ock on the mantel-piece, a little travelling timepiece,
ticked in a hurried way as if anxious to get on. Down beneath them,
somewhere in the courtyards of the great castle, a dog--a deep-voiced
wolf-hound--was baying persistently and nervously, listening for the
echo of its own voice amid the pines of the desert forest.

Steinmetz watched Paul's motionless back with a sort of fascination. He
moved uneasily, as if to break a spell of silence almost unbearable in
its intensity. He went to the table and sat down. From mere habit he
took up a quill pen. He looked at the point of it and at the inkstand.
But he had nothing to write. There was nothing to say.

He laid the pen aside, and sat leaning his broad head upon the palm of
his hand, his two elbows on the table. Paul never moved. Steinmetz
waited. His own life had been no great success. He had had much to bear,
and he had borne it. He was wondering heavily whether any of it had been
as bad as what Paul was bearing now while he looked out of the window
with his hands in his pockets, saying nothing.

At length Paul moved. He turned, and, coming toward the table, laid his
hand on Steinmetz's broad shoulder.

"Are you sure of it?" he asked, in a voice that did not sound like his
own at all--a hollow voice like that of an old man.

"Quite; I have it from Stepan Lanovitch--from the princess herself."

They remained thus for a moment. Then Paul withdrew his hand and walked
slowly to the window.

"Tell me," he said, "how she did it."

Steinmetz was playing with the quill pen again. It is singular how at
great moments we perform trivial acts, think trivial thoughts. He dipped
the pen in the ink, and made a pattern on the blotting-pad with dots.

"It was an organized plan between husband and wife," he said.
"Bamborough turned up at Thors and asked for a night's lodging, on the
strength of a very small acquaintance. He stole the papers from Stepan's
study and took them to Tver, where his wife was waiting for them. She
took them on to Paris and sold them to Vassili. Bamborough began his
journey eastward, knowing presumably that he could not escape by the
western frontier, but lost his way on the steppe. You remember the man
whom we picked up between here and Tver, with his face all cut to
pieces?--he had been dragged by the stirrup. That was Sydney Bamborough.
The good God had hit back quickly."

"How long have you known this?" asked Paul, in a queer voice.

"I saw it su