lies the bed of gold bearing sand—sometimes at a depth of twenty feet. The frozen clods of earth were taken in charge by others, who loaded them on rude wheelbarrows and trundled them away. At a spot some little distance down the stream, a bed of sand, uncovered on the previous day, was being washed out in the wooden hoppers.

The biting cold compelled the men to work with more than their usual energy, and all were hungry when the time for the scanty noonday lunch arrived. They drew as close to the fires as the Cossacks would permit, and ate their bread and drank their weak tea, sitting on the snowy ground.

Sandoff found himself opposite a man who interested him strangely—a tall, slender fellow of about his own age, with dark hair, piercing black eyes, and an expression that was moody and even desperate, as though the burning remembrance of his wrongs was always taunting him.

Two nights before this man had been placed in the prison cell occupied by Sandoff and two others, having been transferred to Middle Kara from one of the lower settlements. He had maintained a dogged silence ever since, and Sandoff had more than once found the stranger’s eyes fixed upon him with a strange earnestness of gaze.

The man ate the last morsel of his bread and washed it down with his tea, glancing casually at Sandoff as he did so. Suddenly his face flushed and a tigerish look came into his eyes—a look of hatred and recognition. The Cossacks were some distance away, and before they could note what was going on, much less take any action, the fellow sprang to his feet and hurled himself on Sandoff, clutching his throat in a vicious grip.

“I know you, I know you,” he cried in passionate accents. “I can’t be mistaken. You are Inspector Sandoff. It was you, you traitorous dog, who deceived my sister and decoyed me from my hiding place!”

In an instant all was wild excitement. The convicts gathered eagerly about the scene of the[86] struggle, but were speedily thrown aside by the guards, who tore the combatants roughly apart, the one senseless with rage, the other stunned and bewildered.

“Who are you?” demanded Sandoff in a troubled voice.

“You should easily guess,” replied the other bitterly; “but I will tell you my name. I am Felix Shamarin.”

A strange look came into Sandoff’s eyes, and he shrugged his shoulders.

“You do well to attack me,” he said. “Could not your own eyes have told you the truth? What, think you, brought me here? It was the passport I gave your sister on that night two years ago. I am suffering for her sake, and for yours. Did you know nothing of it?”

Shamarin drew a short, fierce breath. His face changed color, and a tear forced itself into each eye.

“As God is my witness,” he said with emotion, “I did not know of this thing. I thought it was you who betrayed us—your perfidy that decoyed us to the railway station. And so the fulfillment of your oath to Vera proved your ruin! I wish to God she had never gone near you on that night. It were better for me to have been caught and to have suffered alone. Can you ever forgive me?—I must seem to you the basest, the most ungrateful of men. My sudden passion when I recognized you destroyed my reason, else I must have suspected the truth.”

“It was but natural,” replied Sandoff gently. “Say no more.”

He leaned forward and took the hand that Shamarin extended to him. For a moment the two men were united by a common bond of misery, despite the great gulf that had separated their lives in former days.

The Cossacks had paid no attention to this brief conversation, but just at that moment their officer, Lieutenant Zagarin, pushed his way to the spot with a flushed and angry face.

The cause of the quarrel mattered not to him, nor did he make any distinction between the offenders, though it was perfectly plain that Shamarin had been the aggressor.

“You mutinous dogs!” he cried harshly. “You deserve to be shot. I will be lenient this time—but beware in future. Chain these men to their barrows,” he added, turning to the Cossacks, “and put them to work in that spot yonder, where the soil is so hard. See that they get no supper when they return tonight—or on the following night either.”

Remonstrance or explanation would have been worse than useless. The officer’s command was speedily obeyed, and in a short time Sandoff and Shamarin were working by themselves in a small hollow on the western side of the river, opposite their companions. A single Cossack was detailed to guard them.

The stratum of gravel was unusually hard at this point, and they found the labor very severe as they dug out the clods with their picks and conveyed them to the water’s edge in the wheelbarrows. The watchful eye of the Cossack was upon them, and conversation was out of the question.

The hollow in which they were working was square in shape, bounded on one side by the river, and on the other three sides by a bluff about fifteen feet high, the top of which was covered with dense, scrubby bushes. Being a little way down stream this hollow was beyond the scrutiny of the Cossacks or of the labor gang, and the two toilers were in range of only one pair of eyes, the property of the solitary Cossack.

This individual was disposed to regard his position as somewhat of a sinecure. He had no fear that his captives would run away, for they were securely chained to their wheelbarrows. Nor did he imagine that they would quarrel, for with his own eyes he had seen the reconciliation between them. His duty was to keep them at work, and as this did not require his presence on the exact spot he varied the monotony of his employment[87] by marching up and down that portion of the river shore which commanded a view of the hollow, and by gazing fiercely at Sandoff or Shamarin when they approached with a load of clods. The snow was now an inch thick on the ground, and as the afternoon waned it came down still more persistently, blowing to and fro in blinding flurries.

The men could have conversed with safety, since the Cossack was beyond earshot, but neither felt in the mood for speech. The cold was so intense that their only refuge from it was in hard and incessant work. They had just returned from wheeling a load of clods to the river, and as they drove their picks into the hole they had excavated a ringing sound came to their ears. Glancing around, they saw the Cossack place his rifle against a rock and bend down toward the water, tin cup in hand, with the evident intention of procuring a drink.

That instant a stone, thrown from above, struck Shamarin smartly on the arm. His sudden exclamation startled Sandoff, and both glanced up to see a face peering dimly over the edge of the bluff between the parted bushes.

“Be cautious,” whispered a feminine voice of singular sweetness. “Keep your heads down and pretend to be working, but don’t lose a word I say.”

Shamarin staggered and nearly dropped his pick.

“My God!” he muttered hoarsely, “it is Vera—my sister!”

“Yes, it is I, Vera,” came the reply from above. “Is your companion to be trusted? Quick!”

Shamarin instantly regained his self possession.

“Yes, he is all right,” he replied. “Go on. I am listening.”

The Cossack was still bending over the water. It took him a long time to find a suitable drinking place.

“Here, take this,” said the girl. She threw down a short thin package, which Shamarin deftly caught and hid in his bosom.

“You heard the cannon this morning?” she continued quickly. “They were for me. I escaped last night from the women’s prison at Ust Kara. I will explain all later. I have been watching here all day. Tonight you must escape. Remove a board from the floor of your cell—that packet contains tools which will help you. Come directly to this spot. I have plans which I will explain then. Don’t be alarmed about me. I am warmly clothed, and have a safe hiding place.”

“If possible we shall be there,” replied Shamarin. “I think your plan will work—but if anything happens and we don’t come, give yourself up. I have a strange thing to tell you. This man here, my companion, is——”

“Hush! hush! the Cossack is returning. Good by—until tonight.”

Vera quickly withdrew her head and Sandoff and Shamarin plied their picks with trembling hands and agitated faces, as the Cossack came quickly forward, shouldering his rifle. He had evidently received some signal from his companions, for as he reached the spot he said gruffly: “The lieutenant has ordered a return. The snow is becoming too deep to do good work.”

He conducted his temporary prisoners out of the hollow, and across the shallow stream on the scattered stones. A few moments later the convict gang was marching back to the settlement. At least two of their number bore lighter hearts than had been theirs when they started from their cells that morning.

CHAPTER IV.
A DARING ESCAPE.

The convict prison at the settlement of Middle Kara was a long, low, single story building, so situated that one of its longer sides fronted upon the street, while the other opened on a square courtyard surrounded by a high stockade. Of the two narrow ends one faced another street, and the other was backed by the pretentious tin roofed[88] dwelling belonging to the commander of the prison. The interior of this wretched building, which sheltered nightly from one to two hundred convicts, was dirty and foul in the extreme, and was apportioned into kameras or sleeping cells, holding anywhere from four to a dozen men apiece. Sandoff and Shamarin occupied one of the smaller apartments and shared it with two other prisoners, Butin and Vraskoi by name.

Thus, when they returned that night from the mines and were locked up in their dreary cells, they found themselves confronted by a very perplexing question—how to dispose of Butin and Vraskoi.

At present they gave no thought to what lay beyond the first and most important step—the escape from the prison. It was enough for Shamarin to know that his sister had some possible plan in her head—some plan that offered a fair chance of overcoming the terrible obstacles that usually confronted fugitives who tried to escape from Siberia, and especially at this time of year—the dead of winter. He had sufficient faith in Vera to believe this, and patience enough to act and wait.

As for Sandoff, the possibility of escape thrilled and cheered him and left no room in his heart for the dark side of the question. He, too, had faith in Vera. His past experience had taught him something of her strength of character.

As there was little opportunity for conversation, Shamarin conceived a course of procedure and boldly took the initiative. When the four had eaten their supper—for the lieutenant’s harsh order concerning Sandoff and Shamarin was for some reason not carried out—and were lounging on the hard platforms before retiring, Shamarin revealed the whole affair to Butin and Vraskoi. He felt safe in doing this, for both were political prisoners and had a high sense of honor.

The result was satisfactory. As concerned themselves, Butin and Vraskoi refused to entertain for a moment any project of escape at such a time of year, but they cheerfully offered to assist their companions to the best of their ability, although by so doing they would lay themselves open to severe punishment.

“It will be nothing worse than a deprivation of food, or being chained to our barrows for a week or so,” remarked Vraskoi. “We can endure that easily enough. Surely you would do the same in our place.”

This was quite true, and the services of the two brave men were reluctantly accepted.

While waiting for the prison to quiet down and the night guard to go on duty, Shamarin told Sandoff that his sister had been confined for the past year in the female prison at Ust Kara—which was the most southerly of the settlements. He had seen her but once in that time, on which occasion, three months before, they had mutually agreed to try to escape during the approaching spring, and attempt to make their way to Vladivostok on the Pacific coast.

“Why she has chosen this time to escape I do not know,” concluded Shamarin. “But depend upon it she has a good reason. I know her well enough for that.”

“I believe you,” replied Sandoff. “God willing, we will join her before midnight.”

“It will be a partial reparation for what we have made you suffer, if through her efforts you get safely out of Siberia,” rejoined Shamarin. “It will be a terrible blow when she learns of your misfortune. She will reproach herself bitterly.”

“That will be needless,” said Sandoff. “Fate willed that we should suffer in this way. Your sister saved my life. Could I have acted otherwise than I did? But let us dismiss the past and think only of the future. It will be better.”

“Yes, that is true,” assented Shamarin. “We will think only of the future.”

The conversation then ceased, and as all the prisoners were supposed[89] by this time to have gone to sleep, Sandoff and Shamarin stretched themselves on the hard platform beside their companions. For some time sounds of voices and the shuffling of feet came from the main portion of the prison, but finally, about nine o’clock in the evening, everything became quiet, save for the occasional tramp of a Cossack sentry in the corridor without the cell. This signified that the commander of the prison, his staff of officers, and in fact all residing in the settlement of Middle Kara—except the night guard of Cossacks—had retired to rest. The time for action had arrived.

None of the inmates of the cell were sleeping. They rose noiselessly to their feet and gathered about Shamarin as he drew the package given him by Vera from his pocket. Outside, in the courtyard on which the cell faced, the sentries had built fires, and these sent a dull reflection through the grimy panes of a window high up in the wall. The packet proved to contain a long, sharp bladed knife and a short, flat iron wedge—tools well fitted for the proposed undertaking. How the brave girl had acquired them it was impossible to guess.

Shamarin made a brief examination of the floor, which fortunately was old and rotten. Choosing a likely spot, he set to work with such energy and skill that in less than five minutes two planks had been pried loose, and a dark hole was revealed, through which came a damp and musty odor. All this was accomplished without a particle of noise. Meanwhile Sandoff had been doing up in a neat bundle the blankets and change of clothes belonging to himself and Shamarin.

“Now is our time,” said the latter. “Come, Sandoff, delay may be fatal.”

“Yes, you had better go at once,” added Butin. “It will be safer—though the chances are that your absence will not be discovered until morning. It is very seldom that the guard looks into our cell of a night.”

“Yes, as far as that goes you are safe,” added Vraskoi. “The critical point is to get clear of the prison without detection.”

“That will be easily managed,” said Shamarin. “The weather is in our favor. Come, let us start!”

The parting with Butin and Vraskoi was a sad one. Good wishes were exchanged and hands were clasped in a friendly embrace. Then Shamarin lowered himself into the hole, followed by Sandoff, and the planks were forced into place over their heads.

The first step had been safely accomplished, and the fugitives were now in a hollow place about three feet high and extending under the entire prison, for the building had been erected on piles above the ground. This space was full of dirt and filth that had been dropped in through holes in the floor, and was surrounded on all four sides by a wall of heavy logs roughly plastered together.

Shamarin knew the location of the prison well, and had formed his plans accordingly. Bending low he groped his way forward, with Sandoff by his side, until he came in contact with the wall of logs. With his knife he picked out some of the dried plaster from the chinks. Putting his eyes to the fissure thus formed he could see into the stockaded courtyard of the prison. Through the snow, which was still falling, the forms of half a dozen Cossacks loomed darkly as they stood about a blazing fire, warming their limbs. A stack of rifles was visible close by.

“All right! I have my bearings now,” whispered Shamarin. “Keep close to me and don’t make any more noise than you can help.”

He groped his way along the wall until he reached the angle. Turning this he pushed on for half a dozen yards or more. Then he stopped, and asked in a low whisper, “are you there, Sandoff?”

“Yes,” came the instant reply. “Where are we?”

“On a line with the side street,” answered Shamarin. “The next step is to remove a log. Here, take this[90] wedge and help me to pick out the plaster.”

By feeling with his hands Shamarin chose a log suitable for the purpose, midway between the ground and the prison floor, and both attacked it vigorously but noiselessly. In less than half an hour the plaster that held it in place was removed, as far as was possible, and by their combined efforts, one using the knife and the other the wedge, one end of the log was pried inward until they could grasp it with their hands.

It was a critical moment. Before proceeding further Shamarin peeped out through the crevice. The narrow vista afforded only a brief view of snow covered ground, but as all was quiet he plucked up heart and dragged the log entirely out of its setting. It toppled into the inclosure with a slight crash.

Both men thrust their heads out together, and drew them back as quickly with a startled jerk. An armed Cossack was standing on guard along the prison wall not ten feet distant.

The imminence of the peril staggered the fugitive for an instant. They believed that the Cossack had heard the falling log, and expected him to put in an appearance at any moment. The latter part of this supposition was verified almost instantly, and before any plan of action could be decided upon.

The sentry had not heard any noise, for the wind was blowing in the opposite direction, but at the very moment when the fugitives thrust out their heads he decided to exercise his stiffening limbs. With long strides he advanced, bowing his head before the driving snow. In this attitude the dark gap in the prison wall caught his eye, and with more of curiosity than suspicion he bent down close to the mysterious hole and peered into it. He could not see the fugitives, but the conviction that something was wrong quickly forced itself into his mind, and he opened his mouth to summon the officer of the guard.

Too late! A pair of muscular arms darted lightning like through the opening, and the unlucky Cossack was seized by the throat and dragged bodily out of the snow and through the narrow opening. Still holding his victim by the throat, so that no outcry was possible, Shamarin—for it was he who had performed the daring deed—struck the Cossack’s head forcibly against the end of the log. His struggles ceased, and he lay quietly on the ground.

“Not dead, is he?” asked Sandoff fearfully.

“No, only stunned,” replied Shamarin. “Help me to bind him, quick! Every moment that we stay here increases our peril.” As he spoke he tore the Cossack’s leather belt from about his waist and proceeded to sever it in two, lengthwise, with the knife.

“Don’t stop for that,” said Sandoff. “The officer of the guard makes a round every few moments. If he comes by now we are lost.”

“True!” exclaimed Shamarin. “I had forgotten that—what shall we do? It is important that this sentry be put out of the way, as you will see later. Stop! I have an idea. Put on this fellow’s cap and coat, shoulder his rifle, and mount guard outside, keeping your back up against the hole.”

“A good plan,” replied Sandoff approvingly. “I will do it.”

Shamarin handed him the cap and cloak and he quickly donned them. They fitted his tall figure well. Then he crept hurriedly into the snowy street, picked up the rifle that the Cossack had dropped, and assumed a rigid martial attitude. Opposite him was a row of low buildings, dark and silent. To his left, around the angle of the prison, the narrow street opened on the square, and to the right it extended through the outskirts of the settlement to the Kara River. Not a living creature was in sight.

Five minutes passed and no word or signal came from Shamarin. Then a quick crunching sound fell on Sandoff’s ear, and he had barely time to divine its meaning when a[91] Cossack officer rounded the angle of the prison and approached him on a brisk walk.

Sandoff nerved himself for the ordeal. His cap was far over his eyes and the cape of his coat came well up about his ears, so he had little fear of recognition. He presented his rifle respectfully as the officer reached the spot. The latter contented himself with a nod and a brief glance, and was about to pass on when the rattle of hoofs echoed down the narrow street. Hearing this he stopped not six feet from Sandoff, and waited.

Presently half a dozen mounted Cossacks loomed out of the driving snow, and clattered down the street until they were opposite the prison. Then, catching a glimpse of the officer, their commander ordered a halt, and while the horses pranced restlessly from side to side, a brief conversation took place between the two.

“What luck, Captain Petrof?” asked the officer of the guard.

“None whatever, lieutenant,” was the reply. “The girl has probably perished from exposure by this time. Her body will be found after the first thaw.”

From this Sandoff inferred that the squad of Cossacks had been scouring the country in search of Vera. His ears were on the alert to catch every word, though at the same time he was enduring agonies of suspense lest the prying eyes of the Cossacks—which were frequently turned toward him—should discover the gaping hole in the wall that he was trying to hide.

The next question touched on a still more interesting subject.

“By the way, lieutenant,” said Captain Petrof suddenly, “I want to call your attention, while I think of it, to a grave mistake that was made a day or two ago—though it only came to my knowledge this morning. You know the convict Shamarin, who was brought up from the lower prison? Well, by some blunder he was placed in the same kamera with Sandoff, the one time Inspector of the Third Section. You know the connection between them—and by the way, it was this same girl that got Sandoff into trouble who escaped last night—the sister of Shamarin, you know.”

“That was indeed a serious blunder, Captain Petrof,” replied the lieutenant. “I will rectify it at once. I will remove Shamarin to another cell.”

“It will do the first thing in the morning,” suggested Captain Petrof.

“No, I will attend to it tonight,” returned the lieutenant firmly, “as soon as I have finished my round of inspection.”

The captain chirruped to his horse and the squad of Cossacks trotted off toward the barracks across the prison square, while the lieutenant pushed on without a glance at Sandoff and soon disappeared around the corner of the stockade.

The alarm and consternation of the latter at what he had just heard may be easily imagined. As he turned hurriedly a log was thrust endways through the hole behind him, and was followed an instant later by Shamarin.

“Have you heard?” whispered Sandoff huskily. “Our escape will be discovered. They will enter the cell in a few moments.”

“Yes,” said Shamarin coolly, “I heard all. I am sorry now that I wasted so much time with that fellow in there. I wanted to make sure that he would not alarm his companions and put them on our track. I have him nicely gagged and bound. Now my trouble goes for nothing. But don’t despair, Sandoff. We will make good use of what time we may have. Here, help me to put this log in place—then we will be off.”

Sandoff lent a willing hand, and the break in the wall was soon roughly closed up.

“They will find that fellow long before morning,” said Shamarin. “He is in no danger of being buried alive. Are you ready now? Just keep that Cossack coat and rifle. They may do you good service in the future. I will carry the other bundle, and the[92] knife and wedge. We may need them all. Is the breast of that coat you have on filled out with cartridges?”

“Yes,” replied Sandoff, making a hasty examination.

“Good!” said Shamarin. “It is a strong point in our favor to have firearms. That rifle may save us from starvation—and from Cossacks,” he added significantly.

Then, with a last glance at the gloomy prison, they quickly crossed the street, and plunged in among the rows of squalid huts, keeping a sharp lookout for danger. But on such a stormy night no one was abroad except in the vicinity of the prison, and after winding in and out among the narrow streets of the settlement, the fugitives reached the suburbs. Presently they came to the bank of the Kara River, where they stopped for a breath of free air—the first they had enjoyed in two long years.

“It is possible that the lieutenant has changed his mind, and won’t enter the cell until morning,” said Shamarin, at this point, “but we won’t take any chances. The snow is now about half a foot deep, and it is not coming down fast enough to conceal our tracks in case our flight is discovered within the next hour. We should be traced to this point at once.”

“Then what can we do?” asked Sandoff uneasily.

“Only one thing,” was the reply. “Wade up the shallow bed of the river. It is only partly frozen, owing to the swiftness of its current. The Cossacks may suspect our ruse, it is true, but they will follow the stream southward down the valley, and not to the north, in which direction we must go. But come! Vera will be expecting us.”

Without hesitation they waded into the icy waters and worked their way up stream, keeping close to the shore, where it was quite shallow, and sometimes stepping from one to another of the rocks that, covered with snow and ice, rose above the surface of the current.

Two full hours were required to traverse the two miles and a half that separated the settlement from the gold placers where the convicts had recently been working, but at last the ungainly heaps of sand and gravel began to appear here and there. Peering through the falling snow Shamarin descried at a little distance the hollow where his sister had promised to await their coming.

Forgetful of pain and fatigue they pressed on, and as their weary feet trod the soft snow that carpeted the shore of the river, a dull report echoed through the night and shattered the stillness of the valley. Then another, and another—each seeming louder than the last.

CHAPTER V.
DOWN THE SHILKA.

No need to tell the fugitives the meaning of the booming cannon. It was all plain enough. Their escape had been discovered, and in a few moments mounted Cossacks would be riding to and fro through the snowy night. From one end of the settlement to the other the news would spread, and all would be on the alert for the escaped prisoners.

“If we only could have had one night’s start,” panted Shamarin, as he plunged forward through the drifted snow into the mouth of the little hollow. “But the case is not hopeless by any means. Keep your spirits up, Sandoff.”

Then he uttered a glad cry as a figure muffled in heavy furs rose from behind a rock and came swiftly forward.

“Vera!”

“Felix, my brother!”

They fell into each other’s arms and embraced passionately for a moment. Then in a few words Shamarin revealed the identity of his companion, and Vera’s sorrow and remorse on learning the truth were pitiful to see. She bitterly reproached herself for Sandoff’s misfortune.

“Believe me, you are not to blame,” said Sandoff gently, when he had told her all the circumstances. “I[93] entreat you to let it cause you no distress. It is all past now, and we have too much at stake to think of anything but the future.”

“Yes, that is true,” added Shamarin. “Be sensible, Vera, and think of what lies before us. We must act promptly if we would elude the Cossacks who will soon be scouring the valley. I am impatient to hear your story. Some strong motive must have prompted you to escape at such an unfavorable time. I have enough faith in you to be convinced that you acted for the best.”

“I did,” replied Vera with forced calmness. “A few words will explain all. The women’s prison at Lower Kara has been overcrowded of late, and I discovered accidentally that the governor intended to send some of the inmates to Irkutsk in a few days. I was to be included in that number. As this would have separated us forever, I determined to escape and then try to get word to you, for I knew that you had been transferred to Middle Kara. I escaped from the prison at night by a broken window, and went straight to the homes of the Free Command—to some people whom I knew in the prison, and who had been released on parole while I was there. These noble people—who once belonged to the Revolutionary Committee, but before your time, Felix—gave me stout boots, an abundance of warm clothing, a pistol and ammunition, a supply of food, even a little money, and the tools that I gave you yesterday. But this is not all. They gave me information that is more valuable than their gifts, for without it an attempt to escape at this time of year would be madness indeed. They told me that on the bank of the Shilka River, less than a mile below the Kara, lives a peasant who has a large boat, and some miles down the Shilka, just before it empties into the River Amur, stands a hut hidden in a dense wood. This hut was used last fall by some poor fellow who escaped from the mines. He stored a quantity of provisions there, intending to wait until spring and then strike for the coast; but one day when he had ventured out in search of game the Cossacks caught him and brought him back. But the hut was not found, and the store of food is probably still there. My friends gave me written directions for finding the hut, but I have not time to show them to you now. And so do you see my plan, Felix? We must get the boat, float down the Shilka River to this hut, and live there until spring opens. Then we will do our best to reach Vladivostok on the Pacific coast, and once there we shall surely find, among the vessels of all nationalities in the harbor, one that will help us and bear us away to some free country.”

“It is a noble plan,” cried Shamarin. “My brave girl, I believe it will succeed. The obstacles in the way are many, but we won’t stop to consider them now. We will try to look continually at the bright side. The first step is to reach the mouth of the Kara River, which is about eight miles distant, as nearly as I can judge. Unfortunately, to get there we must pass three of the settlements, commencing with Middle Kara, but we can do so in comparative safety by making a circuit. Let us strike across the valley from here, so as to avoid the Kara River and the settlements, and then follow the ridge southward. That will bring us to the Shilka, and by tracing it for a short distance we shall come to the house where lies the boat. As yet the snow is not deep, and if we travel rapidly we can cover the distance by two o’clock in the morning. The danger of pursuit during that period of our escape is slight, for the snow will obliterate our footsteps before the Cossacks can trace us to this point. The chief danger lies in our track being discovered by prowling squads.”

“And that is very improbable,” said Sandoff. “It need not cause us much uneasiness. Your plan is a good one, Shamarin. Let us lose no time in carrying it out!”

“We can start at once,” exclaimed Vera. “Wait until I get my things.”

[94]

She led the way to the top of the bluff, and showed them the spot that had served her as a hiding place for the past twenty four hours—a dry, sheltered nook among rocks and dense bushes.

Shamarin took the bundle that contained her supplies—Sandoff assuming charge of the other package—and then at their top speed the little party of three crossed the Kara by the bridge of stepping stones, and headed due east across the valley. Its level surface—barely two miles wide—was crossed in safety, and after ascending the range of low foothills, the fugitives turned to the south and followed the line of the ridge. The wisdom of Shamarin’s plan now became apparent, for but little snow had forced its way through the young timber, and they were able to travel rapidly. The successive settlements were passed at a distance. Twice the crisp air bore to the fugitives the muffled tramp of hoofs, but the sounds remained at a distance and finally faded away.

At length, about two o’clock in the morning, as near as could be guessed, the lights of Ust Kara, the settlement nearest to the mouth of the river, showed them that the first stage of their journey was nearly at an end. They felt no fatigue. Even Vera had indignantly refused her brother’s offer of assistance, and in spite of the bitter cold they were all fairly warm from the brisk speed at which they had been traveling.

Presently the ridge began to slope downward until they were on level ground; and after crossing a belt of pine forest, less than half a mile wide, they emerged on a low bluff and the River Shilka was below them. For a moment they contemplated the scene in silence, and not without some dread, for the pale glow of the moon showed the river to be clogged with huge cakes of ice, whirling down stream with a great grinding and crashing, while each shore was frozen solidly for a distance of some yards from the bank.

“It will be perilous work,” muttered Shamarin to himself, “perilous work!” Then he said aloud, “Well, now for the next step. In what direction is that to be? Up stream or down?”

“Down, I think,” replied Vera. “We are hardly a mile from the Kara as yet. The house must be close at hand, though.”

“Down it is, then,” said Shamarin. He led the way to the beach and thence along the snow covered pebbles, until, on rounding a sharp bluff, the fugitives caught sight of a tiny cabin standing near the water’s edge, in the shadow of a clump of pine trees.

Shamarin crept forward alone to investigate, and presently came back with a joyful face.

“All right,” he announced; “no one is stirring in the cabin, and I have found the boat. Follow me with as little noise as possible.”

The boat was lying in a rude covered shed within a yard or two of the river, and had not been used for so long a time that its keel was frozen tight. The united efforts of the two men freed it, and then they began to drag it over the intervening section of beach, very slowly and cautiously, for the cabin was not ten yards away. When they got it on the belt of firm ice it moved more easily, and they pushed it forward, sounding each step of the way until it was almost on the edge of the whirling black water. The boat was apparently in good condition, and had three seats, one in the middle and one at each end. The owner had probably used it to ferry passengers across the river.

Then Sandoff went back to the shed, and returned with two long, iron pointed boat hooks and a pair of paddles.

“Now get in, Vera,” said her brother, “and Sandoff and I will push the boat into the water and make a leap for it.”

But the girl drew back and took a shining gold coin from her pocket.

“Wait just a moment,” she entreated. “I want to give this to the poor man who owns the boat. We may be taking away his only means of[95] livelihood. Perhaps we shall need the money, but it is better that he should have it.”

Without waiting for a reply she sped swiftly over the ice and up the beach. The two anxious watchers saw her reach the cabin and stoop in front of the door.

She rose and started back, but before she could take three steps a dog began to bark furiously from within. The brute had scented the presence of an intruder.

Vera came swiftly down the beach, and bounding over the ice sprang lightly into the boat. Another instant and the two men had pushed it free of the edge, springing safely in as it settled deep in the black water. Each seized a boat hook, and as they prodded and lunged at the great ice cakes that struck the little craft on all sides, and threatened to grind it to fragments, the door of the cabin opened and a man appeared on the threshold—a frowsy looking peasant, only half clad. His dog, a small noisy cur, slipped between his legs and ran down to the shore, where it stood and barked hoarsely at the retreating boat.

The man stooped and picked up the coin, but at first he did not comprehend what had taken place. When his dull faculties finally grasped the truth, he ran down to look into the shed, and then began to shout loudly, gazing out upon the river. Evidently the money did not console him for the loss of his boat.

Meanwhile the strong current was bearing the fugitives rapidly down stream at imminent risk of an upset, for the boat swirled in every direction, now sinking deep in the water, now rising high on the drifting ice cakes.

“That noisy fellow and his dog will prove our ruin,” muttered Shamarin. “Their cries can be heard at Ust Kara.”

“Courage, courage!” whispered Sandoff. “We will soon be out of sight and reach. Careful now, my friend! Below us the river narrows and flows close to rugged hills. There we shall be likely to encounter a swifter and more dangerous current.”

As they skillfully guided the boat onward, striving to keep it headed with the tide, both heard distinctly, above the roar of the water and the grinding of the ice, a quick, dull noise strangely like the galloping of horses.

Vera heard it too, and started from her seat in alarm. All three forgot for a moment the nearer and more imminent peril, and turned for a look at the spot they had just left. The moonlight shone brightly on the cabin, and on the man and dog standing by the shore, and then its pale rays fell on foaming horses, and rifle barrels, green uniforms, and bearded faces, as a troop of Cossacks spurred at top speed around the bluff and out on the broad stretch of shore.

At sight of that dread body of horsemen they shivered and felt that hope was indeed gone. Sandoff was the first to fling off the lethargy of despair. His mental eye showed him what chances were favorable and what unfavorable. Besides, he would rather have died than submit to recapture.

“Don’t despair,” he whispered sharply to his companions. “We have a chance yet—and a good one. The country below us looks rugged, too rough for the Cossacks to traverse with any speed. If the current continues as it does now, we shall easily distance them. Help me to get the boat toward the other shore as far as possible, Shamarin; they may take it into their heads to fire at us.”

The latter obeyed unquestioningly, and with some trouble the boat was headed obliquely across the current. Then the terrific struggle began anew—the battle with the waves and the impetuous ice floes that constantly menaced the destruction of the craft and its inmates, only to be flung sullenly to one side by the skilled hand of Sandoff or Shamarin. Slowly the boat made headway toward the desired shore, and Vera cheered the men in their labors by timely words of encouragement.

[96]

But by this time the ferryman had given the Cossacks all the information they needed, and at the sharp word of command from their officer they spurred down the shore, unslinging their rifles as they rode, until a timbered bluff, jutting into the river, stopped further progress.

The boat was now well toward the other shore, and some distance down stream, but it was still within sight and range. Just as the fugitives dropped flat by Sandoff’s hurried command, a straggling volley was fired, and the leaden bullets plowed into the ice cakes and splashed in the patches of black water. But the boat was untouched. A moment later the current swept it around the curve, and the danger was past for the present.

“Now head it straight—straight with the tide,” said Sandoff. “There! That’s it. Let it take its own course now. All we need do is to keep it trim and fend off the ice.”

The Shilka was at this point less than a quarter of a mile wide, and the fugitives saw with delight steep ridges falling sheer into the water on each side of them.

“If this keeps up,” said Shamarin, “and if the snow storm lasts and grows heavier, as it shows promise of doing, the Cossacks will be compelled to give up the chase. That is one advantage of escaping in the dead of winter—the troops are useless during and after a heavy snow fall.”

The snow was indeed coming down more rapidly, and in small, thick flakes that boded long continuance. The fugitives began to suffer terribly from cold.

More peril was close at hand—in spite of predictions to the contrary. The boat stuck for a time on a projecting reef of rocks, and when it finally floated off again, and had passed down stream for half a mile or so, the steep banks suddenly fell away. Though a continuation of them was visible some distance off, in the interval was a stretch of open country. As the boat drifted out from the shadow of the hills, the ominous thud of hoofs was heard a second time, and down a slight declivity rode the Cossacks at full speed. The relentless pursuers had made a circuit and ridden hard to cut the fugitives off. The officer in command came down to the shore, and descrying the approaching boat he made a trumpet of his hands and shouted hoarsely:

“Come in here at once! If you refuse we will riddle you with bullets.”

“Don’t reply,” whispered Sandoff to his companions. “The situation is critical, but not altogether hopeless. For my part I prefer the chances of being shot to giving myself up. You know what lies in store for us if we are taken?”

“We will go ahead by all means,” whispered Shamarin, and Vera was of the same mind, showing not a particle of fear.

So, without deigning to answer the Cossack, who had by this time repeated his threat, the fugitives dropped below the gunwales, and the boat was allowed to take its own course.

For half a minute there was deep silence and then the valley echoed with ringing reports. Crack!—crack!—crack!—crack—!—crack! So it continued intermittently as the Cossacks quickly loaded and fired, and the boat drifted on its course with provoking slowness. It was a terrible ordeal through which the three crouching figures were passing. The hissing bullets fell everywhere, plowing furrows and holes in the ice cakes, splashing water over the sides of the boat, and not infrequently imbedding themselves in the timbers of the little craft. Had it been closer to the left shore, none of its inmates could have escaped—for the Cossacks were fair marksmen, and kept up the fusillade with untiring persistency. Fortunately no bullets struck very close to the water line, but Sandoff was grazed on the thigh and had his cap shot off, while Shamarin was hit in the fleshy part of his left arm.

At last the firing became less continuous,[97] dwindling down to a few stray shots. When a full minute passed in silence, Sandoff ventured to lift his head, and saw that the boat had once more passed into the shadow of the overhanging hills. He drew his head back, cautioning his companions to do the same, for if they could put the Cossacks under the impression that all three had been killed, it would greatly increase their chances of ultimate escape.

CHAPTER VI.
THE FLIGHT.

The fugitives crouched thus for twenty minutes or more. Then, as the boat could ill spare their attention, and was being driven dangerously among the ice floes, the two men seized the boathooks and stood up.

The Cossacks and the open country had both disappeared. Dark, gloomy hills encircled the river as far as the eye could reach.

Sandoff noted with satisfaction that the snow was still falling thickly.

“If we can reach the hut that you speak of,” he said to Vera, “we shall be quite safe as far as pursuit is concerned. The cold is our greatest enemy now.”

“We must fight it off,” replied the girl. “Even with this swift current we cannot reach the hut before tomorrow afternoon, for it lies very near the point where the Shilka and the Amur River meet.”

“How shall we know the place, Vera?” asked her brother.

For answer she produced a tiny scrap of paper covered with close writing. While Shamarin held a lighted match over her shoulder, she read the contents aloud:

“That has a cheerful and definite ring to it,” remarked Sandoff. “It is a pleasant prospect to look forward to—a sheltered hut among the hills, and in a wild and desolate spot, where the Cossacks will never think of looking for us.”

“Yes, that is true,” said Shamarin. “The valley of the Shilka is a lonely region. If we find this hut, we can safely remain there for some weeks. If we run short of food, there is game in the forest.”

Conversation gave way to silent watchfulness as the boat drifted on through the long, dark hours of the early morning. When daylight came the misty outlines of the hilly shores showed dimly through the driving snow. There was little to be feared from the Cossacks under such circumstances, so the fugitives continued to float down the center of the stream, keeping a sharp lookout, nevertheless, on each bank.

Soon after noon an island hove in sight in mid stream. Four tall pine trees stood on its crest, and when they had passed this and driven the boat far to the left shore, a dark, narrow ravine was visible, with wooded hills on each side. This was the place, beyond doubt, so they landed on the rim of firm ice, and were about to send the boat adrift when Sandoff interfered.

“We had better make sure, first, that the cabin is here,” he said. “I will go up the valley and search for it. If I am successful I will give a sharp whistle. Then turn the boat bottom up—so that the Cossacks, if they find it, will think we have perished—and send it adrift. Then follow my footsteps up the ravine.”

This wise plan was carried out. The others watched Sandoff as he plodded up the ravine, almost waist deep in the drifted snow, and ten minutes later a shrill whistle came distinctly to their ears. Taking out the bundles, they cast the boat adrift, bottom up, and followed the path Sandoff had taken.

Vera’s information proved to be correct. Slightly more than a quarter of a mile from the river, they met Sandoff just starting back to meet them.

“Yes, I have found the hut,” he[98] said. “It is close by, and in a splendid location.”

He led them on for a few yards, and then turned up the hill to a thick cluster of pine trees and scattered rocks. In the very center of this was what they sought—a small, square cabin, strongly built. It was provided with a door and a window, both of which were tightly closed. An entry was effected with little difficulty, and the fugitives examined the interior with growing delight and amazement. In one corner of the floor lay a great heap of withered grass, and a rude closet in the wall held a plentiful supply of dried meat and a lump of brick tea. Everything was just as the former occupant had left it on the morning when he went away in search of game—never to return. A heap of ashes lay in the fireplace, and near by were some plates and a cup rudely fashioned out of wood.

“Nothing could be better suited to our purpose,” said Shamarin. “Here we can live in safety, for the ravine will soon be choked up with snow and no one can come near us.”

“Let us have something to eat,” suggested Sandoff. “I am nearly famished.”

That night was one to be remembered. In spite of the bitter cold outside, the interior of the cabin was snug and comfortable, and the fugitives slept in peace until the sun was far up. They were well provided with coverings, for in addition to their warm clothing each had a heavy blanket—Vera had brought one for herself—and Sandoff owned two overcoats, his own and the one taken from the Cossack.

On the following morning Shamarin partitioned off one end of the cabin for Vera’s use, taking timber for that purpose from a pile that lay outside among the pine trees. It was all drift wood—of which material the cabin itself was made—and the poor fellow who built it must have dragged every piece up the ravine from the river. The tools used in its construction were found in the cabin—a small blunt axe and a rusty saw. Vera knew nothing of the identity of the builder, but the fact of his having these tools showed pretty conclusively that he had belonged to the Free Command.

The fugitives now settled down to a manner of life that was painfully dreary and monotonous. For three whole days it snowed. On the fourth night a small avalanche dropped from the hillside above, and, crashing through the pine trees, completely buried the cabin. This proved to be a rather fortunate thing, for from that time on the little dwelling was snug and warm. After half a day’s labor the men opened communication with the outer world by means of a tunnel leading from the cabin door. At night they slept, and during the day they whiled away the time by conversation and story telling. Not once, however, did either Sandoff or Shamarin touch on his past life. By tacit consent that subject was always avoided. Each felt that it was better to forget the great gulf that had once separated them—better to remember only that they were comrades now, with the same perils and the same hopes.

So the days passed into weeks, and the weeks went by until February was half gone. Food was getting scarce, and all three grew so heart-sick of their cheerless life that a change of almost any sort would have been welcome. One evening when they were all sitting about the fireplace, where a few sticks of wood were burning for the purpose of light, Sandoff said abruptly:

“I have come to the conclusion, my friends, that we had better leave this place at once and begin our journey to the Pacific. I will explain my reasons,” he continued, as his companions gave him their earnest attention. “In the first place, as you know, alternate slight thaws and heavy frosts have put a crust on the snow that will easily bear our weight, while horses would break through it at once. Two months of winter yet remain—a period which is usually one of steady cold—and I maintain that during[99] these two months is the best time for us to travel. The way to Vladivostok leads down the valley of the Amur River. That is really the only path we can take. As you know, the great Siberian post road also follows the windings of the stream. Of course we will keep back among the foothills, and at this time of year, when the post road is little traveled and but few persons are abroad, the danger of discovery would be lessened. If the crust remains on the snow we should be able in two months to cover the thousand miles that separate us from the Pacific. Moreover, if my plan succeeds we shall reach Vladivostok in the early spring, when vessels from foreign countries are coming into the harbor, and when those that have wintered there are preparing to depart. If, on the other hand, we remain here until spring, our progress will be delayed by melting snows and swollen streams, and we shall reach Vladivostok at a very bad season. Still, there are many obstacles in the way of an immediate start—the cold, the difficulty of finding shelter at night, and the necessity of procuring food.”

Sandoff had hardly ceased when Shamarin leaned over and clasped his hand.

“You’ve taken the words right out of my mouth, comrade,” he said eagerly. “I have been thinking of that very thing for the past week or so, and I agree exactly with what you say. As for the obstacles you speak of, we are warmly enough clad to defy the cold. Caverns and bushes will give us shelter by night. We can find an abundance of small game, and now and then pick up food from the friendly peasants who live along the post road. The sooner we start the better—that is my firm opinion. As for Vera, no doubt she is of the same mind.”

“I am,” exclaimed the girl eagerly. “I am anxious to start at once. The journey holds no terrors for me. You know that, Felix?”

“Yes, I know it,” returned her brother proudly. “I know you have twice as much courage and endurance as most men.” At which remark Vera blushed and drew back into the shadow.

So the question was settled without further discussion, and at daybreak on the following morning the fugitives were up and preparing for the eventful journey. That preparation, as may be imagined, was very slight. Shamarin possessed quite an inventive faculty, and in less than an hour he constructed a long flat sledge, rudely but strongly put together.

“This will serve to carry our baggage,” he said, “or any one of us who may be worn out or unable to walk. Moreover, if we come to any long, smooth inclines we can all get on board and go sliding down.”

The blankets, extra clothes, and the small quantity of food that remained, were put up in a neat bundle and strapped to the sledge. Sandoff took the rifle and ammunition, and Shamarin the pistol. Then, with a last look at the dark cabin where so many weary days had been spent, they passed through the door, closing it behind them, and thence along the hard trodden tunnel to the outer air. The day was just two hours old when they started. The sun was shining brightly, and the hard, frozen crust that covered the snow sparkled like myriads of diamonds. They turned up the eastern side of the ravine, pulling the sledge lightly behind them, and stopped for a moment on the summit of the ridge to admire the view that lay before them—range after range of snow topped hills as far as the eye could reach. Then briskly and with light hearts they started away and traveled for hours up one hill and down another—keeping the Shilka River constantly in sight—until the sun was far toward the horizon. The country was desolate and deserted; so when they chose a stopping place in a deep, wooded hollow, they did not hesitate to build a cheerful fire. This was kept up all night, Sandoff and Shamarin mounting guard by turns. In[100] the morning the march was resumed, and during that day the fugitives crossed the Shilka River, very near its mouth, by means of an ice gorge that had formed during the previous night. An hour later they were tramping along the shore of the Amur, the vast watery highway that flows to the Pacific coast. It was now a sheet of ice, and as the Siberian post road—marked by the long line of telegraph poles—skirted the shore, the fugitives made haste to draw back into the forest.

From this time dated a period of progress and security which lasted for three weeks. Day after day they traveled on down the valley, keeping as far back from the river as possible, and during all this time they met not a single human being. The snow crust remained firm, and they made fair progress, covering about fifteen miles every day. At night they suffered much from cold—for sometimes villages were close at hand and they dare not make fires—but they found sufficient shelter to prevent them from freezing.

They nearly starved, however, in spite of the birds and hares that Shamarin skillfully succeeded in trapping. When they halted on the twenty second night after leaving the hut, in a thick wood overlooking the Amur, it was evident that a crisis had been reached. They were worn out with incessant traveling, faint and sick from hunger, and all the shelter they had was this strip of wood—their only food a couple of raw quail.

For themselves the two brave men cared little, but that Vera, whose lips never uttered a word of complaint, should have to endure such suffering was more than they could stand. Especially aggravating to them tonight was the sight of the post station, a mile away, where lights shone cheerily through the twilight from houses in which men were eating and drinking and sitting by warm fires.

“Something must be done,” declared Sandoff earnestly. “We can’t stand this another day. We must have nourishing food or we can go no farther.”

“And where shall we get it?” asked Shamarin moodily. “The outlook is bad enough. We have come less than one third of the distance, and still have seven hundred miles before us.”

For once Vera had no words of cheer for her companions. She knew they had defined the situation truly, and that nothing she could say would help them. Her eyes sought the ground sadly and remained there, fixed with repugnance on the miserable birds that Shamarin had taken from his snares that morning.

“Yes, something must be done,” repeated Sandoff, “and without delay—tonight. I will go down and reconnoiter around yonder post station. If I don’t return soon you need not be alarmed, for I intend to be very careful.”

His companions made no attempt to dissuade him, except that Shamarin offered to go in his place. But Sandoff would not hear of this.

“It is best for me to go,” he said firmly. “My knowledge of government regulations at these post stations will help me if I get into a tight place.”

He hurriedly exchanged the coat he was wearing for the dark green Cossack cloak—knowing that he would attract less attention if seen in this guise. The muff shaped fur cap he had been wearing constantly, and when Shamarin handed him the rifle he looked a thorough Cossack soldier. The deception was still further assisted by the tangled beard and mustache he had grown since his escape from the mines. Thus equipped he bade farewell to his companions, and struck off at a rapid pace through the forest. He had no definite purpose in view—merely a vague hope that he might in some manner procure a supply of food.

The post station was less than a mile distant. By following a ravine covered with thick bushes, Sandoff came out in the rear of a little cluster of houses bunched together on both sides of the post road—the station[101] itself with the square courtyard in front, the telegraph office and half a dozen tiny cabins across the way. A careful glance showed him that no one was in sight and that only one light was visible—a yellow glimmer shining from the rear window of the post station. Toward this Sandoff directed his steps, moving slowly and cautiously over the snow crust.

CHAPTER VII.
THE POST STATION.

The post station was simply a square log building with a stockaded court yard in front. The first floor was thrown into one room, and when Sandoff approached the rear window with noiseless tread, and raised his eyes slowly above the sill, he beheld a scene of cheer and comfort that fairly made his heart ache. In one corner, near the door, stood a large iron stove, heated to a fiery redness. In the center of the room was a table laden with bread, meat, pickles, a bottle of vodka and a steaming samovar of tea, and around it sat three men, evidently Siberian merchants, drinking and eating. In the corner of the room opposite the stove lay a Buriat peasant and a dog, sleeping side by side, and on a bench by the door sat the starosta or station keeper. The window sash was raised half a foot, no doubt because of the extreme heat of the room.

While Sandoff was trying to catch the fragments of conversation from within, the distant tinkle of sleigh bells fell on his ear. The sound came nearer and nearer, now mingled with the tramp of hoofs. Sandoff left his position and crept to the angle of the house, reaching it just in time to see a long covered sledge drawn by a troika—three horses harnessed abreast—come spinning along the post road from the west, and draw up before the court yard gates.

“Some one bound for the Pacific,” muttered Sandoff. “I wonder who it can be.”

Curiosity had by this time mastered his hunger, so he crept back to the window and looked once more into the room. The starosta had gone out—no doubt to welcome the new arrival—and the three merchants were looking inquiringly toward the door. The Buriat and the dog still slept profoundly.

A moment or two later the starosta returned, followed by a short spare man muffled up in furs. His face was clean shaven, and his black, bead-like eyes twinkled at sight of the fire and the well spread table.

Sandoff shot one glance at the stranger, and then drew quickly away from the window and leaned against the end of the house. His hands were clinched, his face black with passion, and he panted fiercely for breath.

“I know him,” he muttered. “It is Serge Zamosc! What can that scoundrel be doing here? I would give my chances of escape to put my hands on his throat for one moment. But this won’t do—I must be calm. I must find out the meaning of this strange thing. To think that the traitor should turn up here in Siberia! How easily I could shoot him through the window!”

Repressing the temptation to do so—but not without difficulty—Sandoff once more put his eyes to the window. Zamosc was standing near the stove, talking in a low tone to the starosta. At that instant the door opened, and a Russian officer in undress uniform entered the room—evidently the head official of the village.

He favored Zamosc with a slight bow, and said abruptly. “I beg your honor’s pardon, but I must trouble you for your passport.”

Zamosc glanced at the other occupants of the room and then led the officer directly to the window, pausing within two feet of Sandoff, who drew his head down and turned his ear upward. Zamosc began to speak in a low voice, but from the fragments that reached him, such as “traveling in secret,” “Inspector of Police,” “government report,” Sandoff[102] was at no loss for a clew to the situation. Then the speakers raised their voices slightly, and the unseen listener heard every word that was spoken.

“Inspector Serge Zamosc and companions,” said the officer, evidently reading from the passport. “How does it come that you are alone?”

“Why, have you not heard?” asked Zamosc in surprise. “I met with an unfortunate accident yesterday about twenty miles back. My horses got off the post road and broke through the ice into the Amur River. I had two Cossacks with me beside the driver. The latter and one of the Cossacks were drowned, and the other soldier was so badly kicked by the horses that I had to leave him at the next station back. I telegraphed on here for a fresh escort. Did you not get the message?”

“No,” said the officer decidedly. “I received no message.”

“That is unfortunate,” exclaimed Zamosc angrily. “The stupid fellow at the office shall pay dearly for his negligence. I will see to that later. But now what am I to do? I am in haste to reach Vladivostok—for I intend to return to Russia by water—and I can’t go on by myself. The driver whom I brought along tonight must return in the morning to the station he came from. Can’t you spare me two of your Cossacks, captain?”

“Impossible, your excellency,” was the quick but courteous reply. “I am short of men now, or I would gladly oblige you. At the next station, however, which is thirty miles distant, you can readily obtain Cossacks and a driver. The latter I could furnish you, but the man I have in view is really not trustworthy and I dare not recommend him.”

“Then I won’t think of taking him,” said Zamosc. “If the next station is but thirty miles away I will drive there alone. I have good horses, and know how to manage them. Bear in mind that I am traveling secretly,” he added in a lower voice.

“Certainly, your excellency. My lips shall be sealed.”

This ended the discussion. Zamosc turned to the starosta and said in a loud voice, “Bring us food and drink for two, my worthy man, and see to it that my sledge is in readiness at three o’clock in the morning. I wish to make an early start.”

Sandoff remained in his place of concealment for fully five minutes, and then rising slowly up he made a cautious survey of the room. The three merchants were spreading rugs on the floor in preparation for going to sleep. At the table they had recently occupied now sat Zamosc and the Russian officer, hobnobbing sociably over food and a bottle of vodka.

Sandoff watched them with a half smile on his face. “A passport for himself and companions!” he whispered. “Traveling on secret service to Vladivostok! He wants an escort and a driver!—Well, he shall have them, if I can provide them for him. You and I will settle up old scores, Serge Zamosc. It is a daring plan—but I will attempt it.”

With this enigmatic self communing Sandoff turned away. Creeping noiselessly around the angle of the house, he passed on to the courtyard stockade—first making sure that no one was in sight. What he had hoped to find was there—a crevice large enough to see through—and putting his eyes to it he obtained a good view of the station yard, and of Serge Zamosc’s sledge. This Sandoff examined long and intently. There was just enough light to reveal its ample dimensions, the huge waterproof hood that covered it, and the mass of furs, rugs, and straw that peeped out from the rear.

“Good,” muttered Sandoff. “Nothing could be better suited for the purpose.”

In the same cautious manner in which he had come he retraced his steps to the ravine. Once there he started off with great strides, and in ten minutes appeared, breathless and[103] excited, before his companions, who had been on the point of starting to look for him, alarmed by his long absence.

“Your hands are empty,” said Shamarin sadly. “You have brought no food?”

“I have brought something better than food,” was the reply. “I bring good news. If you will bear me out in the plan I have formed, I can promise you a quick journey to the Pacific—a journey in a sledge—food in plenty, and a warm shelter. There will be a certain risk, but we won’t talk of that now.”

Before Shamarin and Vera could ply him with questions, he told them what he had just seen and heard. Then he outlined hurriedly the daring plan which had entered his mind.

“All I ask of you,” he concluded, “is strict obedience, courage, and constant presence of mind, no matter what may occur. I know you both well, and I am convinced that you have these qualities.”

His companions were at first stunned with amazement at Sandoff’s daring proposition, but they soon realized its practicability.

“Wonderful!” exclaimed Shamarin. “Truly wonderful! But it can be carried out—the chances are all in our favor. I am with you, Sandoff, body and soul. And what a glorious way to turn the tables on that traitorous Zamosc.”

Vera tried to speak, but, woman-like, broke into tears, and silently clasped Sandoff’s hand.

Judging from the length of time that had passed since sunset, it was now very close to midnight. By Sandoff’s directions the baggage was taken off the hand sled, and the latter was buried deep under the soft snow, in a hole made by cutting the crust with the axe. Then the fugitives struck off at a brisk pace through the forest. They turned aside before reaching the post station, and finally, when the settlement was beyond sight, they struck boldly out to the great Siberian road, and followed it to the eastward. No living or moving object was in sight. On the left lay the frozen Amur, and on the right the sloping foothills. Straight away before them stretched the white frozen road marked by a vanishing line of low telegraph poles.

After walking on for two miles they came to just such a spot as Sandoff hoped to find. A rocky ridge jutted almost to the river, and the road made a sharp turn around it. The view was thus cut off in one direction, while in the other the road was open and straight for several miles. Just beyond the rocky spur a small stream, now ice bound, came down to the river and passed under a low wooden bridge. Beneath this the fugitives discovered a dry, snug spot among the rocks. Nothing could have better suited Sandoff’s plan.

“Wrap yourselves up now and go to sleep,” he said to his companions. “I intend to go on guard at once. I am not weary, and I want time for thought and reflection. I will give you early warning when the decisive moment approaches.”

Shamarin demurred a little, wishing to share his friend’s vigil, but soon acquiesced in the latter’s decision, and he and his sister disappeared under the bridge. Sandoff shouldered his rifle and paced rapidly up and down the strip of road that led from the bridge to the turning place at the point of rocks, from whence he could see without obstruction far back toward the post station. The silence was unbroken. Minutes passed into hours, and hours dragged by until Sandoff was convinced that it was past three o’clock in the morning.

He had been standing for some time at the point of rocks, gazing earnestly to the westward, with a deadly fear creeping into his heart—a fear that something had occurred to spoil the plan on which he and his companions placed such high hopes. Suddenly a dim black speck appeared in the distance. It grew blacker and larger, and came rapidly nearer. It was a sledge beyond doubt, the sledge of Serge Zamosc.[104] Now a tinkle of bells was heard, and a muffled clatter of hoofs.

In haste Sandoff sped back to the bridge, his heart throbbing with excitement. A low call brought forth Shamarin and Vera, still drowsy with sleep. The keen air soon sharpened their senses, and they understood the situation. Sandoff took Vera in charge and led her down to the point of rocks.

“There comes the sledge,” he said, pointing along the frozen road. “Now get in here and crouch down,” pointing to a hollow spot among the rocks. “Your task is simple. When the sledge has gone past, watch the road before you, and if anything approaches give us prompt warning.”

With these instructions he hastened back to the bridge, where Shamarin was waiting. The daring men then took up positions on opposite sides of the road, crouching behind masses of frozen snow. Sandoff had the rifle, Shamarin the pistol, and both weapons were loaded.

“There must be no failure,” said Sandoff grimly.

“There will be no failure,” echoed Shamarin from across the way.

Then all was silent—except for the musical tinkle of bells and crunching of hoofs on the snow. Five minutes later—it may have been less and it may have been more—the sledge whizzed into view from around the point of rocks. The three horses, harnessed abreast, were galloping at full speed, and the only occupant of the sledge was Serge Zamosc, muffled to the nose in furs and holding the lines with a practiced hand.

On and on it came until the planking of the bridge was less than half a dozen yards away. The moment had come. Sandoff and Shamarin sprang up, reaching the center of the road at a bound, and turned their weapons straight into Serge Zamosc’s eyes.

“Stop, or we fire,” they cried loudly.

Zamosc, for all his treacherous traits, was no coward. His first impulse was to check his horses, and he acted upon it—partly. Then he turned to grasp his gun, but finding it out of reach, he struck his horses a terrific blow with the whip and rolled backward from his seat into the body of the sledge.

The frightened steeds plunged forward, but Shamarin was on the alert, and clutched at the lines. He caught them, was dragged along for a few yards, still holding tight, and then, gaining a foothold, he turned the tide and brought the triple team to a standstill on the very edge of the bridge.

Meanwhile Sandoff had bounded into the sledge, and was struggling over the straw, interlocked with Zamosc, who fought with the fury of a madman, believing that he had fallen into the hands of the Siberian assassins who frequently ply their calling along the post road. But he was no match for Sandoff—weakened as the latter was by privation—and soon he was helpless in the grasp of the convict. The horses were by this time quite subdued, and having no fear of a runaway Shamarin left them and ran back to help his companion. There was plenty of strong rope in the sledge, and Zamosc was soon tightly bound, hand and foot. Then his captors placed him in one corner, and proceeded to examine the interior of the sledge. It contained a small iron chest, two trunks, a hamper of provisions, two rifles with ammunition, and nine splendid fur robes.

Sandoff opened one of the trunks. It held clothes—just what they wanted most. He and Shamarin quickly took off their prison garments, and substituted suits of dark material. The coats fitted fairly well, but the trousers were lamentably short—a defect which their high boots partially remedied. This exchange was made by the side of the road, out of Zamosc’s sight. Then Sandoff put on the huge fur cloak, which they had taken from Zamosc before binding him, and handed the Cossack coat and cap to his comrade, who found them a good fit. Shamarin took the discarded[105] garments, wrapped them about a big stone, and dropped them into a black air hole in the Amur, a short distance from the bank.

Up to this time Zamosc had been perfectly quiet, but now he gave voice to a loud cry. Sandoff entered the sledge and gagged him with a handkerchief, performing the operation with as little discomfort as possible to his prisoner, but with such skill that any outcry was out of the question.

“I will have my interview with the fellow later,” he said to Shamarin. “As yet he does not recognize us. The first thing is to get away from this locality.”

A short whistle brought Vera from her post. She was overjoyed at the success of Sandoff’s plan, and reported the road to the westward clear. Five minutes was spent in covering Zamosc up among the rugs in one end of the sledge, and Vera in the other. Then the hood was dropped over the rear end and buttoned down, and Sandoff mounted to the seat, drawing the collar of his fur coat high about his ears, and thrusting his hand into the inner pocket to make sure that Zamosc’s little packet of valuable documents was safe. Shamarin mounted beside him, looking every inch a Cossack with his green uniform, his rifle, and his black, matted beard.

“Remember,” said Sandoff warningly, as he gathered the lines together and flicked the spirited horses with the whip, “remember that from this time on I am Inspector Zamosc!”

Then the sledge bounded forward, rumbled across the bridge, and sped over the frozen road, toward the Pacific, Vladivostok—and freedom.

CHAPTER VIII.
COLONEL NORD OF RIGA.

The gray dawn stole over the sky, and when it was sufficiently light for his purpose Sandoff drew out the bundle of papers and examined them closely. One was the passport, made out in the name of Serge Zamosc and companions—a form which admitted of a very wide construction. The others were letters of instruction, which made clear—at least to a certain point—the object of Zamosc’s journey across Siberia. It appeared that the inspector was to report on the condition of Siberian prisons, with a view to changes which the Minister of Police had in contemplation. Moreover the nature of these letters showed that Zamosc’s mission was a secret one, and among them was one document which enjoined all government officials along the route to give him whatever aid he might require.

“I rely on this more than anything,” said Sandoff to his companion, “for it puts us beyond the reach of unpleasant questioning. As for Vera, I have a plan that promises well. I will say that she is the wife of some Russian officer at Irkutsk, who is going to visit friends at Vladivostok, and whom I have agreed to see to her destination.”

“Yes, that is a splendid plan,” rejoined Shamarin. “But yourself, are you in no danger?”

“Very little, I think,” said Sandoff confidently. “It is not likely that we shall encounter any one who ever saw Zamosc, for he was never out of Russia before. We will travel rapidly and make as few stops as possible. We will part company with our captive as soon as Vladivostok is reached.”

“And what will you do with him in the meantime?” asked Shamarin. “Would it not be best to put him out of the way?”

“By no means,” answered Sandoff decidedly. “I don’t propose to commit murder. We will keep him constantly gagged and bound, and at night—whenever we happen to be stopping at a post station—you, Shamarin, will have to sleep in the sledge with him. We will keep him well covered up, and with care none but ourselves will ever see him.”

Shamarin was satisfied with this plan, and promised to perform his part faithfully. It was now fully light, and on reaching a lonely spot along the road Sandoff turned the[106] horses aside into the forest. The hood was lifted from the end of the sledge, and while Vera was taking the provisions out of the hamper, Sandoff placed the captive in an upright position and removed the gag from his mouth. The early rays of the sun were now shining into the sledge. As Zamosc surveyed the faces of his companions his eyes gleamed with sudden recognition.

“I know you,” he muttered savagely. “I thought you were all drowned—they told me so at the mines. You will pay dearly for this outrage. You know full well that you can never escape.”

Sandoff turned to him with such ill repressed fury that the traitor’s face grew livid with fear.

“I am glad that you know me, you black hearted scoundrel,” he cried hoarsely. “If I gave you your deserts I should put an end to your life, as I at first intended. But I have changed my mind, and shall be satisfied to make you the instrument of our escape. I don’t intend to part company with you, Zamosc, until we have reached the Pacific, and I warn you now that if at any time you attempt to escape or to endanger us, I will kill you as I would a dog.”

Zamosc made no reply, but a strange look of exultation shone about his little eyes that quite escaped the notice of Sandoff and his companions. A short time later, after gagging the captive and placing him in his nest of rugs, Sandoff took the lines and drove the sledge back to the post road.

During the next two weeks the fugitives traveled rapidly, obtaining relays of horses whenever needed. They met plenty of travelers coming from the opposite direction—merchants, squads of Cossacks, and Russian officers journeying from one post to the other, but Sandoff’s distinguished bearing and appearance, and the presence of Shamarin by his side in Cossack uniform, precluded all possibility of detention or suspicion. Vera and Zamosc were at all times out of sight, the covering of the sledge being kept closely down. Sometimes they bivouacked along the road, building fires for comfort and protection from wild animals. Whenever they chanced to spend a night at a post station all passed off well. The starosta’s wife usually took charge of Vera, who was now known as Madame Gunsburg, and Shamarin kept a close watch over Zamosc, both sleeping in the sledge in the courtyard.

The latter bore his enforced captivity well in spite of the fact that he was constantly bound and gagged—except when food was given him. He stoutly refused to answer any questions, however—especially in regard to the key of the small iron chest found in the sledge. The key was certainly not on Zamosc’s person, and a thorough search of the sledge failed to reveal it.

During the first week of their sledge journey the fugitives covered nearly four hundred miles. But after they left the valley of the Amur and turned southward along the valley of the Ussuri River, the weather changed suddenly—an unusual event at this time of year, for it was but the middle of March—and a thaw began, which speedily turned the post road into a bed of slush and water. This lasted for two whole weeks, making rapid traveling out of the question. At the end of that period Sandoff and his companions found they had covered but one hundred and fifty miles, and were still an equal distance from Vladivostok. They now rarely met travelers, for it was the season of the year when journeying by sledge or wagon is equally impossible, and from present indications it would take them three weeks or a month to cover the brief distance remaining.

But on the last night of March a cheering change came. They were stopping at a post station on the Ussuri, and when Sandoff rose early, as was his wont, and went out into the courtyard to see how Shamarin and Zamosc had fared, he found the air bitterly cold, and the river, which had partly broken up on the previous day, ice bound from bank[107] to bank. The post road, as far as the eye could reach, was smooth, hard and glassy.

No time was lost in starting, and as the fresh relay of horses bounded forward under loose rein, with the sledge trailing lightly behind them, Sandoff turned to his companions and cried exultantly: “Hurra! We are safe! This cold spell won’t last long, but it will be quite sufficient to carry us to Vladivostok—or nearly there, for I have no intention of entering the town. We will make no more stops but push right on, and by tomorrow night we ought to reach our journey’s end.”

At noon a village of some size was reached, Riga by name, and here the passports of the travelers were demanded by a bearded Russian officer who stopped the sledge before the military post in the center of the town.

He glanced over the document with sudden interest, whispering to several companions standing near, and then handed it back to Sandoff.

“If your excellency wishes a good hotel,” he said, “I can direct you to one—or perhaps you would prefer the hospitality of the barracks? The best we have is at your service. Our commander, Colonel Nord, is absent, but will return before evening.”

Sandoff looked doubtfully at the speaker, with a dim suspicion that something was wrong.

“Give my best regards to Colonel Nord,” he said calmly. “Tell him that I am in haste, and must go on to the next station.”

The officer was plainly taken aback by this answer. He looked at Sandoff, and then at his companions, who were no less surprised. From his nest of rugs, deep down in the sledge, Zamosc uttered a faint chuckle that no one heard. Sandoff bowed with dignity to the officer, calmly gathered up the lines, and called to the horses. The sledge moved slowly off, gaining speed with each second, but the sharp command to stop that Sandoff more than half feared did not come.

Vera was on her knees, peeping through a hole in the rear curtain.

“The officer is still standing in the center of the road,” she announced eagerly. “He is talking to his companions, and pointing. Now the Cossacks are coming out of the military post—a dozen of them. People are running from their houses to see what is the matter.”

An interval of silence and suspense, during which the sledge moved rapidly down the street.

“Now the officer has gone back,” continued Vera in a tone of relief, “and the Cossacks are moving away too. Only a few peasants are in sight.”

A moment later the sledge passed into a hollow that concealed the town from view, and when it reached the crest of the next ridge a single Cossack could be seen standing before the military post. As the village receded in the distance the fugitives began to feel more easy.

“I was greatly alarmed for a few seconds,” admitted Sandoff. “The officer evidently expected us to stop, though I have no idea why. It is possible that trouble will come out of this affair yet. If I thought so I would suggest that we abandon the sledge and take to the forest with the horses.”

“Try him,” suggested Shamarin with a backward jerk of his arm. “He’ll know all about it.”

Sandoff was favorably impressed with this idea. Handing the lines to his companion, he dropped into the sledge, hauled Zamosc out of the rugs, and took the gag from his mouth.

“You heard our conversation at Riga a few moments ago,” he said sternly. “Don’t try to deny it,” for Zamosc had suddenly assumed an expression of guileless amazement.

“And suppose I did hear it,” he retorted defiantly, “what then?”

“Simply this,” replied Sandoff. “I wish to know, and I intend to know, what it means. It will be to your interest to answer me, for if I find hereafter that we are in danger of recapture I will shoot you without[108] mercy, whereas if we get safely to the coast you will be liberated.”

This plain statement seemed to have an effect on Zamosc.

“Since you take advantage of my helplessness I will tell you,” he said reluctantly. “For more than a year past Colonel Nord, the military commandant at Riga, has been beseeching the authorities at St. Petersburg for a new barracks, and shortly before I began my journey he was notified that I was coming and that I would make an inspection of the building and report on its condition. I hope you are satisfied now.”

He bore Sandoff’s keen glance without flinching. Either he was telling the truth, or he was an adept in the art of lying.

“That certainly seems plausible,” said Sandoff, as he regagged the captive and put him back among the rugs. “Circumstances seem to bear out his story. When I get to the next station I will telegraph back to Colonel Nord that I was compelled to—no, I won’t either. I’ll let matters go as they are. The colonel will be furious with rage, and will open communication with St. Petersburg at once, but by the time he gets any definite answer we shall be out of reach.”

Faster and faster sped the sledge. Mountains and hills, forests and ravines loomed up ahead, shot swiftly by, and faded into the distance. At last far off on the plain a speck appeared, and soon the speck was transformed into a tiny Siberian village—a post house, a military station, a telegraph office, and a few lonely cabins—not more than five or six.

The sun was just sinking into a crimson bed of clouds when the faithful horses entered the little street on a gallop. An instant later they were pulled back on their haunches with foaming nostrils and steaming flanks, as a gate swung suddenly across the road checking further progress. It was directly in front of the little box-like military post that this occurred, and as Sandoff broke into an angry exclamation at the audacity of the deed, an officer came out into the road.

“What do you mean by this?” cried Sandoff angrily.

The man bowed almost to the ground. “Pardon, a thousand pardons, your excellency!” he entreated. “There was no other way—you were going so fast. The noise of the bells would have prevented you from hearing my voice.”

“And now what do you want—my passport?” demanded Sandoff roughly.

“No! No! Your excellency, I beg you not. It is a matter of a different nature. You are the honorable Inspector Serge Zamosc—I am not mistaken on that?”

“Yes, I am he. Go on.”

“Well, your excellency, I have a telegram from Colonel Nord at Riga. He wishes you to remain here until he comes. He has already started.”

“The devil you have!” exclaimed Sandoff blankly. “Well, my good fellow, I am sorry I can’t oblige the colonel. I am in haste to get to Vladivostok, and I really can’t afford to lose so much as an hour. Tell the colonel that a man will come on from Vladivostok in a day or so to look into that little matter of the barracks.”

“I—I am sorry, your excellency,” stammered the officer, “but Colonel Nord will take no denial. He insists that you wait here, and I dare not allow you to proceed.”

It was clear that Inspector Serge Zamosc might be a great man at home in Russia, but here in Eastern Siberia Colonel Nord was a greater.

“Well,” said Sandoff, as he realized the situation and choked down his anger, “I suppose you are only doing your duty. Since Colonel Nord is so importunate I will await his arrival. How soon do you think that will be?”

“In two hours at the most,” replied the officer, “probably less. Until then let me offer you the use of my guard house.”

“Thank you,” replied Sandoff shortly, “I will go to the post station and get supper and order a relay of[109] fresh horses. Colonel Nord will find me there.”

He slowly turned the sledge around and drove into the court yard of the station, which was but a few yards away. The starosta came out to meet the new arrival, rubbing his hands in gleeful anticipation of legitimate robbery.

“You will remain over night, your honor?”

“No,” said Sandoff, “but I want a fresh relay of horses and some refreshment. Attend to these tired beasts first, and when supper is ready let us know. Meanwhile we will remain here.”

The starosta’s cheerful expression faded away, but without more words he unharnessed the horses and led them off to the stable. Sandoff climbed to the ground, followed by Shamarin, and the latter assisted Vera to dismount.

“Well,” said Sandoff, “what do you think of the situation?”

“Unfavorable!” replied Shamarin.

“I don’t agree with you,” exclaimed Vera quickly. “It is vexatious—that is all. If this obstinate Colonel Nord will not be pacified, Victor”—these two had long since dropped all formality of speech—“we’ll have to return to Riga and inspect his barracks—that is, if the colonel’s visit relates to this matter.”

She spoke in a peculiar tone that piqued Sandoff’s curiosity.

“What do you mean?” he asked quickly.

Vera placed her finger to her lips, and glanced toward the sledge.

“I will talk to you later on,” she whispered.

Shamarin did not observe this little bit of byplay. His eyes had been fixed on the ground, and now he looked up and said uneasily, “It would be better to escape if possible. One can’t predict what may come of this visit.”

“I rather agree with you,” replied Sandoff. He walked to the courtyard gate, looked out for a moment, and then came slowly back.

“Escape is impossible,” he said. “Two Cossacks are standing at the western end of the street, and the gate before the military post is still closed and guarded.”

The starosta now appeared with the news that supper was waiting, so Sandoff and Vera entered the house, leaving Shamarin with the sledge, and promising to send him out some food.

Vera and her companion felt little desire to eat as they sat down at opposite sides of the table. The post room was quite empty, and they could talk without being overheard.

“Vera, what do you wish to tell me?” asked Sandoff, as he poured a cup of tea from the samovar.

“Nothing,” she replied. “At least, nothing definite. I have only a vague suspicion.”

“Of what?”

“Of the contents of that iron chest. I believe that Serge Zamosc invented the story he told us about Colonel Nord, and I believe that the chest, if opened, would enlighten us somewhat. I can’t tell you why I think so, unless it is because Zamosc has been smiling to himself all day long and turning his eyes in the direction of the chest, when he thought he was unobserved.”

Sandoff did not reply for a moment. He ate a few mouthfuls of food, and then rose from the table.

“Your suggestion is worth acting upon,” he said. “I intend to get that chest open—by force if necessary, though I will make another short search for the key.”

They passed out into the courtyard, the gate of which was already closed for the night. Sandoff climbed into the sledge—to Shamarin’s surprise—and hauling Zamosc to an upright position began a thorough search of his clothing. It proved unsuccessful, and Sandoff was about to desist when a sudden inspiration struck him. Dropping Zamosc on his back he drew off his right boot. When Sandoff shook it something rattled, and placing his hand inside he drew out a small iron key.

“At last!” he exclaimed. “Why did I not think of that before?”

[110]

“Hold on,” said Shamarin. “I will tell the starosta that we have lost something in the straw, and will borrow a lighted lantern from him.”

He went off in haste, and meanwhile Sandoff put his captive back among the rugs and covered him up completely.

Shamarin returned in a moment, bringing the lantern, and handed it to Sandoff. The latter drew the side and rear curtains of the sledge tightly down and placed the lantern on one of the trunks, while Vera dragged the iron chest from its place of concealment in the straw.

The key fitted the lock, and with a trembling hand Sandoff raised the lid.

A simultaneous cry of amazement issued from his and Vera’s lips. The chest was more than half full of bank notes and stacks of gold coin. On the top of them lay a folded paper. Sandoff was as pale as ashes as he lifted this and glanced at its contents.

“That scoundrel Zamosc has deceived us,” he cried hoarsely. “But for you, Vera, we should be lost. This paper explains it all. The government took advantage of Serge Zamosc’s journey of prison inspection to appoint him paymaster and send him on to Vladivostok with the annual salaries of the East Siberian officials. Here is the list of names. It commences with Colonel Nord, at Riga, 5,000 rubles, and, with the exception of two points along the way, the others are in Vladivostok. No wonder that the colonel is anxious to see me. He must have been apprised of Zamosc’s visit beforehand. When he arrives I will pay him the money, make suitable apologies, and then we will resume our journey. Help me to carry this money into the post room. That will be the proper place for the interview with the colonel.”

The two men conveyed the chest into the house between them, groaning not a little under its ponderous weight, and then, leaving Vera to take charge of it, Shamarin returned to the sledge, while Sandoff hunted up the starosta and ordered glasses and a bottle of wine to be taken into the post room.

“I expect a visitor in a short time,” he said, “and as I may be delayed with him longer than I expect I want you to put fresh horses into my sledge at once. What do I owe you for your services?”

The starosta named an exorbitant figure, but Sandoff paid it without demur, and then waited in the courtyard until the three spirited horses were harnessed.

He now went back into the post room, and sent Vera out to the sledge, with instructions to draw the covering tightly and remain inside. Then he paced up and down the room for probably half an hour, glancing through the window from time to time into the courtyard.

All at once a ringing clatter of hoofs was heard that came nearer with every second, and a moment later the sound of voices and a loud call for the starosta apprised Sandoff that the horsemen had entered the yard. He glanced cautiously through the window, and could dimly make out five mounted figures—Colonel Nord and his escort, beyond a doubt.

Leaving the window after the first hasty glance, Sandoff threw up the lid of the chest, placed the paper on the table before him, lit a cigar, and seated himself comfortably in a chair. He had hardly done so when the door was thrown open, and the starosta entered, followed by a large red faced man in full uniform.

“Colonel Nord, your excellency,” he stammered, backing out of the room and closing the door.

The colonel was unmistakably surprised at sight of Sandoff. He hesitated a moment, and then, catching sight of the chest of money, bowed in a formal manner.

Sandoff held out his hand.

“I am glad to see you, Colonel Nord. I owe you an apology for my seemingly strange conduct this morning, and beg you will accept my explanation——”

The colonel’s brow grew dark, and[111] he glared at Sandoff under his bushy eyebrows.

“Sir, I wish to see Inspector Zamosc,” he thundered. “You are not the man!”

For an instant Sandoff could only stare at his visitor in hopeless confusion. Here was a contingency that had never entered his head.

“What does this mean?” continued the colonel fiercely. “Is the inspector afraid to meet me in person? Does he forget having made my acquaintance in Petersburg last summer, that he attempts to palm off a substitute upon me? I refuse to treat with you. I will not touch a cent of that money, unless Inspector Zamosc counts it out with his own hand. Where is he? I demand to see him.”

The irate colonel started for the door, and would have rushed out to the sledge had not Sandoff checked him in time.

“Stop just a moment, Colonel Nord, and hear my explanation,” he entreated. “It is true that I am not Inspector Zamosc—I am merely his assistant. It was through a sad error that the inspector drove through Riga this morning without stopping. He has now begged me to see you in his stead and plead sickness as an excuse for his absence. He is out in the sledge, but if you insist upon seeing him I will summon him.”

“Yes, I do insist upon seeing him,” the colonel replied with a grim smile. “There are various private matters that must be discussed. Tell the inspector that he needn’t be afraid of me,” he added with a short chuckle.

“I will deliver your message,” replied Sandoff calmly. “Kindly excuse me while I go to summon the inspector. You will find cigars and wine on the table.”

“I had better accompany you,” said Colonel Nord jocosely. “The inspector might take fright and run away. When he sees that I am not in a violent rage he will be reassured.”

As he spoke he preceded his companion to the door. For a moment Sandoff thought all was lost, but a idea occurred to him just in time.

“Beg pardon, colonel!” he exclaimed. “But all that money—would it be safe to leave it here alone?”

“Ah, no, quite right!” muttered the colonel, glancing greedily at the chest. “I will remain here. Be quick, though, for I must return to Riga as soon as possible.”

Sandoff left the room with a firm step and composed bearing, but nevertheless his brain was fairly bursting with the intensity of his thoughts. He had but one idea—the necessity of making an immediate and desperate dash for liberty.

The game was up. Just inside the door stood the four Cossacks who formed Colonel Nord’s escort. They were laughing and talking boisterously, and Sandoff noted with satisfaction that the starosta had taken away their horses—probably to be fed and watered. Here was one danger out of the way. The sledge stood where he had left it, facing the road, and the gates were wide open, the starosta having neglected to close them after Colonel Nord’s entry. Another favorable circumstance!

Sandoff calmly untied the strap that held the horses to the gate post. Then he turned and slowly mounted the seat beside Shamarin. Even in the dim light the marble pallor of his face was visible, and his companions were quick to scent danger.

“Something has happened,” said Vera. “What is it, Victor?”

“Hush!” said Sandoff in a voice that they hardly recognized. “Not so loud! All is lost and discovery is inevitable. Prepare the firearms for use. All depends now on getting clear of the village.”

He gathered up the lines and Shamarin touched the horses with the whip. They trotted out of the yard, the circlet of bells making merry music over their heads, and turned up the street on a gallop.

“Those accursed bells!” muttered Sandoff. “Why did I not take them off?”

[112]

Then he fiercely jerked the horses to a standstill as the military post loomed in view, with the barred gate stretching from side to side across the road.

The officer who had stopped them before came out with a lantern.

“Open the gate,” demanded Sandoff. “I am in haste, and must make up for lost time.”

The man hesitated. “Have you seen Colonel Nord already, your excellency? He came but a moment or two ago.”

“Certainly, you blockhead!” roared Sandoff, losing control of himself. “Else why should I be here? Open that gate instantly!”

The officer was cowed by this determined attitude, and moved forward with the evident intention of obeying; but before he could take three steps a door was heard to slam violently, and from the post yard came a volley of shouts and curses, delivered in Colonel Nord’s high pitched voice. Then followed answering cries, and a quick running of feet over the frozen snow.

The officer halted, and looked keenly at the occupants of the sledge. Then he called “Guard! guard!” in a shrill voice.

“Hold firm,” whispered Shamarin. “There’s only one way—I’ll do it—stand by me.”

With a leap he was on the ground, and running toward the gate, where stood a single Cossack. As he passed the officer the latter whipped out his sword, and started in pursuit. Sandoff caught the gleam of steel, and, leaning from the seat, whip in hand, he dealt the fellow so terrific a blow on the arm that he dropped the weapon and howled with pain. Shamarin reached the gate and was confronted by the burly soldier before it, rifle in hand. There was no time for parleying. Shamarin dodged under the Cossack’s rifle and flung the fellow to one side of the road, where he lay stunned in the snow and ice. Then he dashed furiously at the gate—which was fortunately not locked—and by a single blow knocked it half way back on its hinges.

It was now Sandoff’s turn. Swinging his whip overhead, he brought it down smartly on the horses. The spirited brutes plunged madly forward, and he urged them with hoarse shouts to still greater speed. As they dashed through the gateway, Shamarin regained his seat by a flying leap.

The whole affair had consumed but a few seconds. Before the Cossacks could realize the audacity of the deed, the sledge and its occupants were whizzing away into the night at a rate of speed that had seldom been equaled on the great Siberian road.

The officer picked up his sword with his uninjured arm, and swore and yelled alternately until he was hoarse. The vanquished Cossack rose to his feet, and idiotically jerked the gate shut with a bang. The others ran for their horses and mounted in hot haste—and in the midst of all the confusion up clattered Colonel Nord and his escort, bawling at the top of their voices.

“Idiot! Blockhead!” the colonel roared at the terrified officer. “You will pay dearly for this! Why did you let those scoundrels through? Open that gate at once—send after me all the men you have—telegraph to the next station. Do you hear me?”

Then, as the gate swung back, the irate colonel and his squad of armed Cossacks—now increased to nine—galloped madly through, and went pounding along the frosty road in hot chase of the fugitive sledge.

CHAPTER IX.
MAURICE DUPONT.

As the twinkling lights of the little settlement receded in the distance, and the stretch of road intervening still remained free from pursuers, Sandoff and his companions felt their spirits rise, darkly as the future loomed ahead. Shamarin helped Vera to prepare and load all the guns. This done, he furled the rear hood, and stationed himself so that he could see back[113] along the course over which they had come. The horses continued to gallop at a tremendous pace, but when two or three miles had been traversed the pursuers hove in sight, and Shamarin soon reported the alarming fact that they were gaining.

“They will continue to gain, of course,” said Sandoff. “It can’t be otherwise. We must fight them off.”

He backed the two trunks and a pile of rugs against the seat, for protection to himself while driving, and instructed Vera and Shamarin to keep low in the bottom of the sledge, which had a depth of at least two feet.

By this time the Cossacks were close enough to be counted, and close enough for something else, too, for a shower of bullets suddenly whistled about the sledge. Shamarin retorted with two cleverly aimed shots, and disabled one of the enemy. This occasioned a slight delay, after which the Cossacks came on more rapidly than ever. It was evident that a resumption of firing would do speedy harm to the fugitives or their horses. Taking advantage of a smooth bit of road where the sledge made little noise, Shamarin leaned from the end and shouted with all his might:

“We have a captive here—Inspector Zamosc. We are going to place him in range, and if you shoot again you will surely kill him.”

Colonel Nord’s reply to this was a volley of oaths, but the firing was not resumed, in spite of the fact that occasional shots from the sledge held the Cossacks at bay.

None realized the critical nature of the situation better than Sandoff. Nearly half the distance to the next station had been covered, and at any moment Cossacks might be met coming from the opposite direction. He decided on a daring and uncertain plan—nothing less than to abandon the post road and strike across country toward the coast. Although Vladivostok was yet some sixty miles away, it was barely two thirds of that distance to the nearest point on the Sea of Japan.

The desired opportunity speedily came—none too soon, however, for the Cossacks were beginning to spread out with a view of getting ahead of the sledge or of shooting down the horses.

To the right of the post road lay wooded hills, and on the left, toward the sea coast, was a stretch of undulating country very little timbered. Sandoff abruptly turned the horses in this direction, and applied the whip with merciless severity. The sledge attained a speed that was truly terrific. It skimmed over the frozen ground, swaying dizzily from side to side, and leaping high in air as it struck hillocks or scattered stones.

The Cossacks made a desperate effort to overtake the fugitives, but the four who had come on from Riga with Colonel Nord began to fall behind, their horses being exhausted. The colonel himself had evidently procured a fresh steed at the post station, for he pushed on with the other three Cossacks.

For half an hour this wild race continued. The ground increased in ruggedness. The undulating swells of land grew higher, and the hollows between them consequently deeper. As the horses galloped with steaming nostrils up one of these long slopes and dragged the sledge lightly over the crest, Sandoff uttered a cry of dismay. Down in the next valley wound a stream a hundred yards or more in width. It was ice bound, but the glassy covering looked smooth and treacherous, and was dotted with air holes.

“They have us now!” exclaimed Shamarin. “The game’s up!”

Sandoff gritted his teeth and took a firmer hold of the lines.

“There is a chance yet,” he cried hoarsely to his companions. “Drowning is better than recapture.” Then he lashed the horses more furiously than ever, and the sledge went down the frozen descent like a meteor, and whizzed out on the sheet of ice. Had the horses been moving less rapidly they must have broken through at once, but their very speed carried[114] them on over the treacherous surface. The frail ice behind the sledge creaked and groaned and broke, and the angry and amazed Cossacks, who were close in pursuit, found their progress cut off by a watery gulf.

On went the sledge, Sandoff all the while urging the noble beasts by whip and voice, but when the shore was only half a dozen yards away the ice gave way with a terrific crash.

Sandoff plunged into the icy water waist deep, and, taking Vera in his arms, conveyed her in safety to the bank. Shamarin followed him with an armful of rifles and ammunition. Then Sandoff returned to the horses, knife in hand, and regardless of the bullets that pattered about him, he severed two of the animals from their fastenings, and after much kicking and plunging they gained a foothold on the firm ice. The third horse was struck in the head by a bullet, just as Shamarin—who had hurried back to aid his companion—was cutting it loose, and with a shrill neigh it rolled over into the water.

“Mount as once,” cried Sandoff, as he led the horses out on the shore. “Vera can ride with you or me—it matters not which.”

“And Zamosc! Shall I shoot him before I go?”

“No, leave him to his fate.”

“But,” said Vera, placing her hand softly on Sandoff’s arm, “the sledge is sinking, and he is helpless. Give him a chance for his life.”

“The villain doesn’t deserve it,” replied Sandoff shortly, but meeting an appealing glance from Vera’s eyes he turned and waded back to the sledge. Leaning over the seat he pulled Zamosc to an upright position, and took the gag from his mouth.

“If you value your life you had better tell your friends to cease firing,” he said.

Zamosc lost no time in making good use of his voice, and he was shouting lustily for help when Sandoff regained the shore. By the aid of a huge bowlder Shamarin mounted one of the horses. As it happened to be the smaller of the two, Sandoff mounted the other, and helped Vera up behind him. A moment later the fugitives vanished over the crest of the next ridge.

A succession of thick forests and rockstrewn ravines made progress slow and painful. Day came, revealing a barren and desolate country stretching as far as the eye could reach. In front of the fugitives towered a range of lofty mountains. After three or four hours of difficult riding they reached the foothills, themselves and their horses thoroughly exhausted. Here the latter were abandoned, and the ascent was begun on foot. A long and wearisome climb brought the refugees to the top, and here their eyes were gladdened by the sight they had longed to see. The mountain and the wooded hills at its base sloped gently to the eastward for half a dozen miles, and beyond were the fair blue waters of the Japan Sea, fading away into the horizon. Near the shore lay two black objects—steamers without doubt.

It was late in the afternoon when the fugitives drew near the sea. One slight ridge crowned with pine trees lay between them and the desired goal. They crept through the valley with slow and cautious steps, fearing either to meet Cossacks who had come up the coast from Vladivostok, apprised of the situation by telegraph, or to be overtaken by Colonel Nord and his party, who for all they knew might have been following them since the previous night.

“The first thing is to get a good look at those vessels lying off the shore and discover their nationality,” said Sandoff.

At that moment a rifle shot rang sharply on the air, and was followed by a second report and a ferocious yell that came from no human throat.

“Some wild beast!” muttered Sandoff, and as he spoke a man’s voice cried, “Help! Help!”

The tragedy—for such it seemed to be—was taking place but a few yards distant.

Rifle in hand, Sandoff ran forward[115] for a dozen yards or more and peered through the thick foliage into a circular open glade. In the center of this rose a rounded bowlder six or eight feet high, and perched on the top was a young man, striking blow after blow with a clubbed rifle at a great wounded tiger cat who was making frantic efforts to get at him.

At sight of the stranger Sandoff uttered a cry of surprise. “Can it be he?” he said aloud. “Yes, it surely is. What can he be doing——”

He did not finish the sentence, for at that instant the tiger cat sprang fairly to the top of the bowlder, and seized the unfortunate man by the ankle. It was no time for hesitation. Sandoff boldly advanced from the bushes, and, taking aim at the tiger cat’s head, fired. The brute rolled backward in his death struggle, while the rescued man half fell, half jumped, from the rock, and limped toward Sandoff with amazement and gratitude visible on his face.

“I owe you my life,” he said huskily. “That was a good shot of yours. I fired twice at the brute, but failed to kill him, and my steward, who was with me, ran off. The coward won’t stop now until he gets to the yacht.”

“The yacht!” cried Sandoff hoarsely. “Is your yacht here? But don’t you know me, Maurice Dupont?—No, of course you don’t. I am Victor Sandoff.”

“Victor Sandoff!” The other repeated the words in an amazed tone. “Can it really be you? How came you here? You, who were sent to Siberia. I heard about it—it was unjust, tyrannical!”

Both were silent for an instant, thinking of the time when they had last met in one of the aristocratic clubs of St. Petersburg.

“Tell me,” said Dupont, “what does this mean?”

Briefly Sandoff recounted the story of his escape, and when he paused, pale and agitated, Maurice Dupont took both his hands in his and held them there.

“Your troubles are over, my old friend,” he said, with tears in his eyes. “Tonight, as soon as it is dark, come down to the shore. You will find a boat there with one of my men in it, and once safely on my yacht I defy the Czar himself to take you off. You must be careful, though, for a Russian corvette is lying at anchor near me, watching for a couple of poor devils who escaped in a boat from the convict island of Saghalien last week. In fact, one of the Russian officers came out with me today. He is somewhere at hand now, with a couple of my men. You see I have been wintering in Vladivostok, and came up here a day or two ago for a little sport before starting for la belle France—but stop! I hear footsteps. Keep yourself and your companions well hidden, Sandoff, and as soon as it is dark make your way to the beach. You will find the boat opposite my yacht, which you can identify by the red lantern in the bow. Quick! They are coming.”

The Frenchman strolled leisurely across the glade while Sandoff darted into the bushes and made his way back to Shamarin and Vera with his burden of joyful news.

Through the remainder of that short afternoon the fugitives lay concealed among the rocks on the summit of the ridge, and when darkness came they crept cautiously down to the edge of the bay. Less than a mile from shore lay the steam yacht Grenelle, easily distinguished by the red light that swung from its bow.

“If your friend fails to keep his word, we are lost,” said Shamarin. “He may hesitate to assume such a risk——”

“He won’t hesitate and he won’t fail,” interrupted Sandoff with decision. “There! What is that now?”

“A boat!” cried Vera joyously, and so indeed it was. It lay upon the beach, and as the fugitives drew near a man advanced to meet them—a middle aged bearded sailor, wearing the blue and white uniform of the Grenelle. He bowed politely to Sandoff and said, “The boat is waiting, monsieur. I fear we shall[116] have a rough passage, for the surf is heavy and the wind is rising.”

“Then the sooner we start the better,” said Sandoff, answering the sailor in his own tongue.

The boat was small, and without difficulty it was dragged down to the edge of the surf with Vera seated in the stern. The three men pushed the craft out through the surf. Then they sprang in, and Sandoff and the sailor fell to the oars, Vera and her brother meanwhile bailing out the water that had been flung over the sides.

“Pull with all your strength, my friend,” said Sandoff. “It will be no easy matter to gain the yacht.”

The wind was blowing toward the shore. Each moment it seemed to increase in violence, and the sea to grow more turbulent. After a period of steady rowing Sandoff noted with alarm that the boat was being carried in the direction of the Russian corvette. Again and again it was headed for the crimson wake of the lantern, and each time the waves buffeted it persistently out of its course. Shamarin relieved Sandoff at the oar, but with no better result. The situation was becoming alarming. The sky was overcast with dark, murky clouds, and the waves tossed the frail craft about at will.

Suddenly a ruddy blaze was seen on the beach. Then a rocket with a luminous blue wake whizzed high in the air, and before the fugitives could recover from their surprise a similar signal was sent up from the deck of the corvette.

“We have been tracked to the shore,” cried Sandoff. “The Cossacks must have come up from Vladivostok, and now they are signaling to the corvette either to be on the lookout or to send a boat in.”

“Most likely the latter,” said Shamarin. “Look! Lights are moving on deck, and I can hear the rattling of chains.”

The possibility of recapture when safety was so near at hand dismayed the fugitives. The boat was in a dangerous position, being directly between the corvette and the shore.

“We may be saved yet,” cried Sandoff hoarsely. “Pull straight for the yacht—pull as you never pulled in your lives. It is our last chance.”

The men tugged desperately at the oars, and to such purpose that the boat made visible headway toward the Grenelle. A shout for help might have brought another boat to the rescue, but as it could have been heard with equal distinctness on board the corvette this expedient was out of the question.

Another mishap was close at hand. As the sailor pulled desperately at his oar, it split with a sharp crack. In the momentary confusion that followed, the boat swung broadside to the waves, and a fierce blast of wind coming up at that instant, over it went in the twinkling of an eye.

Sandoff, being on the leeward side, shot out and downward, going clear under the icy water and coming to the surface a few seconds later, to find the capsized boat half a dozen feet from him. To the bow clung Shamarin, submerged to the breast, while the sailor had managed to crawl upon the stern. Vera was not to be seen, and as Sandoff made this terrible discovery his heart seemed to stand still and his chilled limbs to lose their power.

“Victor! Victor! Help me!”

His name was called in feeble accents, and he saw a head and an arm floating in the waves between him and the boat.

All else was instantly forgotten. With three powerful strokes he reached the spot, and placed one arm tightly about the girl’s waist, while with the other he beat the water furiously.

“I will save you, I will save you, Vera—my darling!” he whispered hoarsely. The words came unbidden from his very soul. This moment of common peril had wrung from his lips the confession of a passion that he had cherished in secret for months.

The wind forced the boat down toward him, and throwing up his arm he caught the keel and clung there, pressing his precious burden[117] close to his side. Slowly the space between the yacht and the boat widened. They were drifting nearer and nearer to the long, black hull of the Russian corvette.

“Better to die now than go back to the mines—back to torture and a living death,” whispered Shamarin across the boat. “Good by, Sandoff. I can’t hold on much longer.”

Sandoff could not reply. His own strength was failing, and a deadly numbness was stealing his senses away. The heroic sailor remained mute, faithful to his trust, though a single cry would have brought rescuers to the spot.

Suddenly the quick, sharp rattle of oars was heard. The sound came nearer and nearer, and finally a dim object passed close to the drifting boat. It was the gig from the corvette, speeding toward the shore.

As the dreaded object disappeared in the gloom, Sandoff still held to the keel, though his arm seemed to be tearing from the socket. With the other arm he fiercely drew Vera to his breast until her cheek was almost touching his.

“I love you, I love you!” he cried passionately. “I tell you now, Vera, in the presence of death. Would that God had seen fit to spare us for another and a better life in a land without tyranny and oppression! But regrets are vain. It is sweeter to die this way together than to be torn apart and dragged back to the horrors of Siberia.”

His eyes met hers, and he read in their swift, mute glance the echo of his own words.

With one hand she drew his head down. “Victor,” she whispered, “you have made death sweet. Its bitterness is gone.” Then their lips met, and as the waves thundered around them Sandoff felt his hand slipping from the boat.

A low cry from the sailor roused him, and unconsciously his fingers tightened anew on the keel. The spot where Shamarin had been was empty—the brave fellow had gone down. For him there was an end of toil and suffering.

Again that low cry! The seaman was kneeling on the capsized craft, staring ahead through the gloom. “A boat! a boat!” he cried hoarsely.

“He is mad,” thought Sandoff. “He sees no boat,” but even as he strained Vera to his breast and felt the icy waters rising higher around him, a dark object shot forward over the waves, and a voice cried, “Sandoff! Sandoff!”

The next instant he and his burden were snatched from the icy waters, and then remembrance left him.

When his senses returned, he was lying, warm and comfortable, in a snug berth on board the Grenelle. As in a dream he saw kind faces about him and heard Maurice Dupont’s voice:

“Sandoff, my dear fellow, you are safe now. The yacht is already under way. We are bound for France. It was providence that guided us when we started out to search for you in the other boat. We arrived just in time—but too late to save your companion. The brave fellow had gone down.”

Sandoff made an effort to rise. “Vera, where is she?” he asked.

“Safe, my dear fellow, safe and well. You will see her tomorrow.”

Sandoff smiled and his eyes closed. He was sleeping peacefully.

Toward the end of the following June the Grenelle entered the harbor of Marseilles, and Sandoff and Vera journeyed by rail to Paris, accompanied by Maurice Dupont.

But little more remains to be told. Vera and Sandoff were married in Paris, where both had friends, and the honeymoon was spent in Maurice Dupont’s villa at Asnieres. They will never return to Russia, nor have they any desire to do so. They live happily in their adopted country, but if they are spared to the extreme limit of old age they can never forget the terrible adventures they shared together when escaping from the mines of Kara, or that memorable night off the Siberian coast when poor Felix Shamarin lost his life in the sea he toiled so hard to reach.

FROM WEEKLY TO MAGAZINE.

In the issue of the 18th of August, Munsey’s Weekly announced that thereafter that publication would be issued monthly and in magazine form, instead of weekly, and that the name would accordingly be changed to Munsey’s Magazine. This departure has been made in the belief that the Magazine will furnish broader scope for serious work than the Weekly, that its ample pages and higher grade of art will remove it to a more desirable distance from the daily press, which with its illustrations and its great Sunday issues has, to a very great extent, usurped the position once held by the illustrated weekly journals of this country.

Now that the transition from Weekly to Magazine is accomplished it will be the purpose of the management to make Munsey’s Magazine a publication of the best grade—one that shall be strong in illustration, instructive in its heavier articles and entertaining in its fiction. Life is a necessary condition of growth, and as we now have life so shall growth follow—growth in everything that goes to round out a magazine in whatever approaches the ideal.

OUR IMMIGRANT ARMIES.

“Hundreds of thousands of able bodied immigrants arriving in our ports every year! What a tremendous addition to the wealth and prosperity of the country!”

“Hundreds of thousands of penniless immigrants arriving in our ports every year! No wonder that in the American labor market competition grows fiercer and fiercer!”

Here we have two expressions of opinion that may be heard every day, and that give diametrically opposite views of one of the most familiar and important facts of the day. Which of the two is correct? Is the arrival of a foreigner, whose sole capital is his ability to labor, a benefit or an injury to the country? It is surely time that the question should be definitely decided in the popular mind. The annual influx of about half a million foreigners cannot but have a tremendous effect upon the industrial, social and political development of the country. If its effect is beneficial, then the influx should be encouraged and even stimulated; if injurious, it should be regulated and restricted.

The question is one for political economists and statesmen. Politicians of the ordinary sort will no doubt prefer to let it severely alone. It was indeed raised as a political issue by the defunct Knownothing party, but the shape in which it was presented, and the answer that it met, belong to a past generation. We have to deal with the subject anew, and at a more advanced point in our national history. Our condition, our needs, and our dangers are widely different from those of our predecessors, and changed circumstances may require altered policies.

Few will question the truth of the axiom that the great need of a new country is industrious immigrants. In the youth of the American commonwealth, its pioneers found themselves possessed of a vast continent of almost boundless natural resources, upon whose eastern edge a handful of scanty population was scattered. Had immigration ceased at the beginning of the present century, the development of those resources would have been incalculably retarded. This would be today a[119] comparatively small, weak and indigent nation—more closely resembling, perhaps, the Canada of today than the United States of today.

So much for the past. Now for the future. Do not common sense and experience show that communities, like individuals, must have their birth, their adolescence, and their maturity? And must there not come a time in their development when accessions to their numbers are rather a burden than an aid? We have all heard of over populated countries, and it is not necessary to be a follower of Malthus to recognize that while population tends to multiply in an ever increasing ratio, there must always be a limit to the means of subsistence. That we are within measurable distance of such a limit we do not maintain; that we are advancing toward it cannot be denied.

Take England as an example of a country in the state of social and industrial development that we are approaching. She is old and crowded with population. Her resources have been exploited, her railroads have been built, her canals have been dug. Her industries are of course vast in extent, but their expansion becomes more and more difficult, and it grows harder and harder to find employment for the increasing hosts who demand work. If it were proposed to bring into England, from some other country, a hundred thousand, or even a thousand, penniless laborers, what a unanimous outcry would be raised against the inexpediency of such action! The vehemence with which the idea would be opposed may be judged from the uneasiness and even indignation already excited there by the gathering in London of a colony, comparatively insignificant in numbers, of immigrants from Eastern Europe.

The condition of the United States is still very different from that of England. She has over five hundred inhabitants to the square mile—we have but twenty. There are still fertile plains in the West that have not felt the plow, and lodes of ore in our mountains awaiting the miner’s pick. We have still great resources to develop. But there evidently is a point in a country’s history at which foreign immigration, once vitally beneficial, becomes injurious. The question that calls for earnest discussion and speedy settlement is whether we are now approaching that point—whether we have not already arrived there.

RULING OUT ART.

In their dealings with Art, Congress and the Treasury Department have not been fortunate. The legislative and executive authorities at Washington seem to think that the great and glorious principle of protection to American industries demands the exclusion or heavy taxation of every product of foreign art. The Treasury recently distinguished itself by issuing an order that all engravings, etchings, and photographs found in the mails from abroad should be confiscated. Under this ruling an American traveling or residing in Europe cannot mail a photograph to his relatives at home. An immigrant from Ireland or Germany cannot receive the likeness of his mother or sister in the “old country” unless it is sent him by an express company and through the custom house, whose expenses and delays are almost prohibitory.

It may be gathered from the preceding article that we believe in the exercise of the government’s powers for the encouragement of American industries and the protection of American labor. We are also patriotic enough to think that America is a civilized country, and that a policy of hostility to foreign art is unworthy of her. Art knows no international boundaries and is not a mere matter of dollars and cents. Even if it were, the prohibition or restriction of importations would make us poorer and not richer. Inspection of representative work from abroad is in a hundred ways beneficial to our own educational, artistic, and mechanical advancement. All this has been so fully and frequently pointed out, that we may hope some day to see it recognized in our fiscal system. The McKinley bill did indeed take a step in the right direction by reducing the duty on paintings and statuary from thirty to fifteen per cent ad valorem, leaving the tariff upon photographs, etchings, and all kinds of prints at twenty five per cent. It is difficult to see why the arguments that led Congress to cut off one half the tax upon[120] paintings should not apply with equal force to the abolition of the other half. The Treasury order excluding photographs from the mails is surely oppressive enough to excite forcible protests. It is true that the ruling is in strict accordance with the letter of the law, which had previously been in abeyance. The annoyances—individually trifling, perhaps, but collectively serious—that its enforcement will cause, may result in strengthening the demand for the liberation of art from the customs officials.

DEFECTS IN OUR PENAL CODE.

Nineteenth century ingenuity has identified and christened the science of penology, but has hitherto failed to make any thorough application of its principles. The practical side of the matter is indeed in a state of partial chaos. Take, for instance, the various contemporary methods of dealing with homicides. England hangs them, France guillotines them, Spain garottes them, New York invokes electrical science to slay them with artificial lightning. The great West takes them without any tiresome legal process and suspends them upon the nearest tree. And meanwhile the best thought of the day seems to be turning toward the opinion that capital punishment in any form is unjust and inexpedient.

Another anomaly in existing penal systems is their failure to deal adequately with the chronic “jail bird”—the man whose inveterate tendency to crime breaks out again and again, with only such enforced intervals as may be imposed by periodical incarcerations. Such cases are, unfortunately, far from rare. For instance, the daily press last month recorded a fiendish plot to rob and murder an aged couple in a Long Island village. Of the two conspirators, one had spent a total of seventeen years in prison as the result of a series of convictions for similar offenses, while the other—a lad of eighteen—had just finished a term of imprisonment for a previous attempt to murder.

At almost the same time a miscreant made an effort, which narrowly missed success, to blow up a crowded train on the Lehigh Valley railroad by placing dynamite on the track. Investigation of his antecedents revealed that most of his life had been passed in jail, to which he had been repeatedly sentenced for a variety of more or less serious crimes, among which was an attempt to destroy a Hudson River passenger steamboat. For his last offense he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. With the usual commutations, his term will probably expire in five or six years, when we may expect him to renew his attacks upon his fellow men.

The dual purpose of the penal law is, we take it, the reformation of the criminal and the protection of society. Now in the cases cited, and in scores of similar ones, it is entirely clear that repeated terms of imprisonment have not the slightest corrective or deterrent effect upon the offender, while they afford only a temporary safeguard to the community upon which he preys. As soon as he is released from jail, his perverted mental bent impels him to resume his warfare against mankind. It is mere fatuity to give such a man his liberty, when liberty simply means another opportunity to attack the lives or property of others. And yet, under existing laws, he is again and again set loose to resume his predatory career. There is no statute under which his incurable hostility to society can be rendered innocuous by imprisonment for life. And yet it is evident that such is the only rational method of dealing with a large number of cases.