assurance that only by giving up my accomplices
could I obtain mercy.

"But the money, the money?" I cried,
struggling as I was dragged away.

"The money with which the Revolutionary
Committee have supplied you to sow sedition in
the Czar's dominions, is confiscated to the Czar's
use," said the governor, testily; and I was
hurried away.

They thrust me into the common jail, giving
me, however, a cell to myself. This cell was
about the size of the sleeping cabins on board a
steam-packet; it was dimly lighted; and its
iron-studded door and stoutly-barred window
looked as if they might have baffled Jack Sheppard.
I was searched, and my money, pocket-book,
and watch, my rings, my pencil and penknife,
were solemnly taken away. I asked for writing
materials, but my captors shook their heads.

When they were gone, I sat down upon the
mean pallet bed, the legs of which were screwed
to the floor, buried my head in my hands, and
fairly sobbed. Pride and the sense of innocence
had hitherto sustained me, but now my strength
gave way, and I felt a dreadful sense of depression
and isolation in that strange half-barbarous
land, and wept as bitterly as a lonely child lost
in the darkness. Was it not all a dream?

Time seemed in no hurry. Three times a day
my jailer, an invalided soldier, drilled to the
bloodless regularity of an automaton, visited
me. He brought me bad coffee and dark bread,
indifferent cabbage-soup and sour quass, and
then good tea and dark bread, at early morning,
noon, and sunset. He swept my cell,
refilled my pitcher, arranged my wretched bed,
and marched off in aggravating silence. Indeed,
he spoke no tongue but Russian; that he could
not help; but he never deigned to reply by sign
or smile to all my beseeching looks and expressive
pantomime, and I could hardly help giving
way, sometimes, to an insane impulse to fly at his
throat. There came, also, at irregular intervals,
a superior official in uniform, who narrowly
examined the cell, and tested every bar and bolt
with a small hammer, and rapped on the walls
and floor to detect any excavation on which I
might have been busy. But I had none of the
talents of Baron Trenck or Latude, and made
no effort at breaking bounds, so he might have
spared his pains. He, too, refused to converse.
When my gestures grew exceedingly animated,
he made shift to tell me in French that "if
contumacious, I should be chained."

In vain I demanded a trial, a public hearing.
The governor, with two inferior judges in black
caps, a greffier and an interpreter, did twice
visit my cell; but, as I could only tell the truth,
while they were seeking political revelations,
they merely set me down for the most obstinate
and brazen of culprits, and I was warned that
my recusancy would bring down on my head
the full weight of the emperor's displeasure.

I kept a reckoning of the days. More than
a week had elapsed since my arrest—it might
have been a year by the tedium of it but it
was now the twenty-fifth, and if Druce, Gray,
and Druce were unable to meet their engagements
on the twenty-eighth, speedy bankruptcy
must follow, and the fair credit and great business
of the merchant princes would collapse like
a soap-bubble. I went nearly mad as I paced the
monotonous round of my cell, watching the dawning day,
and thinking of the mischief about to
ensue. But the authorities were deaf to my
remonstrances, and I could not even elicit from
them when or where, if ever, I was to be tried for
my imaginary offences. I was hopelessly a
prisoner. I might die in jail, I might go mad, or, who
knows, I might actually be sent to Siberia, and
perhaps grow grey in the Ural mines, I—Thomas
Chatterton Bainbridge—in expiation of the sins
of a man whose very name I could not pronounce.

I had been listening to the rattle of every
key, to the sound of every step. Mercy! Was
I awake? Was it the voice of the official
interpreter whom I heard, amidst a great bustle,
apologising to somebody in bad French for the
facheuse circonstance of the English gentleman's
ten days' detention? Magistrate, greffier, turnkey,
guard, soon entered my cell; and who was
that tall, frank-looking young Englishman, who
came forward to shake my hand as if he would
have wrung it off?

"Mr. Bainbridge, allow me to introduce
myself—George Druce, nephew of Druce and
partners. My dear sir, how sorry we all are
that you should have suffered so much on your
kind errand to serve us! How lucky we learned
your whereabout! I was sent off at once, after
the governor, my uncle, had made it all right
with the Russian authorities. Shamefully you
were treated, to be sure, but that fellow has the
cuuning of Old Nick himself."

"What fellow?" I asked.

"That Pole, that Zlisynezka, the Mazzini of
the North. He wrote a letter to our house
which confessed, in a jocular manner, the trick
he had played you. He stole your passport in
the night, at the inn, substituting his own; and,
as Mr. Bainbridge, he easily managed to elude
suspicion, and plunge deep into the interior, on
one of his dangerous missions. The disguise
has now served his turn, for the man has as
many characters as Proteus, but he never meant
your imprisonment to be perpetual."

"How?" cried I, as a light broke in upon me.
"Do you mean that my companion at the hotel,
Van Marum, the Dutch engineer, was Zlis——
what do you call him?"

"The same," answered Druce, smiling.

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