The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Black Cross, by Olive M. Briggs

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Black Cross

Author: Olive M. Briggs

Release Date: April 30, 2007 [EBook #21259]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BLACK CROSS ***

Produced by Al Haines

[Frontispiece: "Ah, mein Gott!" he cried, "It is Kaya!"]

THE BLACK CROSS

BY

OLIVE M. BRIGGS

_Frontispiece by_

SIGISMOND DE IVANOWSKI

NEW YORK

MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY

1909

Copyright, 1909, by

MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY

NEW YORK

Published, February, 1909

to

YAPHAH

THE BLACK CROSS

PART I

CHAPTER I

It was night in St. Petersburg. The moon was high in the heavens, and
the domes, crowned with a fresh diadem of snow, glittered with a
dazzling whiteness. In the side streets the shadows were heavy, the
facades of the great palaces casting strange and dark reflections upon
the pavement; but the main thoroughfares were streaked as with silver,
while along the quay all was bright and luminous as at noontide, the
Neva asleep like a frozen Princess under a breast-plate of shimmering
ice.

The wind was cold, the air frosty and gay with tinkling sleigh-bells.
A constant stream of people in sledges and on foot filled the Morskaia,
hurrying in the one direction. The great Square of the Mariinski was
alive with a moving, jostling throng, surging backwards and forwards
before the steps of the Theatre like waves on a rock; a gay,
well-dressed, chattering multitude, eager to present their tickets, or
buy them as the case might be, and enter the gaping doors into the
brilliantly lighted foyer beyond.

It was ballet night, but for the first time in the memory of the
Theatre no ballet was to be given. Instead of the "Premiere Danseuse,"
the idol of Russian society, a new star had appeared, suddenly,
miraculously almost, dropped from a Polish Province, and had played
himself into the innermost heart of St. Petersburg.

The four strings of his Stradivarius, so fragile, so delicate and slim,
were as four chains to bind the people to him; four living wires over
which the sou