their retiring forms with suppressed curses and
jeering laughter.

The conduct of Glittstein during this
domiciliary visit had been very satisfactory. He was
present when the commissary announced his
errand, and when Emile's escape was
proclaimed; and the look of surprise with which
he received the news was evidently genuine.
When the police were searching the house,
his broad face wore an expression of concern
and disgust; he did not scowl or mutter maledictions,
as the Poles did, but held himself aloof;
and I thought I could read in his intelligent
countenance not only sympathy for the distress
of the family, but an honest man's natural
repugnance to tyranny.

"What would they say to this in England,
Herr Burton?" he asked, in a cautious tone, as
I passed him.

"What indeed, Glittstein!"

The troubles of the Oginski family were by no
means at an end. Two days after the
withdrawal of the baffled gendarmes, there arrived
an imperative mandate, sent by telegraph to the
governor of the province, and transmitted as
rapidly as man and horse could bear it to the
castle. Count Emmanuel was required
immediately to present himself before the authorities
at St. Petersburg, there to remain until he had
satisfied the Czar of his innocence of any
complicity in his son's desertion.

A painful dilemma now arose. Disobedience
was not to be dreamed of, and the count at once
prepared to depart, but would have preferred to
be accompanied on his dismal northern journey
by his wife and his medical attendant. Under
ordinary circumstances, the countess would have
gone with her invalid husband without hesitation,
but now—when her son lay, worn out
and wounded, perhaps dying, on a mean bed
in a neglected outhouse, it was impossible.
It was equally out of the question that I,
whose professional care was necessary to the
sufferer's recovery, should absent myself from
Miklitz.

The count went alone. How it was managed
in detail I do not bear in mind, but the countess
feigned severe indisposition, and this afforded a
plea for retaining the English doctor at Miklitz.
The count was, as I have said before, the most
trustful of men. He would not hear of my
leaving the countess, and was considerate enough
to leave Glittstein, his right hand man, whom
he accounted a treasure of sense and fidelity,
to help us, taking with him only his Polish
valet.

The object of so much hostility, tenderness,
and pity, lay passive and prostrate, in a condition
between life and death. We could only visit
him by stealth, and it was with much difficulty
that we could convey to his comfortless lair
the supplies of which he stood in need. He
was very, very ill. The gunshot wound in his
arm gave me a good deal of anxiety, for the
bone was badly shattered and exfoliated, and
the wonder was that gangrene had not
already ensued. But my chief fear was that
the terrible exertions of that long journey
through forests and over bleak steppes, with
its attendant hunger and hardships, would
prove too much for even a sound and youthful
constitution.

It was long before the patient could find
strength for anything like a continuous narrative
of his escape and the causes of his desertion.
It was a tale not merely of privation and toil,
and barbarous warfare on a rugged frontier, but
of studied insults, unjust punishments, and a
deliberate purpose to break the spirit and
crush the heart of every one of these
unfortunate exiles. He had fought and marched,
had endured the hardest details of a hard life,
with an unflinching and uncomplaining courage
that was due to his Polish pride, but he had
been at last compelled to become "dushtek," or
servant, to a Russian major.

"He was a cruel coward, the most hated of
all our tyrants," said the young man, feebly;
"he taunted me, he spoke to me as if I were
his dog; he mocked my country and my creed;
he made my tasks, and the bread I ate, as bitter
and as odious as a petty despot could. One day
he struck me across the face with his cane.
Next moment he lay at my feet, calling for help,
and I fled."

How he had formed the bold resolve to regain
his home in West Poland, penniless and on foot;
how he had journeyed, hiding in the woods by
day, and travelling by night; how the peasants
had sometimes given him food and shelter, and
at other times had turned out to hunt him down
in hopes of reward; all this he told in simple and
modest words. Also, how he had changed clothes
with a Malorossian serf, who had given him an
old caftan and cap in exchange for his uniform
coat; and how, soon afterwards, the tidings
of his escape having preceded him, he had
been pursued by a troop of Cossacks, and
had received his wound from one of their
musket-balls, while in the act of scrambling
up the steep bank of a river which he had
swum, and which had baffled the horsemen.
Finally, how, famished, cramped in every joint
and sinew, he had dragged himself with
bleeding and crippled feet to the door of his
father's house, at which he had not dared to knock,
and was watching the windows when his mother
saw him.

A gallant lad he was, slender and graceful of
figure, rather active than strong, and with a
handsome face enough, when once it began to
lose the gaunt famine-stricken look which it
wore at first. When the crisis of his illness
was past, and his recovery became only a
question of time, we contrived to remove him
to a lodge in the forest, a mile or more from
the castle, which was tenanted by a woodsman,
whose wife had been his nurse. These good
people were wholly trustworthy, and would have
borne torture or death, I believe, sooner than
betray their young lord. They cared for him
with the utmost affection; and Michael, the
woodsman, actually relinquished his Sunday visit
to the brandy-shop which a Jew kept in the