s
best powers of argument and entreaty to effect a compromise. He would
send the lad to the University, have him educated abroad, establish him
in chambers--do anything, in fact, but that which the inexorable Pole
demanded of him. This he protested with a humility quite foreign to him
and an earnestness which revealed the depth of the indignity he
suffered; but Boriskoff remained inflexible.

"I am determined upon it," was the harsh retort; "the boy shall be as a
link between us. Keep him from this hell in which he has lived and I
will set so much to your credit. I warn you that you have a difficult
task. Do not fail in it as you value your own safety."

The manner of this reply left Gessner no alternative, and he sent Silas
Geary to Whitechapel as we have seen. A less clever man, perhaps, would
have fenced alike with the proposal and the threat; but he knew his own
countrymen too well for that. Perhaps a hope remained that any kindness
shown to this vagrant lad would win back ultimately his ancient
freedom. Alone in his room this night, a single light rebutting the
darkness, he understood into what an abyss of discovery he had fallen,
the price that must be paid, the debt that he owed to forgotten years.

"This man is a devil," he said, "he will rob me shilling by shilling
until I am a beggar. Good God! that it should have come to this after
twenty years; twenty years which have achieved so much; twenty years of
such slavery as few men have known. And I am helpless; and this beggar
is here to remind me of my enemies, to tell me that I walk in chains and
that their eyes are following me."

He threw himself upon his bed dressed as he was and tried to sleep. The
stillness of the house gave fruitful visions, magnifying all his fears
and bringing him to an unspeakable terror of the days which must come
after. He had many ambitions yet to achieve, great ideas which remained
ideas, masterly projects which must bring him both fame and riches, but
he would have abandoned them all this night if freedom had been offered
him. Years ago, he remembered, Boriskoff, the young miner, had earned
his hatred, he knew not why unless it were a truth that men best hate
those who have served them best. To-night found that old hatred
increased a thousand fold and shaping itself in schemes which he would
not even whisper aloud. He had always been looked upon as a man of good
courage and that courage prompted him to a hundred mad notions--to