If you talk like this in the
kabak no wonder you have a bad throat. There, I can do no more for you.
You must wash more and drink less. You might try a little work perhaps;
it stimulates the appetite. And with a throat like that I should not
talk so much if I were you. Next!"

The next comer was afflicted with a wound that would not heal--a common
trouble in cold countries.

While attending to this sickening sore Paul continued his conversation
with the last patient.

"You must tell me," he said, "when these changes are about to come. I
should like to be there to see. It will be interesting."

The man laughed mysteriously.

"So the government is to be by a Mir, is it?" went on Paul.

"Yes; the poor man is to have a say in it."

"That will be interesting. But at the Mir every one talks at once and no
one listens; is it not so?"

The man made no reply.

"Is the change coming soon?" asked Paul coolly.

But there was no reply. Some one had seized the loquacious orator of the
kabak, and he was at that moment being quietly hustled out of the room.

After this there was a sullen silence, which Paul could not charm away,
charm he never so wisely.

When his patients had at last ebbed away he lighted a cigarette and
walked thoughtfully back to the castle. There was danger in the air, and
this was one of those men upon whom danger acts as a pleasant stimulant.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE NET IS DRAWN

During the days following Paul's visit to the village the ladies did not
see much male society. Paul and Steinmetz usually left the castle
immediately after breakfast and did not return till nightfall.

"Is there any thing wrong?" Maggie asked Steinmetz on the evening of the
second day.

Steinmetz had just come into the vast drawing-room dressed for
dinner--stout, placid, and very clean-looking. They were alone in the
room.

"Nothing, my dear young lady--yet," he answered, coming forward and
rubbing his broad palms slowly together.

Maggie was reading an English newspaper. She turned its pages without
pausing to notice the black and sticky obliterations effected by the
postal authorities before delivery. It was no new thing to her now to
come upon the press censor's handiwork in the columns of such
periodicals and newspapers as Paul received from England.

"Because," she said, "if there is you need not be afraid of telling me."

"To have that fear would be to offer you an insult," replied Steinmetz.
"Paul