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“Nicol Patoff! Do you know him? Where is he?”

LUCY HARDING
A ROMANCE OF RUSSIA

BY

MARY J. HOLMES

AUTHOR OF

“Edna Browning,” “The Homestead on the Hillside,” “Maggie Miller,” “Tempest and Sunshine,” etc.

THE AMERICAN NEWS COMPANY

PUBLISHERS’ AGENTS

NEW YORK

Copyright, 1905

By Mary J. Holmes

Lucy Harding

LUCY HARDING.

CHAPTER I.
NICOL PATOFF.

In the summer of 189– I was one of a party of tourists who were going to St. Petersburg. There were eight of us, all women, strong, fearless and self-reliant, and all natives of Massachusetts. Two were from Boston, three from its suburbs, and three, including myself, from Ridgefield, a pretty little inland town among the Worcester hills. We had a guide, of course, Henri Smeltz, a German, and if his credentials, which I now think he wrote himself, were to be believed, he was fully competent to take charge of eight women with opinions of their own and as much knowledge of the country they were to visit as he had. It had been the dream of my life to see the water-soaked city, and when the opportunity came I accepted it eagerly, with, however, some dread of the fatigue of the long journey and the annoyances I might meet in the capital of the czar. I was not a good sailor and I had a great dislike for train travel, and by the time we had crossed the Atlantic and the Continent and were on the Gulf of Finland, I was in a rather limp and collapsed condition. But I rallied as the bright July day wore on, and when the Russian officers came on board I was quite myself and felt able to cope with them all if necessary. I had nothing to fear. I was an American citizen and wore the colors of my country in a knot of ribbon on my dress. My passport was all right, so far as I knew. But better than this was the fact that I could speak Russian with a tolerable degree of accuracy. I was fond of languages, and during my school days had mastered German and French to the extent of reading and writing them fluently. My teacher was Nicol Patoff from St. Petersburg, who, outside of his school hours, had a class in Russian which I joined, and astonished both Nicol and myself by the readiness with which I acquired the difficult language which the most of my companions gave up in despair after a few weeks’ trial and in spite of the entreaties of Nicol, who assured them that with a little patience what seemed so hard would be very easy.

He was a tall, handsome young man, with large, dark eyes which seemed always on the alert, as if watching for or expecting something which might come at any moment. All we knew of him was that he was from St. Petersburg. That his father, who was dead, had once been wealthy, in fact had belonged to the minor nobility, but had lost most of his money, and this necessitated his son’s earning his own living, which he could do better in America than elsewhere. This was the story he told, and although he brought no credentials and only asked to be employed on trial, his frank, pleasing manners and magnetic personality won him favor at once, and for two years he discharged his duties as teacher of languages in the Ridgefield Academy to the entire satisfaction of his employers. Many conjectured that he was a nihilist, but there was about him a quiet reserve which kept people from questioning him on the subject, and it was never mentioned to him but once. Then a young girl asked him laughingly if he had ever known a nihilist intimately.

“But, of course, you haven’t,” she added. “I suppose they only belong to the lower classes. You might see them without knowing them well.”

For a moment the hot blood surged into Patoff’s face, then left it deadly pale as he replied: “I have seen and known hundreds of them. They belong to all classes, high and low, rich and poor—more to the rich, perhaps, than the very poor. They are as thick as those raindrops,” and he pointed to a window, against which a heavy shower was beating. “There is much to be said on both sides,” he continued, after a few moments. “You are subjected to tyranny and surveillance, whichever party you belong to. It is a case of Scylla and Charybdis. Of the two it is better to be with the government than to be hounded and watched wherever you go and suspected of crimes you never thought of committing. A nihilist is not safe anywhere. His best friend may betray him, and then the gendarmes, the police. You have no idea how sharp they are when once they are on your track.”

This was a great deal for him to say, and he seemed to think so, for he stopped suddenly and, changing the conversation, began to speak to me in German and to correct my pronunciation as he had never done before.

During the next few weeks he received several letters from Russia, and grew so abstracted in his manner that once when hearing our lesson in Russian he began to talk to us in French, then in German, and finally lapsed into English, saying with a start: “I beg your pardon. My thoughts were very far away.”

“Where?” the girl asked who had questioned him on nihilism.

He looked at her a moment with a peculiar expression in his eyes, and then replied: “In Russia, my home, where I am going at the end of this quarter.”

We were all sorry to lose him, and no one more so than I, although I said the least. There was something in his eyes when they rested upon me and in his voice when he spoke to me which told me I was his favorite pupil, but if he cared particularly for me he never showed it until the day before he left town, when he called to say good-by. I had been giving my hair a bath and was brushing and drying it in the hot sun when he came up the walk. I disliked my hair and always had. It was very heavy and long and soft and wavy, and I had the fair complexion which usually goes with its color; but it was red, not chestnut or auburn, but a decided red, which I hated, and fancied others must do the same, and when I saw Nicol coming up the walk I shrank back in my seat under the maple tree, hoping he would not see me. But he did; and came at once to me, laughing as I tried to gather up into a knot my heavy hair, which, being still damp, would not stay where I put it. I know he said something about Godiva, then checked himself with “I beg your pardon,” as he saw the color rising in my face; and, lifting up a lock which had fallen down, he said: “I wish you would give me a bit of this as a souvenir.”

“Are you crazy,” I asked, “to want a lock of my hair? Why, it is red!”

“I know that,” he said; “but it is beautiful, nevertheless, especially in the sunlight. I like red. Can I have a bit?”

He took from his vest pocket a small pair of scissors, and handed them to me. I was too confused for a moment to speak. No one before had praised my hair. I had made faces at it in the glass. My brother, who was a few years older than myself, called me Carrots and Red-top, and, when in a very teasing mood, pretended to light a match on it. And Nicol called it beautiful, and wanted a lock of it as a souvenir. My first impulse was to give him the whole, if I could, and be rid of it; but, as I gathered the shining mass in my hand, and saw how the sunlight made it brighten and glisten, I began to have a certain feeling of pride in it, it was so long and thick and glossy, and curled around my fingers like a living thing.

“Yes, you can have some of the old, red stuff, if you want it,” I said, laughingly; and, taking his scissors, I cut a tress where it could not be missed and handed it to him.

He was my teacher, my friend; he was going away, and I felt I scarcely knew how toward him, as, with my hair still down my back—for it was not yet dry, sat beside him, while he talked of Russia, and the difference between life there and in America, appearing all the while as if there was something he wished to say, but could not, or dared not.

“Domestic life there is not what it is here. You would not like it,” he said.

“I know I shouldn’t,” I answered, quickly, and he went on: “But it is home to me. My people are well born, and I must cast my lot with them, whether for good or bad.”

“I hope not for bad,” I said, with a little lump in my throat.

“That depends upon the standpoint from which you look,” he replied. “If I join the nihilists, and you sympathize with them, you will think I go for good. If I side with the government, and help hunt the nihilists down, and your sympathies are there, you will say I go for good.”

“Never!” I answered, hotly, stamping my foot upon the ground. “Nihilism may be wrong, but I detest the government, with its iron heel upon the poor people, and in a way upon your czar, who is kept more in ignorance of what is taking place than I am. You are all slaves, every one of you, from the czar in his palace to the poor serf in his mud house on the barren plain. I wish I could give your grand dukes a piece of my mind!”

Nicol laughed at my heat, and answered: “You didn’t have that red hair given you for nothing, did you? I wish you might give them a piece of your mind, but am afraid it would do no good. Russia is pretty firm in her opinion of herself. I wish she was different. I have learned many things in your country which I shall not forget. My life has been very pleasant here, and my thoughts will often travel back to Ridgefield, and the freedom such as we Russians do not know.”

“Why not stay, then?” I asked, the lump in my throat growing larger, and making my voice a kind of croak.

“That is impossible,” he replied. “Russia may be bad, but I can no more stay away from it than the bird can stay away from the nest where its young are clamoring for the food it is to bring them.”

“You have friends to whom you are going!” I said; and he replied: “Friends? Yes; thick as the leaves on the trees in summer, and they are waiting for me. I am going into danger or honor. I have not quite made my choice.”

“You are not a nihilist?” I exclaimed, starting to my feet, as if to get away from him.

With a low, musical laugh, habitual to him when he laughed at all, which was seldom, he put up his hand and drew me back upon the seat.

“I thought you sympathized with the nihilists?” he said.

“I do,” I answered; “but it is hard to associate you with one. I think of them as a kind of desperadoes, made so by oppression.”

“There you are mistaken,” he replied. “I told you once that the nihilists are found with the rich as often as with the poor. Some time you may, perhaps, read of a gang of people starting for Siberia, and I may be with them. If not, there will be others in it just as heartbroken at leaving their homes as I should be. Pray for them, but do not be troubled for me. I shall escape. I was not born to be a slave, a prisoner, and there is not power enough in all Siberia to keep me, if I choose not to stay.”

He stood up, tall and straight, and his eyes flashed with a fire I had never seen in them before. After a moment he resumed his seat, and continued: “There is no doubt that Russia is hovering on the crater of a volcano, which may, at any moment, burst out like Vesuvius. But St. Petersburg is a right jolly place, after all, and it is my home. I hope you will go there some day. Your knowledge of the language will make it easy for you, and you will not find us a bad lot, or know a nihilist from a partisan of the government. They are all mixed in together. If you go, I may or may not be there, but find No. — Nevsky Prospect. It was once my home, where we kept forty servants, falling over each other and doing less work than half a dozen do in America. It is part of the system. Here is my card. Good-by, and God bless you!”

He passed his hand caressingly over my hair, and, stooping, kissed me on my forehead. Then he left me, and I put my head upon the back of the seat, and cried, with a feeling that something had gone out of my life which had made it very pleasant.

For a long time I expected to hear from him, but no word had ever come, and years had gone by, and I was a woman of nearly thirty-five, with my schooldays behind me, but with a vivid remembrance of that part of them when Nicol was my teacher. His card was all I had left of the handsome young Russian who had stirred my girlish heart as no other man had ever done. I had never forgotten what he said to me of the gang bound for Siberia, asking me to pray for them, and, in imagination, I had often seen that gang, and he was always in it, and when I prayed I am afraid it was for him—for Nicol alone. And now I was going to his country, and might possibly meet him, if he was there. He would be older, and probably married. But that did not matter. The pain in my heart and the lump in my throat when he bade me good-by were gone. That chapter was closed, but I was thinking of it, and of him, when I had my first meeting with a Russian gendarme.

CHAPTER II.
THE GENDARME.

I had pictured them as old, or middle-aged, with gray or white hair, hard faces and fierce eyes, which could look through one and see if there was anything concealed. But the tall man, who bowed so deferentially, and hesitated a little before speaking, as if he thought I would not understand, was quite different. He was neither very old nor grizzled, although his heavy beard, which covered the most of his face, was streaked with gray. I could not judge well with regard to his eyes, as the lids were partially closed, the result of some chronic trouble with them, I afterward learned. I knew they were looking at me sharply—so sharply, indeed, that I felt my face growing red with resentment, and, as he continued to scrutinize me, coming close to do so, all my dread of him and his craft vanished, and, with a proud turn of my head, I said: “Why do you stare at me as if you thought me a smuggler, or a nihilist? I am neither.”

Instantly there came upon all I could see of his face for the heavy beard and into all I could see of eyes for the drooping lids a smile, which made my brain whirl, and for a moment I asked myself if theosophy were not true, after all, and I had lived another life somewhere, and been in the position in which I now found myself, face to face with a gendarme, who, as the smile disappeared under his heavy mustache, said: “Madame speaks Russian well.”

“Thanks!” I replied. “I ought to, with so good a teacher as I had in Nicol Patoff.”

I don’t know what spirit possessed me to mention Nicol’s name. I had never rid myself of an impression that he would rather I should not speak of him to strangers, and I had blurted it out to this gendarme, who started visibly, and repeated: “Nicol Patoff! Do you know him? Where is he?” he asked, and, with every sense alert lest my old teacher’s safety was in danger, I answered: “The last time I saw him he was in America.”

“In America. Yes; but what do you know of him now? Where is he?” was his next question.

“I know nothing of him, except what is good, and, if I did, I should keep it to myself, if the telling it would harm him. He was my teacher and friend, and a gentleman,” I said, rather hotly.

I did not know what right he had to be asking me about Nicol Patoff, and was very angry as I confronted the gendarme, who, I fancied, was laughing at me.

“You don’t know where he is now?” he continued, in good English, and, to my look of surprise, continued: “You see, I can speak your language, though not as well as you speak mine. Nicol Patoff must have been a good teacher, and you an apt scholar.”

I did not reply, but, with a formal bow, left him and joined my companions, who were curious to know what I had been saying to the gendarme. But I was noncommittal, and gave some evasive answer, as I watched him in the distance, with his staff, of which he seemed to be the head. Standing near the purser, later on, I said to him, rather indifferently: “Who is that officer with the queer eyelids? He carries himself as if he owned the ship and all the passengers.”

Glancing stealthily around, as if to make sure no one was listening—a habit I noticed in many of the Russians—he spoke very low, and said: “That! Oh, that is Michel Seguin, one of the very highest of the police. The suspects dread him as they would the plague. He’s a regular sleuthhound, and can detect a criminal and unearth a plot when everyone else has failed. I don’t know why he was sent here to-day, unless they had heard there was a suspect on board. You can’t escape Michel Seguin, when once he is on your track.”

He looked hard at me, as if he thought I might be the suspect Michel Seguin was sent to arrest. He had certainly talked with me longer than with anyone else, and I had been rather saucy to him. But I was not afraid of him, and had a feeling of quiet and safety just because I had talked with him. We were through with the police for the present, and were free to look upon the frowning fort of Cronstadt, bristling with guns and threatening destruction to any enemy’s vessel which might venture near it.

From Cronstadt we could see in the distance the golden dome of St. Isaac’s towering against the sky, and around it the turrets and spires and roofs of the city I had come so far to see, and where I was destined to meet with so many adventures. The sail up the Neva to the wharf was soon accomplished, and we were in the whirl and hubbub of a great town, where Henri, our guide, nearly lost his wits in the confusion, and finally left the ordering of affairs to me, as I could speak the language so much better than he. Most of our party chose to take a large conveyance from the station to our hotel, but I preferred a drosky, as I had heard so much of them from Nicol Patoff, and wished to try one. Half a dozen were ready for me in a moment, and, after my choice was made, I said to the coachman, who looked like a small haystack, or rather like a feather bed with a rope tied around its center: “Don’t drive fast. I shall fall out.”

He nodded that he understood me, gathered up his reins, which looked like two narrow strips of leather, shook them at his horse, and we were off like the wind, jolting over the cobblestone pavement, now in one rut and now in another, while I tried in vain to find something to hold to. There was nothing; neither side nor back was of any use. To clutch the padded garment of the driver was impossible. It was like holding so much cotton wool in my hands. There was no alternative but to pound him with my fists, which I did, in imminent danger of being thrown from the drosky. At last the point of my umbrella reached him, and, slacking his speed, he asked: “What will little madame have?”

“Drive slower,” I said. “You have nearly broken every bone in my body, and I have nothing to hold to.”

“Very well,” he replied, and started again, faster than before, it seemed to me, as I swayed from side to side.

A breeze had blown up from the Neva, and this, added to the motion of the drosky, took my hat from my head and carried it along, with little swirls of dust and dirt, until it was some distance in front of us. The blows I dealt that padded figure in front were fast and furious, but of no avail. Nothing availed, not even my umbrella, till I sprang to my feet and clutched him around his neck, as if about to garrote him. Stopping his horse with a suddenness which drew the beast upon his haunches, he gasped: “In Heaven’s name, what will little madame have now?”

“I’ll have my hat!” I cried, pointing to my crumpled headgear, which some little girls had picked up and were examining, one of them trying it on and turning her head airily.

I think the driver swore, but am not sure.

“Madame shall have her hat,” he said, and was about to plunge on, when I stopped him again, by saying: “Let me out. I will walk the rest of the way. We are almost there,” and I pointed to what I was sure was our hotel, for I had studied St. Petersburg so carefully before coming that it seemed to me I knew every street and alley and public building.

“As the little madame likes,” was his polite rejoinder, followed by a call to the girl who was still sporting my hat, to the evident admiration of her companions.

“Drop it, or it will be the worse for you!” he cried, with a flourish of his whip. “It is madame’s.”

But I did not need his interference, for, as I came up to the girl, breathless and panting, a tall gendarme crossed from the other side of the street, and at sight of him the children fled in haste, leaving my hat behind them. Picking it up and brushing some particles of dust from it, and straightening the crushed flower with a deftness I hardly expected in a man, he handed it to me, and said: “You will not wear it again, after it has been on her head,” and he motioned toward the girl, who, with her two companions, was scampering away as fast as her little, bare legs and feet could carry her. I had another hat in my trunk, and, remembering what I had heard of the condition of Russian heads, answered, emphatically: “Never! She can have it. Here, girl, come back!” I screamed to the child just disappearing in the distance.

I doubt if my call would have reached her if the gendarme had not sent after her a short, shrill, peremptory whistle, which brought her to a standstill as quickly as if she had been shot. Turning round, she saw me beckoning to her, and holding at arm’s length my hat, as if there was contagion in it. In a few moments she had it, or, rather, the three had it, pulling and fighting over it, until the last I saw of it one little girl was dangling a long ribbon, a second appropriating the bunch of forget-me-nots, while the eldest was wearing the poor, shorn thing as proudly as if it were a great acquisition.

I had scarcely realized till then, in my excitement, that the gendarme who had come to my aid was the one who on the boat had questioned me of Nicol Patoff. Would he ask me about him again, I wondered, and was relieved that he did not even act as if we had met before. Glancing at my hair, which I was beginning to rearrange, he said: “Madame must go bareheaded.”

“Only from here to the hotel. I have another hat,” I answered, thinking of the day Nicol Patoff had found me drying my hair, and complimented its beauty.

It was darker now, with a wonderful sheen upon it in the sunlight, and I could not help feeling that the man was admiring it through his half-closed eyes, and scanning me very closely. He had certainly been going in the opposite direction when I first saw him across the street, but he turned now and went with me to the hotel, where my friends gathered round me, asking what had happened, and why I had come on foot and without my hat. While I was explaining to them, the gendarme was speaking to the clerk about me, I was sure, as he glanced toward me, and nodded that he understood. Then, with a bow in my direction, which included those of my party standing near me, the gendarme walked away.

I had learned by this time that our German conductor, Henri, was of very little use, except to smoke and take a glass of beer when he could get it, and, if I wanted a thing done, I must do it myself. I could speak Russian much better than he could, and, as I wished to ask some questions, and was particular about my room, I went to the desk to register. After I had written my name, “Miss Lucy Harding, Ridgefield, Massachusetts, U. S. A.,” the clerk called a young boy, whom he designated “Boots,” and bade him show Miss Garding and her friend, who was to room with her, to a certain number. If there is in the English alphabet one letter which puzzles a Russian more than another, it is the letter “H,” and he usually ends by putting “G” in its place. Consequently, I became Miss or Madame Garding, developing, finally, into a Garden, and remaining so during my stay in St. Petersburg. From what we had heard of Russian hotels, we were not prepared for palatial apartments, and I was surprised at the large, airy corner room into which I was ushered. Turning to Boots, I asked if there was not some mistake. Was he sure this room was intended for us, and if it were not the best in the house?

When he found I could speak his language, Boots became communicative and familiar, although, evidently, he had no intention to be pert. It was one of the best rooms, he said, and tourists did not often get it, as it was reserved for Russian gentry when they came to town from the country.

“I heard Monsieur Seguin ask the clerk to do his best by you. I guess he thinks you are some great lady at home.”

Just then there was a hurried call for Boots, and he left me wondering what possible interest Michel Seguin could have in me. I had been rude to him on the boat, and had not shown myself very friendly since. Probably any special attention he might pay me was prompted by a wish to learn something of Nicol Patoff. But forewarned was forearmed, and Nicol, who undoubtedly was under some ban and in hiding, was safe so far as I was concerned.

“I’ll take the good the gods provide,” I thought, as I unpacked my trunk in my spacious, airy room, and then went down to dinner, where I found several tourists, all eagerly discussing what they had seen and what they expected to see.

CHAPTER III.
THE DOG CHANCE.

As the sun was not down—for we were in the midst of the long, northern days, when darkness and daylight almost kiss each other in a parting embrace—I suggested that we take a little stroll and look at St. Isaac’s and other points of interest. As we were leaving the hotel, we met the gendarme, Michel, who, I found, came often to the hotel, inquiring after passports and any newcomers, or those who had changed their quarters. A civil bow was all I awarded him, as I hurried outside, where I found my friends crowded around a huge mastiff, sitting upon his haunches, as if waiting for some one—his master, probably. He was of a species which, in America, we call a Russian collie, and esteem for their fidelity and gentleness. He was the handsomest dog I had ever seen, with his fine, intelligent face, and long, silky mane, and, as I was fond of animals of all kinds, I stooped to caress him, while he beat his bushy tail in token of appreciation and good will.

“You are a beauty,” I said. “I wonder whose dog you are, and what is your name?”

“Chance, and he belongs to me,” came in quick response, which made the dog start up, while I turned to meet the drooping eyes of the gendarme fixed on me with a quizzical expression.

“Chance,” I repeated, still keeping my hand buried in the soft wool of the animal, who was stamping his feet and shaking his head, as if ready for action of some kind, if he only knew what it was. “Chance,” I said, again. “It is a strange name for a Russian dog. I had a little poodle, years ago, which I called Chance. I’ve never heard the name since.”

“No, it is not common; and it came to him from a friend,” the man replied. “He is a noble fellow. His grandmother was from the royal kennels, so, you see, he has kingly blood in him. I was offered a thousand dollars for him by one of your countrymen, and would not take it. He is young, but is already my factotum on whom I depend.”

“Do you mean he is like a bloodhound, whom you put on the track of the poor wretches you are hired to run down?” I asked, thinking of Nicol Patoff, and recoiling from the dog, who put up his big paw, as if to shake my hand, and thus conciliate me.

The gendarme laughed, and replied: “I have little need of a dog, except in case of murder. If the czar were killed, for instance, and the assassin were hiding, I might call in Chance’s help; and he would find him, too, if he had ever seen him before, or anything belonging to him. You are not afraid of him?”

“No,” I answered, and, before I could say more, the officer continued, to the dog: “Salute the lady!”

In an instant two great paws were on my shoulders, and Chance was looking into my face, with an expression so human that I began to feel cold and sick, and tried to free myself from him, and in my effort dropped my handkerchief.

“Down, Chance! That will do,” his master said, and then to us: “He will know you now wherever he meets you, especially after I have shown him this.”

He had picked up my handkerchief, a soiled and torn one, I saw, with a pang, and, handing it to the dog, bade him give it to Miss Harding. He mastered the “H,” and I was not a “Garden” to him. Obediently, Chance brought it to me, shaking his head and holding it a while in his teeth, as if loath to let it go.

“It is all right,” the gendarme said, taking it from the dog, but not returning it to me. “Chance has looked on your face,” he continued, “and smelled an article of your wardrobe. I could track you now to Siberia, if necessary, if I had this handkerchief to show him.”

I shuddered, and put out my hand to take my property, but, with a kind of authoritative air I had never seen in him before, he put it in his pocket, saying, quietly: “Allow me to keep it as a means of safety to you and your party. I have met many Americans; they are all alike; they wish to see everything, and go everywhere, and never think of danger, or, if they do, it does not deter them. That Dutch guide of yours, lounging on a settee and smoking cigarettes, is no good. He will take to vodka next, and be more stupid than ever. Madame, with her knowledge of Russian, is a better guide than he. May as well give him up, and run your own canoe. You see, I am up in Yankee slang. I have heard a good deal of it. But don’t risk too much. St. Petersburg is as safe as most cities, but be a little cautious where you go and when you go. As a rule, our women are not often seen in the streets unattended. But we expect different things from tourists, particularly Americans, who dare anything to satisfy their curiosity. You are intending to go out this evening, and the sun is nearly down. Wait till to-morrow, and, if Chance happens to join you, don’t think it strange, either to-morrow or next day. In the summer, when the city is full of sightseers and the court and nobility are away, there is frequently a set of impostors and marauders from the country, who come into town for theft and spoil, thinking to find the visitors an easy prey. Chance knows them by instinct, and will keep them at a distance. If he growls, you will know there is danger, and the beggar a fraud.”

He turned abruptly and was gone, followed by Chance, bounding at his side and occasionally picking up a stick, or whatever he could find, and taking it to his master, expecting it to be thrown for him to catch and take back. For a moment we watched him in silence; then the tongues of the party were loosened, and they began to wonder why this gendarme had seemingly taken us under his protection and given us the service of his dog. I offered no opinion. I was still morbidly jealous for the safety of Nicol Patoff, if he were alive and on Russian soil, as I thought probable, and Michel Seguin’s interest in us was really centered in me, with a hope that he might yet learn something of his enemy. It was a part of his method, which usually proved successful, but would fail for once.

It was beginning to get a little chilly, and I suggested that we should return to the hotel. We found our guide, Henri, snoring loudly, with his mouth open, his arms falling at his side and a half-burned cigarette held fast between his thumb and fingers.

“The lout! We ought to get rid of him; he is of no earthly use, except to draw his pay. We do not need him. You can do all he can, and more, too; and then we shall have Chance,” my companions said, as we went to our rooms.

As a result of this conversation, after a few days, during which Henri showed a greater liking for vodka than for attending to us, we separated by mutual consent, but not until he had done some pretty hard swearing, saying “he was not hired to carry the satchels and shawl straps and wraps and umbrellas of eight old maids, no two of whom wished to see the same thing at the same time, or go to the same place, and who were the hardest-to-please women it had ever been his lot to conduct.” “Red-head,” as he called me, was the worst of all, and, if she didn’t look out, she would find herself in the clutches of the police, romping round as she did, looking into everything and talking to everybody.

We laughed, and left him to his vodka and his pipe and cigarettes, and his stupid sleep in the armchair of the office, from which he occasionally roused enough to inquire about the “eight old maids, and what they were up to now.”

CHAPTER IV.
NICOL’S HOUSE.

We had been told that the time to visit St. Petersburg was in the winter, when the city is in its glory. The nobility have then returned from their summer homes. The czar is at his palace. The Nevsky Prospect is gay with equipages of every description, from the common sledge to the carriages of the aristocracy, while the Neva, frozen to the thickness of three or four feet, rivals the Nevsky, with its crowds of sledges and skates and lookers-on, its colored lights, its bazaars and booths filled with a laughing crowd till long after the coachmen and horses, who have stood for hours in the cold before the Winter Palace, where a ball was in progress, have gone home.

All this I saw later, and was a part of most of it during my second visit to St. Petersburg; but now, not knowing the difference, I was satisfied to be there in the summer, although the streets seemed deserted, and most of the great houses were closed, or left in charge of a few old domestics, who were faithful to their trust as watchdogs. The czar, with his family, was at Gatschina, in the great, gloomy palace, where I was told that, although there were six hundred rooms, the royal family confined themselves to only six, as they could thus feel more secure from attacks of nihilists. Whether this was true or not, I do not know. One hears many wonderful rumors in St. Petersburg of plots and counterplots, and prying gendarmes, and arrests and banishment to the fortress or Siberia; but these did not concern us. We were there to see, and we made good our time, going everywhere we could go, and pushing our way into some places which at first seemed impossible to enter.

And nearly always Chance was with us. Just where he came from I did not at first know. We usually found him outside the hotel waiting for us, and attaching himself to me as if I were his mistress. His master we did not see until the fifth day, when we met him in front of the house where Nicol Patoff had once lived. I remembered the number on the card Nicol had given me, and was anxious to visit it alone, to inspect it at my leisure, and possibly ring the bell boldly, and ask if the Patoff family were at home. But this I could not do, for, as I was the only one who spoke the language, it seemed necessary that our party should keep together.

Still, I must see the house, and give it more than a passing glance, and at last I took the ladies into my confidence, telling them why I wished particularly to see the place. None of them had ever heard of Nicol, except the girls from Ridgefield, and, as these were much younger than myself, they only knew of him as some one who taught in the academy for a time and then disappeared. They were, however, ready to go with me, and on a sunny afternoon we started along the Nevsky on our tour of discovery, with our escort, Chance, who seemed to know just where we were going, and forged ahead at a rapid pace until he reached the Patoff house, where he stopped and waited for us to come up.

It was very large, and built of brick, as are most of the houses in St. Petersburg. In front was the inevitable porter, or servant, of the proprietor, who keeps guard over the premises and over all who come in or go out. The one of our party most interested in Nicol Patoff after myself was Mary, my roommate, who was usually bubbling with enthusiasm, and who thought it would be great fun if we could get inside a real Russian house, and see what it was like.

“Aren’t you going to ask that porter if Mr. Patoff lives here? He looks harmless and sleepy,” she said, while Chance was making various signs that he expected us to enter.

What I might have done I do not know, if upon the scene a new actor had not appeared, in the person of the gendarme Michel, who came upon us rather suddenly, as we stood huddled together on the sidewalk. There was no mistaking the pleasure on his face when he saw us.

“Good-afternoon!” he said, speaking in English. “Sight-seeing, I suppose? What place are you bound for now, if I may ask? I hope you find Chance a good escort. I tell him every morning to find Miss Harding, and he goes;” and he patted the head of the beautiful dog, who began to leap upon him, with little cries of delight.

This, then, was the reason why Chance always came to me when he appeared at the hotel. My handkerchief, which the gendarme still kept, was the cue which guided him, and I ought to have been flattered, but I was not, for I always felt as if there was something sinister behind the officer’s attentions which I could not fathom. It was Mary who replied, in her breezy way:

“Chance is splendid; he goes with us everywhere, and just now we are looking at the house where Nicol Patoff used to live, and where, perhaps, he lives now.”

I tried to catch her eyes, and stop her, but she was turned partly from me, and went on: “Do you know who lives here?”

“Not Patoff,” the gendarme said, with the same expression I had seen on his face when I spoke of Nicol on the boat. Then he added, quickly: “Do you, too, know Nicol Patoff?”

“Oh, no,” Mary replied. “I was a little girl when he taught in Ridgefield. Miss Harding was his favorite pupil, and that is why she speaks Russian so well. I have heard he was a splendid-looking man, with an air of mystery about him. Some thought him a nihilist. Do you know him, and was he a nihilist?”

I gave a gasp as I waited for the answer, which was spoken very deliberately: “He was a nihilist, and has given me a great deal of trouble.”

“Are you trying to find him?” was Mary’s next remark. “Why don’t you put Chance on his track?”

I was very fond of the girl, but I could have throttled her to hear her speaking thus of Nicol Patoff, and suggesting that Chance be put to find him.

“Mary!” I exclaimed. “Are you crazy, to suggest so diabolical an act? Nicol Patoff was a gentleman! What has he done to you that you should wish to throw him into the hands of his foes, and have him condemned, unheard, and sentenced either to the fortress or to Siberia, where every foot of the soil has been wet with the tears of exiles, some guilty, of course, but more innocent!”

“Madame is very eloquent in her defense of Nicol Patoff, and her tirade against our government,” the gendarme said, and I answered:

“Eloquent for the right, you mean! Nicol Patoff was my friend, and incapable of crime, unless it was that of detesting your atrocious government, which I do most heartily. I am glad I am an American, and not a Russian, subject to your laws!”

Womanlike, I was half crying, and my voice sounded croaky, and I hated myself for it, and hated the gendarme, who was certainly laughing at me, while my companions stood aghast, wondering what would be the result of my outburst. We had nothing to fear, for however stern and uncompromising the gendarme might be in the discharge of his duty, he was very kind to us, and, after I ceased speaking, he said: “If I ever find Patoff, and I may do so, I will tell him your opinion of him and our government. It will please him vastly, if all I know of him is true.”

“What do you know of him?” I demanded. “You have questioned us about him, and now I ask you, what has he done?”

“Nothing which I can tell you now,” was the good-humored reply. “I can only tell you what you probably know—that this is the house you are looking for, but no Patoffs live here now.” He hesitated a moment, then added: “It belongs to my family—to me! Would you like to go in?”

We had stood upon the sidewalk so long that the few passers-by began to look at us curiously and with suspicion, as if the presence in our midst of a gendarme boded evil to some of us, and one or two stopped to see what would follow. It was to me that Michel had addressed his invitation, and before I could answer and decline, as I meant to do, although I wished very much to see Nicol’s old home, he said: “It is perfectly proper for you to do so. Tourists not infrequently visit private houses when the owner is gone—for a compensation, of course. In this case there is no compensation. The owner is here, and invites you to enter. Will you come?”

“Yes, Miss Lucy, do. It will be something to tell at home,” Mary entreated, while Chance leaped upon me and then ran ahead, as if he were adding his invitation to his master’s.

I could not well resist, and gave a rather unwilling assent, wondering whom we should meet inside—what woman, I meant. This question was soon settled by the gendarme, who said, as he ushered us into a long reception room, which, to my Yankee eyes, looked untidy and uncared for: “You must excuse whatever is amiss, and I am afraid there is a great deal out of order, according to your code of housekeeping. I am just now living a bachelor’s life, as my mother has gone into the country for the summer, and Russian servants are not like the Yankees. I don’t suppose the house has all been swept since she went away. Now, what would you like to see most?” he asked, as we stood looking around us rather awkwardly.

“Oh, everything,” Mary replied; “the bedrooms and the kitchen. I’ve heard the latter was awful; not yours, especially, but everybody’s.”

She was certainly irrepressible and rude, and I tried to stop her, but the gendarme, who seemed pleased with her sprightliness, laughed good-naturedly, and said: “You are right, I think, and a Russian kitchen is a terror, particularly when the mistress is gone, and Chance and I keep house. As to bedrooms, my mother and I are civilized enough each to have one, but in some grand houses the master and mistress ignore such trivial things as bedrooms, and sleep on couches improvised as beds, while the servants sleep on the floor, or where they can find a place.”

“Horrible!” was Mary’s exclamation, as she held up her short dress, as if fearful of contamination.

Evidently the gendarme was proud of his house, leaving the kitchen out of the question. That we did not see, nor madame’s bedroom, nor his; but he took us through suites of rooms on the walls of which were some fine pictures, while the massive furniture had once been very handsome and costly. But the heavy brocade upholsterings were faded and frayed; the solid rosewood and mahogany tables and chairs were tarnished and scratched; there was dust everywhere, and one of the small, silken couches was evidently Chance’s bed, when he chose to make it so, for he sprang upon it and lay down, with his tongue lolling and his eyes watching us intently.

“I think it awful untidy. Where are the servants, I wonder?” Mary said to me, in a low tone, but not so low that the gendarme did not hear her, and reply: “I think it is rather untidy, but mother will soon right it up when she comes; she is a raging housekeeper. As to servants, there are plenty of them, such as they are. I dare say the most of them are asleep in the sunshine.”

Up to this time I had said but little. Something was choking me, as I went through the rooms where Nicol used to live, and I tried to imagine him there, with his fastidious ideas and his dainty dress, free from spot or blemish.

“It must have been different then,” I thought, and I said: “Mr. Patoff told me they sometimes had as many as forty servants in his day.”

“Oh, yes,” the gendarme replied. “No doubt of it. I think we at one time had sixty, before the emancipation of the serfs, when labor cost nothing.”

“Sixty!” Mary repeated. “Why, at home if we have one we do well. What did sixty do?”

“I hardly know,” the gendarme answered her. “I think they fell over each other, and quarreled, mostly, and only did one thing, and then their duties were over for that day. We have fewer servants now and better service.”

Mary arched her eyebrows, as she looked around for signs of service, and finally wrote with her finger the word “shiftless” in the dust which lay thickly on the highly polished surface of a handsome inlaid table. If the gendarme saw it, he made no sign, but took us to the next floor through other rooms filled with old and expensive furniture, but in none of which I could have sat down with a homelike feeling. I was beginning to get tired, and showed it, when he said: “I must take you to my den, and then I am through.”

He opened a door into a large, airy room looking out upon the Nevsky and the Neva.

“This is something like it!” Mary exclaimed, pirouetting across the floor and seating herself in a large easy-chair near the window. “This is like home,” and she looked around her admiringly.

“I am glad you like it. I come here to rest after a worry with passports and nihilists,” the gendarme said, with a look which was lost on me.

My attention had been attracted from the first by a full-length portrait of a young man hanging over the mantel.

“Nicol Patoff!” I exclaimed, clasping my hands with a firm grip, and feeling the tears spring to my eyes, as my thoughts went back to the old schoolroom, the lessons learned there, and the handsome young Russian whom this portrait brought so vividly to my mind.

It must have been taken before he came to America, when he was not more than twenty, but there was no mistaking the fair, smooth face, the lines of the mouth just breaking into a laugh, or the expression of the soft, brown eyes, with that far-away look in them.

“You recognize it?” the gendarme said, and I answered, quickly: “Recognize it! Of course I do! I should know Nicol wherever I met him, whether in his old home or in the wilds of Siberia. He was younger when this was taken than when I knew him. He is an old man now.”

“Yes, very old,” the gendarme replied, sarcastically. “Forty-five, at least. Old enough to die, if he is not already dead.”

By this time my companions had crowded around the picture, commenting upon it and wondering where the original was, and how his portrait came into the possession of the Seguins. It was Mary, as usual, who asked direct questions.

“Funny his portrait should be here, if he had anywhere to put it. How came you by it, and where is he?” she asked.

The gendarme did not answer at once, but seemed to be considering what to say. Then he suddenly grew very communicative.

“As you are so interested in the Patoffs, and some of you knew Nicol,” he said, “I may tell you that the family was once very wealthy, but reverses came, and they sold this house to us, with all there was in it. They were leaving the city for Constantinople, and did not care to take anything with them. Some time they might return, they said, but they never have.” He was sitting near an old-fashioned writing desk of mahogany, and, putting his hand upon it, he continued: “This was Nicol’s desk, and in it are some souvenirs he must have picked up in America, and perhaps forgot to take with him, or intended to come back for them. There is a dollar greenback, a fifty-cent piece, a little silk flag with stars and stripes, and——!” he hesitated a moment, and then went on: “In a small, pearl box, and tied with a white ribbon, is a long curl of hair—a woman’s hair. Please let me open that window. You look faint, and it is very warm here,” he said, breaking suddenly from his talk of Nicol’s treasures, and raising a sash behind me, as he saw me gasp for breath.

The cool air from the river revived me, or I should have fallen, the atmosphere grew so thick and the room so black as I saw myself a young girl, under the maple tree, giving a lock of my hair to Nicol Patoff, who had seemed so eager to get it, and who had cared so little for it as to leave it with strangers when the house was sold.

“You do look spotted and queer, and it is awful hot in here,” Mary said, fanning me with her hat; then, turning to the gendarme, she continued: “A lock of hair, a greenback, a fifty-cent piece and a flag! There is a romance hidden in this desk. What is the color of the hair?”

She looked at my heavy braids, but her countenance fell when the gendarme replied: “Black as night!”

I knew he lied, but blessed him for it, feeling sure that he guessed on whose head the hair once grew, and wished to spare me from Mary’s badinage.

She was very young and irrepressible, and went on: “Funny he should have left them, unless he had to run away. Can we see them?”

“Certainly not,” he replied. “It was wrong in me to speak of them, perhaps, and it would be a greater wrong to show them.”

“I guess you are right,” Mary said, while I made a move toward the door.

The sight of Nicol’s picture, and the mystery attending him, had affected me strangely, making me faint and sick, and I longed to be in the fresh air outside.

“You will stay for a cup of tea? Ludovic will prepare it at once, and we have some rare old china,” the gendarme said, but I declined the tea, and hurried from the room. As we emerged from the gloomy vestibule into the summer sunshine, the gendarme said to me, in a tone too low for even Mary to hear: “You have seen Nicol Patoff’s old home. Could you ever have lived here with him?”

He had no right to ask me such a question, and I felt my face grow red and my hair prickle at the roots, as I answered, promptly: “Never with him, nor anyone else!”

Why I added the last clause I do not know. There had been no reference to my living there with anyone but Nicol, and that was an impossibility. The gendarme laughed, and said: “Yankee habits and Russian customs would not affiliate well, I am sure. It is better for you to be as you are, and Nicol as he is.”

“Where is he, and of what is he suspected?” I asked, looking the officer square in his face, while his lids drooped lower over his eyes, and the ridge on his forehead grew deeper.

“It is too long a story, and madame would believe nothing against Nicol, if I told her,” he said.

He seemed to take my liking for Nicol for granted, and it made me angry, but my reply was to thank him for his courtesy in showing us the house, saying I knew my companions had enjoyed it, and that some of them would undoubtedly make it a subject for a paper for some of the clubs to which they belonged.

“Clubs, yes!” he rejoined, with animation. “I hear your country is full of them. And of societies called for letters of the alphabet, ‘D. A. R.’s,’ and ‘G. A. R.’s,’ and ‘Y. M. C. A.’s’ and ‘W. C. T. U.’s,’ and ‘Y. P. S. C. E.’s,’ and a host more. I got an American to give me the list, and what they all meant, and tried to commit it to memory, but gave it up. I’d like to see an article any of you might write on our house. I hope you will omit the general untidiness. It is better when mother is at home,” he said, with a bow, as he bade us good-by, saying we were welcome to call again whenever we chose. The old porter knew us now for friends, and would let us in at any time.

“I don’t know why we should ever care to go into that old house again, smelling of must and rats. Forty servants! And I don’t think the windows had been washed this summer, or the big salon dusted,” was Mary’s comment, as we walked rapidly toward our hotel, for it was getting near dinner time.

During the next week we scoured St. Petersburg as well as eight women without a guide could scour it, and by some means gained access to places which our whilom conductor, Henri, who still lounged at the hotel, told us were impossible to be seen without permits from the highest authorities. We had no permits, and just walked in, as a matter of course.

Everything seemed to give way to us, and we went about far more fearlessly, I think, than the czar, when he occasionally drove into town, with his armed police beside him. We had no guards—even Chance had deserted us, and we saw nothing of him or his master after the day we visited the Patoff house. We passed the place two or three times, and always stopped a moment to look at it, but there was nothing attractive in its gloomy, shut-up appearance. The master was evidently absent from the city, and I was not willing to admit that I missed him; but I did, and missed Chance more, feeling always a sense of security when he was with us.

But this did not prevent us from going wherever the fancy took us—sometimes on the beautiful river, Neva, the glory of the city; sometimes in droskies, which were not so terrible as the first one I had tried; but oftener on foot, feeling sure that our numbers and nationality protected us, and gaining courage and daring, until suddenly confronted with an experience we had not counted upon.

CHAPTER V.
THE HIGHWAYMAN.

Of all our party, next to myself, Mary was the fondest of walking, and went with me oftenest on long excursions. We had driven up and down the Nevsky two or three times, but had never walked its entire length, as I proposed doing a few days before our intended departure from the city. It was one of those bright, sunshiny afternoons, which almost make amends for the ice and snow in which the city is wrapped a great portion of the year. There were very few in the street, either in the fashionable or common part of the Nevsky, and the air was so invigorating that we felt no fatigue, but walked on and on, past the Patoff house, which showed some signs of life.

A door and windows were open, and we saw a lackey or two dodging in and out. Probably the master had returned, and I felt a little thrill of pleasure at the thought of meeting him again. It was impossible not to like him for his great friendliness and the many times he had made it easy for us in a city hedged round with rules and spies and officials ready to take advantage of us.

For a long time after passing the Patoff house we went on, until at last we turned into quarters where I had never been. A glance told me that it was peopled by the poorest class; still, I kept on, noticing how hard were the faces of the women, and how squalid and dirty were the children playing by the doors of the houses. I had been anxious to talk with this class of people, and hear from their own lips a history of their lives and their much-vaunted adoration of the czar, who could do no wrong!

Here was my opportunity, and I was about to accost a tired-faced woman, and had bowed to her smilingly, when suddenly I was confronted by a shabbily dressed young man, whose cringing manner bespoke the professional beggar. Not knowing that I could understand him, he held out his hand, and then put it to his mouth, in token of hunger, a trick I had seen many times in Italy.

“What do you want?” I asked, drawing back from him, as he came so near to me that I smelled his breath of bad tobacco and vodka.

At the sound of his own language, his face brightened, and he exclaimed: “God be praised, madame speaks Russian! She is kind, I know, and was sent to help me, and will give me a few kopecks for my sick wife and two starving children. I came from Moscow a few weeks ago to get work, but can find none, with everybody out of the city. Fifty kopecks are all I ask.”

He was still holding his hand very close to me, and once touched my arm, while I was thinking what to do, and doubting the propriety of giving the man the fifty kopecks asked for. It was not a large sum—about twenty-five cents—for a sick wife and two starving children. In my weakness—for I am weak where poverty is concerned—I might have yielded if Mary had not pulled my sleeve, and whispered, frantically: “Come away, Miss Lucy! The man is an impostor! I believe we are among thieves!”

He could not have understood her words, but he divined their import, and instantly his manner changed, from a hungry beggar to that of a resolute bandit, sure of his prey. Snatching with one hand at the bag at my side, in which I was supposed to carry money, with the other he clutched at the ring on my ungloved hand, trying to wrench it from my finger. It was not a large stone, but a fine one, and its brilliancy in the sunlight had attracted his notice.

I held to my bag with one hand, but with the other I was powerless, for he held it as in a vise. I felt there was no use appealing to the women near us for help. They were looking on stolidly, as if a theft in open day was nothing new to them. One, however—the tired-faced woman to whom I had bowed—seemed agitated, and suggested that I call the police.

But there were none in sight. The street seemed deserted. Even the butki, or box, on the far corner of the street, or square, where three men are always supposed to be stationed, to keep order, seemed also deserted, and I was left to fight my antagonist alone, with the probable result of being defeated. Suddenly, like an inspiration, Chance came into my mind. If he were there, I was safe. I did not know that he was home, but in my desperation I called, with all my might: “Chance, Chance, I want you!”

Almost before his name had left my lips, I heard the thud of his feet, like the hoofbeats of a horse, and knew that he was coming, but not the Chance I had ever seen before—mild-eyed and gentle as a baby. Every part of his body was bristling with rage, making him twice as big as usual. His eyes were red as balls of fire, and his teeth showed white between his open jaws. If I had not known him, I should have thought him mad, and, as it was, I felt a little shiver of fear as he came rushing on, with a low, angry growl, and his head low down.

The bandit’s back was to him, and he did not know the danger threatening him until Chance came round in front and two big feet struck him in the stomach, stretching him upon the ground, with Chance standing over him and looking at me for instructions as to what he should do next. I had heard some Russian oaths, but never any quite so fierce as those which came from the lips of the prostrate young man, who had wrenched my bag from my side, and kept it, with a tight grip.

“Chance,” I said, pointing to the bag, “that is mine. Get it for me!”

He understood, and in a moment the bag was in my hand, and on that of the bandit was an ugly wound, where Chance’s teeth had been. The dog still kept his place over the fallen man, growling angrily whenever his foe attempted to rise.

“Please, lady, call him off!” the man pleaded, his face white and his teeth chattering with terror.

I was nearly as white as he was, and trembling in every limb, as I stood looking at him.

“Oh, please let me go before he nabs me!” he continued, as, lifting up his head, he looked down the long street, where a policeman was just appearing in response to a tardy summons from the butki. “I’ve been in a dungeon, I’ve had the knout, and they did not make me any better. Let me go,” he said. “I did wrong, and am sorry!”

The knout and dungeon had an ugly sound. All my womanly pity awoke for the wretch, who was little more than a boy.

“I’ll give you another chance to do better,” I said, bidding the dog come to me, which he did rather unwillingly, growling savagely as the man sprang up, and, picking up his hat, exclaimed: “Thanks, lady! I’ll not forget it!” and then disappeared into some den or alley.

The women began to gather around me by this time, all talking together, and evidently so pleased at the escape of the thief that I was almost as much afraid of them as of him. The tired-faced woman, however, who had suggested the police, was different, and, when she asked me to sit down, I assented, for I was very tired, and went toward her door.

“Wait a moment,” she said, as she saw me about to sit upon the doorstep, which was rather dusty, but which I preferred to a seat inside, because it was in the open air.

Bringing a broom, she swept the step clean, and, taking off her apron, folded it and laid it down for a cushion for Mary and me, while she took a seat inside the door. Mary was nearly in a state of collapse with fright, and did not refuse a drink of the vodka a woman offered her in a broken cup. The strong liquor, which nearly strangled her, did her good, for she sat up in a moment and began to pull her dress away from contact with those near her.

Chance had stretched himself at my feet, but his head was up and alert, as if scenting mischief. Evidently he did not like the neighborhood, for he looked at me occasionally, as if asking why I was here, and why I did not leave. Several children gathered round him, timidly at first; then, as they gained courage, putting their little, dirty hands on his shaggy side, and calling him Chance, and a good dog, to which attention he responded rather indifferently, with a whack or two of his bushy tail.

“Do they all know him?” I asked, in some surprise, and forgetting that they had heard me call his name.

“Oh, yes,” the woman answered. “We all know Michel Seguin’s dog—a better detective, they say, than his master, if he chooses to use him, which he not often does.”

The policeman now came up, and began to question the crowd as to the recent disturbance. At sight of him, the children drew back and huddled closely together, but the women stood their ground, and began to tell the story, but shielded the thief as much as possible. A man had snatched at madame’s purse, and she had set the dog on him, was the amount of information, until a child called out, in a little piping voice, as she pointed toward me:

“Ask her. She talks our way.”

Scanning me very closely, as if I had been some rare curiosity, the man said: “You are the American madame who speaks our language so well?”

I did not like his face or his manner. He was brusque and rough, and different from any gendarme with whom I had come in contact, but I replied that I was from America, and could speak his language.

“Tell me, then,” he said, “the right of this row. I can make nothing from the jargon of these cattle, who evidently wish to shield their friend.”

I told him the story briefly, and described the man as well as I could.

“Carl Zimosky, by Heaven!” he exclaimed, bringing his fist down upon his side, and addressing himself to the women, one of whom nodded.

Then, turning to me, with an angry frown, he continued: “And you let him escape! You let Carl Zimosky go, when you might have kept him so easily! Carl Zimosky is one of the worst felons we have, and is slippery as an eel—a thief and a pickpocket. A sick wife and two starving children! He has no wife, nor children. He is not twenty-one. We have had him up twice.”

“Yes, he told me he had been in a dungeon and under the knout, and they made him worse,” I said, looking at him very calmly and coolly.

“And perhaps that is the reason you let him go. You thought him a nihilist, and I’ve been told you sympathize with them. Madame,” he continued, his voice growing louder and his manner so offensive that Chance got up, looked at him and growled, shook his sides, looked at me, and lay down again, nearer to me, with his head stretched forward, as if listening, while the gendarme went on: “Madame, these things may do in the United States, but not here in Russia! You may get into trouble, if you are a woman and an American!”

He fairly swelled with importance as he delivered this threatening speech, which did not move me, except to make me angry. I was not afraid. I knew that, at a word from me, Chance would have him by the throat, and of what might come after that I did not think or care.

“Sir!” I began, rising to my feet, in order to look over the heads of the women, who at the man’s angry words had gathered in front of me, like a fence, to keep me from harm. “Sir! do you think I am going to stay all the afternoon keeping guard over Carl Simpsy, or Simpson, or whatever his name is, waiting for you, or some other laggard, to come? Where were you, that you were not attending to your business? I have seen policemen in all parts of the city except here, where, it seems, they are needed——”

“And where you ought never to have come,” he interrupted, in a much lower tone than he had at first assumed. “It is no place for women, alone, and I don’t believe you’d got away with any money or jewelry you may have about you now, if it were not for that dog. Where, in Heaven’s name, did he come from? I thought Seguin was out of town. This Zimosky is suspected of robbing his house last night, and we are looking for him.”

“Robbed Michel Seguin’s house!” I exclaimed, a half wish throbbing through my brain that I had detained the man.

The gendarme must have guessed my thought, for he said, with a sneering smile: “Madame feels differently now that Seguin is concerned. I have heard you were very friendly with him.”

I was too angry to answer, and I felt that my face was as red as my hair. The women began at once to ask questions concerning the robbery, but the gendarme did not deign to answer them. They were cattle, as he had designated them, and, as just then there came a whistle which he understood, with a scowl at the women and children and a look I did not like at myself, he walked away in pursuit of some poor wretch—Carl, perhaps, I thought, as I sat down again upon the doorstep, faint and tired from my recent encounter.

Only the woman on whose doorstep and on whose apron I was sitting was willing to talk. She seemed superior to her neighbors, with a look upon her face as if nothing mattered to her now. In reply to my questions, she said that Paul Strigoff, the gendarme who had just left us, was one of the hardest and cruelest of the lot, and he was more a German than a Russian. Carl had been in prison, and nearly killed with the knout, but he had his good parts, and would share his last crust or kopecks with a friend.

“He is”—and she hesitated a moment; then began, in tolerably fair English; and, when I looked at her in surprise, she explained that she had once lived in England for a year, and learned the language. “I was not always what I am now,” she said. “It is a great fall from the Court Quay to this place, but I have made the descent, and was so bruised and stunned that life holds nothing for me now—nothing—and what goes on around me rather amuses me. I have been a suspect—arrested as such, and put in prison. Oh, the horror and shame of it, and I as innocent as you! My husband is in Siberia—sent there rightfully, I suppose, according to the laws of this land. I have no children, thank God, but”—and red spots began to come out on her thin face—“it is not known to many here—but Carl is my nephew. A good boy once as ever the sun shone on. But they arrested him for something he never heard of, and nearly killed him with the knout to make him confess what he knew nothing of. When satisfied that they could get nothing from him, they let him go, and he crept to me in the night, with his poor back all gashed and bleeding, and every particle of manhood crushed out of him. There is nothing like the knout administered wrongfully to take the pride from a man and make him a fiend. Carl is pretty bad now, and does not care. I am sorry he attacked you, and wonder that he did. He must have had too much vodka. You should not have come here, and the sooner you go, the better. Your friend is greatly upset.”

She looked at Mary, who was very white and very busy trying to keep herself from the children who were pressing round her, and who had been joined by other children from some quarter. Among them I recognized my hat, which I had discarded on the first day of my arrival. The same girl I had then seen with it on was wearing it, and had twisted a piece of faded blue tarleton around it in place of the ribbon and flower, which, I suppose, some other child was wearing. At sight of it, I laughed. The world seemed so small, with many wires converging to the same point, and just now to this neighborhood, where I knew I ought not to be. But I must ask the woman a question before I left, and, turning to her, I said: “Do you know Michel Seguin?”

“Only as a terror to the nihilists and thieves. I’ve never spoken to him,” she said. “I hear that, although he is quick to catch ’em, he is kind after they are caught. Very different from Paul Strigoff, who has come up from the scum of Moscow, and feels his importance as a gendarme, while Michel Seguin is a gentleman, and comes of a good family.”

“Do you know where he lives?” I asked her next, and she replied: “Yes; on the Nevsky. He has money, and his mother is a lady.”

“And did you ever know or hear of the Patoff family, who first owned the house? There was a Nicol Patoff, a young man. Did you ever hear of him?”

“Patoff?” she replied. “No, I don’t know them. They must have left before I came to St. Petersburg. The Seguins lived there then.”

“Thanks!” I said; “and now I really must go. Come, Mary.”

I stooped to help her up, and, before I got her to her feet and away from the woman, who was again offering her vodka, I was conscious that some new impulse had been given to the crowd, which had pressed disagreeably near to me as I bent over Mary. The children began to scatter, and in the distance I saw my hat, worn hindside before, and bobbing up and down on the frowsy head of the peasant girl. The women, too, began to move off toward their own homes, while Chance started up, and, with a joyous bark, ran swiftly up the street, where a tall gendarme was coming toward us with rapid strides and swinging a little cane, which I had heard could, on occasion, make itself felt.

“Michel Seguin!” I almost screamed, as I clutched Mary’s arm and drew her along with me. “Oh, I am so glad,” I said, stretching out my disengaged hand to Michel, who took it, while with his other hand he relieved me of Mary, who, at sight of him, began to recover her strength and courage.

And so, without a word of inquiry or explanation, we walked away from that quarter to the Nevsky, which had never seemed so bright and pleasant as it did when we at last sat down upon a bench, with Michel between us, still holding our hands, as if he had us in custody.

“Now, tell me,” he said, “how came you in that quarter, of all others? It is no place to walk. What took you there?”

“My miserable curiosity,” I said, with a sob in my voice. “I wanted to explore new places, and see all sorts and conditions of people.”

“I think you probably saw them,” he answered. “I reached home about noon. I saw you go by, but was too busy to speak to you. Knowing your fondness for long walks, I concluded you were taking one, but as time passed, and you did not return, I sent Chance to find you. But what happened to upset you so?”

It was Mary who began to tell the story. I could not. The thought of it made me faint again, and, without knowing it, I leaned rather heavily against Michel, while, in a voice half choked with nervous tears, Mary related our experience with the thief, and the part Chance had in it.

The dog seemed to know what she was saying, for he stamped his feet and shook his head, turned a somersault or two, and finally came and, putting his nose in his master’s lap, looked earnestly at him for commendation. “Good Chance,” was all the return he could get, for both the gendarme’s hands were in use, one holding me, the other holding Mary, while he listened with rapt attention, and, when she mentioned the name of the thief, he started and let go my hand.

“Carl Zimosky!” he repeated. “He is the most expert thief we have. I never knew him openly attack one in daylight before. Such things are not common. There are too many police around, besides the three in the butkis.”

“Great good they did us!” I exclaimed. “I don’t believe they were on guard, or else they were asleep, and your fine policeman, Paul Strigoff, took his time to get to us, and, when he came, he was exceedingly insolent because I had let the thief go.”

“Paul Strigoff!” and Michel laughed; “and so you fell in with him, too! You did have an adventure! Paul and Carl! I wish myself you could have kept the latter till we found whether he had my watch.”

“Your watch!” I repeated, remembering, suddenly, what I had heard of his house being robbed. “Was your house really entered? Strigoff said so.”

“Yes,” he answered. “When I reached home, I found the servants in a great commotion. My house had been entered by some one, a quantity of silver taken, and a gold watch, which I prized very highly, because—because——” he hesitated, then went on: “It is an American watch, made in Waltham, and, you know, they are valuable. It was Nicol’s. He brought it home with him, and it has ‘Ridgefield’ on it, and the date when he bought it.”

“How came you by it?” I asked, rather sharply, and he replied: “Just as I came by the house and the other articles. All fair, as I once told you. The Patoffs were not cheated.”

Here was a new complication, with Nicol in it. I remembered the watch perfectly. It was bought at a jeweler’s in Ridgefield, who kept only the best wares. Nicol had seemed rather proud of it and consulted it frequently if the day was hot, the lessons hard and his pupils stupid and anxious to be free.

“And you suspect Carl Zimosky?” I asked, in an unsteady voice.

“Yes, we always suspect him. He is what you Americans call a bad egg—into one scrape as soon as he is out of another.”

“And I let him go!” I said. “He begged so hard and looked so scared; but I’ll try and get the watch for you if he has it.”

“You!” and he laughed derisively. “Will you turn detective, and go into the dives after him? He eludes us every time.”

“No,” I answered, thinking of the tired-faced woman, his aunt, whom they called Ursula. I should work through her, but I did not say so, as I did not wish to bring her into the trouble if I could help it.

“I do not know for sure that he has the watch, but I am sure you cannot get it if he has,” the gendarme said.

“Let me try, and don’t go after him until I have given him up,” I said. “He has been in prison once and under the knout, and his back is all cut and scarred. It is horrible, and I hate the whole system, and am glad we are going away in a few days.”

“Going away so soon?” the gendarme asked, and in his voice there was genuine regret such as we feel when parting from a friend.

“Yes,” I answered, not quite in the tone I had at first assumed.

I could not understand the influence this man had over me, or the sense of restfulness I felt as I walked beside him on the Nevsky, till we reached his house, which, at his invitation, we entered, hearing from the porter and a head servant an account of the robbery, which was so adroitly done as to leave in their minds no doubt that the thief was Carl Zimosky.

“But we’ll get him, we’ll get him,” the porter said, with a shake of his gray head, “and the knout will soon make him give up the plunder, if he has it.”

I shuddered, but made no remark. I meant to get the watch, if Carl had it, though how I scarcely knew. It was growing late, and I was too tired to walk the remaining distance to the hotel. I would take a drosky, I said, and, with Mary, was soon being hurled along the street in an old vehicle and at a pace which threatened the dislocation of our limbs, if indeed we were not thrown into the street.

If anyone at the hotel had heard of the robbery at Michel Seguin’s house, nothing was said of it, and by mutual consent Mary and I kept our own counsel with regard to our adventure. We had had a long walk and been in a queer part of the city, we said, when questioned, and that was all. I was more tired and excited than I had ever been in my life, and I made my fatigue an excuse for retiring early to my room, where I lay awake far into the night, devising means for getting Michel’s watch, if possible, from the hands of Carl Zimosky, if he had it, or through him from the one who did have it.

CHAPTER VI.
THE WATCH.

I changed my mind with regard to leaving St. Petersburg in three days, and decided to stay a week longer. For this change I made no explanation except to Mary, whom I took into my confidence, telling her of my intended visit to Ursula and asking her to go with me. At first she shrank from the idea in alarm, but finally consented, and on the afternoon of the second day after our adventure, we started again for what Mary called the thieves’ quarters. To save time we took a drosky nearly to the end of the Nevsky, and walked the rest of the way. It was a warm afternoon and the street was swarming with children who, at sight of us, set up a clamor. “She’s come again—the madame who talks as we do,” and they began to gather around us; but I waved them off so imperatively that they did not even touch us with their hands as I went forward to where Ursula was again sitting in her door mending some garments which I knew intuitively belonged to her scapegrace nephew. She looked surprised when she saw us, but arose at once and asked us to come in instead of sitting upon the steps, as we had done before. Her room was neat and clean and homelike, although poorly furnished and showing signs of poverty.

“Please keep them out,” I said, motioning to the children, some of whom followed us in. “My business with you is private.”

An expression I did not quite like came upon her face as she sent the children away, and then, speaking in English, said: “What is it? Why have you come again?”

I told her very briefly that everything pointed to Carl as the thief who had entered Michel Seguin’s house, and why I was interested to get the watch, if possible. “Do you think Carl has it?” I asked.

Her needle came unthreaded just then, and after biting the end of her thread several times and making several jabs at the eye of her needle, she took up the poor old coat, patched in many places, and replied: “I don’t think—I never know what he has, nor what he does except as I hear it. I’ll not deny that the police have been here after him, but they didn’t get him. He’s cute,” and she smiled in a proud kind of way at the boy’s cuteness in eluding the vigilance of the gendarmes.

“Do you see him often?” I asked, and she replied: “Yes, and no; if he is hard pressed he stays where they can’t find him. Late at night he comes in to see me.”

“Can you communicate with him when you wish to?” I asked next, and she replied: “Yes, we have ways and means—a kind of underground railroad such as your people used to have when you had a slavery not half as crushing as ours.”

“You are a nihilist,” I said, and instantly her face flamed up, then grew pale, as she replied: “Of course I am. Half of us are nihilists at heart. Not that we want to kill the czar. That’s murder. We want a freer government, like yours, where we dare call our souls our own and are not watched at every turn.”

We were getting away from the object of my visit, and I came back to it by saying: “Will you see Carl and ask him to bring you the watch? I don’t care for the silver; it is the watch I want. I let him go when I might have kept him till the gendarme came. I think there is enough good in him to do me this favor.”

“He may do it for you. He was very grateful. Paul Strigoff is a devil,” she said; then she added, suddenly: “You and Michel Seguin are great friends.”

“Marry him! Marry a Russian! Never!”

I did not know whether we were or not, but it was safe to answer in the affirmative and that he had been very kind to us all since we first met him.

“He is of a good family and ought to be something better than a hunter of criminals. People wonder he took it up. Would you marry him?” was her next question.

“Marry him! Marry a Russian! Never!” I exclaimed, so loud that she started in her chair. Her spectacles fell off and her needle came unthreaded again.

“They are not so bad if you get the right one,” she said, adjusting her glasses and making more jabs at the eye of her needle.

I threaded it for her, and as there was nothing to gain by stopping longer, I took my leave, after bidding her let me know at once if she had good news for me.

“To-morrow,” was her reply, and I left her patching the old coat which made me faint to look at, it spoke so plainly of poverty and the scenes it must have been in, for I believed it was the one Carl had worn when I met him, and that the rent which Ursula was mending was made by Chance’s big paws.

Quite a retinue of children attended us for a ways, and among them my old hat was conspicuous again, worn this time right side before, with a piece of an old blue veil twisted round it and round the girl’s face. That night seemed interminable as I waited for the to-morrow and what it might bring from Ursula. It brought a note addressed in a fair hand, and containing only the words: “Come this afternoon at two o’clock, and alone.”

I did not quite like the word alone, but did not hesitate a moment. But how should I manage it? What excuse should I make to my friends who were already looking upon me as something of a crank? At last I decided to make no excuse except that I was going out on business and alone, with the exception of Chance, who was already waiting outside the hotel, as he had waited every morning since my adventure with Carl. Mary suspected where I was going, but said nothing, and at a little before two I was driving along the Nevsky till I reached a point where I alighted, telling the driver I would walk the rest of the way. Chance was in high spirits, sometimes running far ahead of me and then bounding back to my side. The moment I turned into the street, or square, where Ursula lived his whole attitude changed. His fur seemed rough and his head was lowered to the ground as he started on a racing gallop as if in pursuit of something. He was usually obedient to my call, and I succeeded in getting him back and kept my hand upon his neck until I reached Ursula’s house. There were not as many children in sight as usual. They had gone on a picnic and the street was very quiet. Ursula was watching for me, but her countenance fell when she saw Chance pulling to get free.

“I thought you would come alone,” she said. “I am afraid of that dog.”

“He is harmless if there is nothing to be harmed,” I replied, taking the chair she offered me and still holding Chance, who tugged to get away from me, and finally did so, beginning to run in circles around the room and to scratch at a door which, I think, opened into a bedchamber and in which I heard a rustling sound as of some one moving. “Carl is in there,” I said to Ursula, who replied, after listening a moment, while Chance continued banging at the door with his huge paws: “He was there. He is not now, thank God! He has a way of leaving the place unknown to anyone but ourselves. And he has taken it. He saw the dog coming with you and was afraid like myself. I sent for him last night and told him what you wanted. He had the watch and promised to bring it this afternoon and give it to you himself. He wanted to thank you personally for letting him go that day and to tell you he was not all bad and was going to do better. He brought the watch, but dare not face the dog.”

She arose and went into the bedroom, followed by Chance, who acted as if he would tear up the floor and ceiling, until I quieted him by the first blow I had ever given him, and which wrung from him a look of intense surprise as he crouched at my feet with his nose on the floor as if scenting something.

“Do you recognize it?” Ursula asked, putting the watch in my hands. “It has a name and date on the lid.”

I knew it was Nicol’s without the name, and the touch of it was like the touch of a vanished hand not dead in reality to my knowledge, but dead to me except so far as memory was concerned, and the sight of it brought Nicol as vividly to mind as when I was the pupil and he the teacher—young, handsome and strong in all that makes a man strong mentally and physically, and I could hear his voice calling me Lucy, as he did once or twice when we were alone, and his soft, brown eyes looked at me as no other eyes since had ever looked. Where was he now, and what the mystery surrounding him? And——

“I thought you would come alone. I am afraid of that dog.”

There came over me a flash of heat which made my blood boil, as I thought: “Could Chance find him from this clew?” Then as quickly I answered: “No. I will get the truth from Michel Seguin when I give him back his property.”

As I turned to go I offered Ursula money for Carl. But with a proud gesture she refused it. “He thought you might do it and said he should not take it. He was not as mean as that,” she said, giving me a box in which to put the watch which was ticking as loudly and evenly as it had done years ago in the schoolhouse in Ridgefield. I wanted to give the woman something to show my gratitude to her, and offered her the stick pin which held my scarf. But she declined it; then, with a wistful look at the knot of red, white and blue ribbon which I always wore, she asked if I had another like it. I had, and at once gave her the knot, which she took with thanks.

“It is the badge of a free country,” she said, “where I once thought to go. It is too late now for me, but if Carl could get there it might make a good man of him. Here he can do nothing but hide—hide—till he is caught again, and then Siberia, or a dungeon!”

I was sorry for the woman, whose dim old eyes were full of tears as she bade me good-by, saying: “You will not betray my boy by telling where he was when you got the watch?”

“Never!” I answered, and kissed the tired, white face which I might never see again.

I did not know what Mrs. Grundy would say when she saw a lone woman stop at Michel Seguin’s house, nor did I care. I was at a point where Mrs. Grundy’s opinion did not matter, and I bade the driver of the drosky leave me at Monsieur Seguin’s door, after ascertaining that he was at home. His face was one of intense surprise when he saw me, and mingling with the surprise was a look of pleasure as he came forward to meet me.

“What is it? What has happened?” he asked, for I was shaking with excitement.

“Let me go to your room—Nicol’s room, and I will tell you,” I said.

He led the way to his den, and opening the box, I put the watch upon the table without a word.

“What!” he exclaimed, springing forward and taking it up. “My watch! Where did you find it?”

“I didn’t find it,” I said. “I got it through Carl. No matter how, nor when. He brought it to me, but the silver I did not get.”

“I don’t care for the silver,” he said, a little impatiently. “It was the watch I prized, because——”

He stopped abruptly and seemed to be thinking, while I was nerving myself for what I meant to do.

“You would make a splendid detective,” he said at last. “How can I thank you?”

Here was my chance. “You can thank me first,” I replied, “by letting that boy alone for a while, and if he is arrested again, don’t be harsh or cruel with him. There is good there which the knout will never improve.”

“Promised!” he said. “I’ll look after the lad myself, for your sake.”

The tone of his voice said what his half-shut eyes could not express, and I felt the blood tingling in my veins as I went on hurriedly:

“You can also tell me the mystery surrounding Nicol and why he is in hiding where even you cannot find him. You are a man and I am a woman—no longer young, and so I do not mind telling you that I liked Nicol Patoff very much, and I should be so glad to see him, and—and——”

Here I began to choke; but I swallowed hard, put aside all shame, and went on: “You have a lock of hair which he left when he went away. You said it was black; I know better; it is red, bright red—the color mine was when a young girl. It is darker now. He asked me for it, and I gave it to him. I want it back. It is mine, not yours. Will you give it to me?”

His eyes were wider open now than I had ever seen them, and startled me with an expression I could not define, but which made me wish I was not there talking to him.

“As Nicol’s property I must keep it with the watch until such time as he can claim them openly,” he said at last. “I know he thought more of the hair than of the watch. I cannot give it up.”

His manner was decided, and I felt my temper rising, but forced it down; for there was one more favor I would ask, and then I would say good-by to him forever.

“You have refused to give me the hair, but you have promised to be kind to Carl for my sake. Will you be equally lenient toward Nicol, should he be arrested and under your authority? Do you think you could do anything to help him? They say you are all powerful with your friends. Will you try to have Nicol’s punishment a little lighter? I don’t know what he has done, but don’t let them give him the knout, nor the dungeon, nor Siberia, nor anything.”

I was choking now and standing up, with my hands clinched so tightly that my nails hurt my flesh, while he, too, stood with his eyes closed, his chin quivering, and his teeth pressed tightly over his under lip. When he spoke his voice was strained and unnatural, as he said: “Pardon me for what I am going to say. Do you love Nicol Patoff? Would you marry him if he stood high in St. Petersburg?”

He had asked me a similar question once before, and, as then, I now answered quickly: “No, I could not marry a Russian. I hate your government machinery. I should be a nihilist in a month, and my house would be a rendezvous for them.”