href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@26090@[email protected]#Page_35tn" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">"It is a foolish business altogether, but if you will enact my part for a few minutes you will get me out of an awkward scrape."

"Don't mention it," Godfrey replied. "It will be a joke to laugh over afterwards." He placed the broad hat, to which the black silk mask was sewn, on his head, and Katia put the cloak on his shoulders.

"I trust you," she said in a low voice as she walked with him to the top of the stairs. "There, I must go now. I had better see Captain Presnovich safely off, and then go and tell the young lady, who is a great friend of mine—it is for her sake I am doing it, you know, not for his—how nicely we have managed to throw dust in the colonel's eyes!"

Regarding the matter as a capital joke, Godfrey went down-stairs and made his way to the entrance, expecting every moment to be accosted by the irascible colonel. No one spoke to him, however, and he began to imagine that the colonel must have gone to seek the captain elsewhere, and hoped that he would not meet him as he went down the stairs with Katia. He walked down the steps into the street. As he stepped on to the pavement a man seized him from behind, two others grasped his wrists, and before he knew what had happened he was run forward across the pavement to a covered sledge standing there and flung into it. His three assailants leapt in after him; the door was slammed; another man jumped on to the box with the driver; and two mounted men took their places beside it as it dashed off from the door. The men had again seized Godfrey's hands and held them firmly the instant they entered the carriage.

"It is of no use your attempting to struggle," one of the men said, "there is an escort riding beside the sledge, and a dozen more behind it. There is no chance of a rescue, and I warn you you had best not open your lips; if you do, we will gag you."

Godfrey was still half bewildered with the suddenness of the transaction. What had he been seized for? Who were the men who had got hold of him? and why were they gripping his wrists so tightly? He had heard of arbitrary treatment in the Russian army, but that a colonel should have a captain seized in this extraordinary way merely because he was absent from his post without leave was beyond anything he thought possible.

"I thought I was going to have the laugh all on my side," he said to himself, "but so far it is all the other way." In ten minutes the carriage stopped for a moment, there was a challenge, then some gates were opened. Godfrey had already guessed his destination, and his feeling of discomfort had increased every foot he went. There was no doubt he was being taken to the fortress. "It seems to me that Miss Katia has got me into a horrible scrape of some kind," he said to himself. "What a fool I was to let myself be humbugged by the girl in that way!"

Two men with lanterns were at the door of a building, at which the carriage, after passing into a large court-yard, drew up. Still retaining their grip on his wrists, two of the men walked beside him down a passage, while several others followed behind. An officer of high rank was sitting at the head of a table, one of inferior rank stood beside him, while at the end of the table were two others with papers and pens before them.

"So you have captured him!" the general said eagerly.

"Yes, your excellency," the man who had spoken to Godfrey in the carriage said respectfully.

"Has he been searched?"

"No, your excellency, the distance was so short, and I feared that he might wrench one of his hands loose. Moreover, I thought that you might prefer his being searched in your presence."

"It is better so. Take off that disguise." As the hat and mask were removed the officer sprang to his feet and exclaimed, "Why, who is this? This is not the man you were ordered to arrest; you have made some confounded blunder."

"I assure you, your excellency," the official said in trembling accents, "this is the only man who was there in the disguise we were told of. There, your excellency, is the bunch of white and red ribbons on his cloak."

"And who are you, sir?" the general thundered.

"My name, sir, is Godfrey Bullen. I reside with Ivan Petrovytch, a merchant living in the Vassili Ostrov."

"But how come you mixed up in this business, sir?" the general exclaimed furiously. "How is it that you are thus disguised, and that you are wearing that bunch of ribbon? Beware how you answer me, sir, for this is a matter which concerns your life."

"So far as I am concerned, sir," Godfrey said, "I am absolutely ignorant of having done any harm in the matter, and have not the most remote idea why I have been arrested. I may have behaved foolishly in allowing myself to take part in what I thought was a masquerade joke, but beyond that I have nothing to blame myself for. I went to the Opera-house, never having seen a masked ball before. I was alone, and being young and evidently a stranger, I was spoken to and joked by several masked ladies. Presently one of them came up to me. I had no idea who she was; she was closely masked, and I could see nothing of her face." He then repeated the request that had been made him.

"Do you expect me to believe this ridiculous nonsense about this Captain Presnovich and his colonel?"

"I can only say, sir, what I am telling you is precisely what happened, and that I absolutely believed it. It seemed to me a natural thing that a young officer might come to a ball to see a lady who perhaps he had no other opportunity of meeting alone. I see now that I was very foolish to allow myself to be mixed up in the affair; but I thought that it was a harmless joke, and so I did as this woman asked me."

"Go on, sir," the general said in a tone of suppressed rage.