ricade. There they stopped, gazing stupidly at Paul.

"The Moscow Doctor--the Moscow Doctor!" passed from lip to lip. It was
the women who shouted it the loudest. Like the wind through a forest it
swept out of the room and down the stairs. Those crowding up pushed on
and uttered the words as they came. The room was packed with them.

"Yes!" shouted Steinmetz, at the top of his great voice, "and the
prince!"

He knew the note to strike, and struck with a sure hand. The barricade
was torn aside, and the people swept forward, falling on their knees,
grovelling at Paul's feet, kissing the hem of his garment, seizing his
strong hands in theirs.

It was a mighty harvest. That which is sown in the people's hearts bears
a thousandfold at last.

"Get them out of the place--open the big doors," said Paul to Steinmetz.
He stood cold and grave among them.

Some of them were already sneaking toward the door--the ringleaders, the
talkers from the towns--mindful of their own necks in this change of
feeling.

Steinmetz hustled them out, bidding them take their dead with them. Some
of the servants reappeared, peeping, white-faced, behind curtains. When
the last villager had crossed the threshold, these ran forward to close
and bar the great doors.

"No," said Paul, from the head of the stairs, "leave them open."

So the great doors stood defiantly open. The lights of the state
staircase flared out over the village as the peasants crept crest-fallen
to their cottages. They glanced up shamefacedly, but they had no word to
say.

Steinmetz, in the drawing-room, looked at Paul with his resigned
semi-humorous shrug of the shoulders.

"Touch-and-go, mein lieber!" he said.

"Yes; an end of Russia for us," answered the prince.

He moved toward the door leading through to the old castle.

"I am going to look for Etta," he said.

"And I," said Steinmetz, going to the other entrance, "am going to see
who opened the side door."

CHAPTER XLIII

BEHIND THE VEIL

"Will you come with me?" said Paul to Maggie. "I will send the servants
to put this room to rights."

Maggie followed him out of the room, and together they went through the
passages, calling Etta and looking for her. There was an air of gloom
and chilliness in the rooms of the old castle. The outline of the great
stones, dimly discernible through the wall-paper, was singularly
suggestive of a fortress thinly disguised.

"I suppose," said Paul, "that Etta los