attract his attention. As for the girl at my side, she watched me in some astonishment. Presently, seeing what I was after, she asked me if it were not the young soldier on the white horse in whom I was interested.

"Mademoiselle," said I, "it is Léon, my nephew. If I can make myself known to him, I will warrant that he will be inside this house before you can count ten. A fine soldier, mademoiselle; I am very proud of him."

She nodded her head and looked at the boy with a new interest. There was such a great bivouac fire at the corner of the square that you could see him almost as if he were upon the stage of a theatre, and surely a handsomer man did not ride with the Grand Army. Well I knew what this pretty woman would think of him, and I watched her with an old man's interest.

"He does not see you," she remarked presently.

It was all too true.

"But he will not abandon me," I retorted; and, turning at the same moment, I struck with the butt of my pistol at a second face which showed itself at the window. The fellow withdrew with a curse that plainly meant mischief. I could hear other voices in the room, and by and by a stranger sound, and the smell of fire upon it.

"Good God!" I said, "they are burning the chapel!"

At that she uttered a low cry, the first of fear that I had heard escape her lips.

I opened the window and looked down into the chapel. There were but two men there, and one was firing the curtains of the altar. So little did he fear interruption that I leaped down on him while his torch was still upraised, and, running him through with my sword, I pulled the burning curtain upon him and stamped the fire out upon his body. The other assassin watched me with eyes grown wide with fear. He had a torch in his hand, but he stood there as though spellbound, and when I made at him he fell headlong upon the staircase, and man and fire went rolling over and over together.

This did not alarm me, for the stairs were all stone, and there was nothing that could be kindled. Following the fellow through the bedroom, I came again upon the great staircase, and there looked down upon as strange a spectacle as I shall ever see in all my years. It was as though all the rabble of Moscow had come together in that magnificent hall—giant Tartars, low-caste assassins from the Indies, black-browed Slavs, patriarchs with long beards and youths with none—all were filling their sacks with the spoils of the prince's house and carrying them, when full, to the garden beyond. Animals in a den never fought more fiercely than some of these rogues when their lusts had clashed. Nor might a man have found a fiercer company in all the foul havens of the East.

For myself, I watched them aghast, knowing that it were death to be discovered where I stood. So eager, however, were they that none saw me, and the pillage and the riot were still at their height when one amongst them cried "Fire!" and in an instant every man sprang to attention, and the roar of a great conflagration burst upon their astonished ears.

VII

The palace had been fired; there could be no doubt about it.

Volumes of smoke poured into the hall and went floating to the ceiling in dense and looming clouds. The marble reflected a ruddy light as of flames vomited from a fiery pit. There was a crackling of wood, a rending of glass, and upon that the oaths and curses of the assassins below. Now truly were they hoist of their own petard. The palace had been fired while their plunder was yet unpacked, and they roared and barked around it like wolves robbed of their prey.

I say that we were all taken unawares, and that is true enough. For myself, I stood there listening to the roar of the flames, and watching the mad, frenzied struggles of the scum below, and with no more idea of how to get out of the place than the veriest child might have had. None but a madman would have attempted to fight his way through the raving mob of brigands who grovelled about the doors in seeming impotence, as though their shaking hands could not unlock the bars which imprisoned them. Yet passed they must be if I and the child with me were not to perish in the flames.

So much could not be hidden from either of us. We beheld them wrangling still upon their plunder while the flames were all about them, and those who did run from the hall returned immediately to warn their friends in a tongue which had no meaning for me. From this time they became as demons possessed. It was a terrible thing to see them running round and round like dogs driven by a whip, to hear the clash of their knives, and the shrieks of those who fell. Nor could I wonder that my little companion's courage deserted her at last and that a loud cry of fear escaped her.

"Oh, come," she cried, "come from this dreadful place." And, so saying, she caught me almost savagely by the arm and led me from the gallery. Whither she would take me, I knew not at all. Her eyes were alight with the fear which animated her. She stretched out her arms as though to feel her way in the gathering smoke which threatened us. I could see already that she had little hope of the venture.

We crossed a corridor and entered a lofty room which I took to be the library of the palace. Farther on there was an antechamber, whose door was locked and barred as the others had been in the room below. Upon this she beat furiously as though someone beyond could hear us and would open. Solid as a gate of iron, twenty men could not have forced it. I saw already that our errand was vain, and I was about to lead her away when what should happen but that the door was opened from within, and a Russian soldier stood before me. "Nicholas!" cried mademoiselle; and instantly the child was in the arms of a Russian, who kissed her as a lover might have done.

Now, this man was an officer who wore the white uniform and the black cuirass of Prince Boris's famous regiment. I took him for the prince's son, and there I was not wrong, as I learned at a subsequent date.

And it needed no clever eye to tell me how things stood between the girl and himself, and there was a smile on my lips while I watched them and then looked over his shoulder into the room beyond, full of his fellows and ablaze with the glitter of uniforms.

The presence of these men needed little explanation. I perceived that there had been a secret conclave in the palace, and I understood in an instant what my own presence must mean. It was no coward's alarm. There were half a dozen of them atop of me before I could lift a hand to save myself. In vain the girl pleaded with them. They discovered immediately that the palace was on fire, and, mad with rage and fury, they fell upon me like wild beasts. The French had done this thing, they cried; then let the Frenchmen pay the price. I knew now that they meant to kill me. Their very gestures would have told me as much. "A spy!" they shouted—to Janil de Constant!

Well, there it was, and that is the simple truth of the story.

I remember that they pushed me headlong from the room, then down a steep flight of stairs, and so to a garden at the foot of it. There one of them cried for a sergeant to come to him. After that my memory is chiefly of the glitter of bayonets and of a man who called to his fellow to bind my hands with cord. It came to me as in a dream that they were about to shoot me, and that this was the hour of my death. I recollect that I was thrust up against a rough stone wall, and that the sergeant asked me a question in Russian of which I could make nothing.

From the room there now came the loud shouts of the officers, who had discovered that the palace was on fire, and were leading some of the troopers to attack the flames. Their voices and that of the sergeant mingled oddly in my ears; but presently I began to perceive that the man wished to bandage my eyes, and as this promised an instant of grace, I assented willingly. To say that I was afraid is to give but a child's idea of the