his superiors in St. Petersburg.

"If it was ever known, it was hushed up for fear of the trouble that
it would have brought to his masters; but two years later he visited
Paris, and was found one morning in bed with a dagger in his black
heart, and across his face the mark that told that he had died by
order of the Nihilist Executive.

"When I read those awful tidings from the grave, sorrow became
quenchless rage, and despair was swallowed up in revenge. I joined
the Brotherhood, and thenceforth placed a great portion of my wealth
at their disposal. I rose in their councils till I commanded their
whole organisation. No brain was so subtle as mine in planning
schemes of revenge upon the oppressor, or of relief for the victims
of his tyranny.

"In a word, I became the brain of the Brotherhood which men used to
call Nihilists, and then I organised another Society behind and above
this which the world has known as the Terror, and which the great
ones of the earth have for years dreaded as the most potent force
that ever was arrayed against the enemies of humanity. Of this force
I have been the controlling brain and the directing will. It was my
creature, and it has obeyed me blindly; but ever since that fatal day
in the mine at Kara I have been physically helpless, and therefore
obliged to trust to others the execution of the plans that I
conceived.

"It was for this reason that I had need of you, Alan Tremayne, and
this is why I chose you after I had watched you for years unseen as
you grew from youth to manhood, the embodiment of all that has made
the Anglo-Saxon the dominant factor in the development of present-day
humanity.

"I have employed a power which, as I firmly believe, was given to me
when eternal justice made me the instrument of its vengeance upon a
generation that had forgotten alike its God and its brother, to bend
your will unconsciously to mine, and to compel you to do my bidding.
How far I was justified in that let the result show.

"It was once my intention to have bound you still closer to the
Brotherhood by giving Natasha to you in marriage while you were yet
under the spell of my will; but the Master of Destiny willed it
otherwise, and I was saved from doing a great wrong, for the
intention to do which I have done my best to atone."

He paused for a moment and looked across the fireplace at Arnold and
Natasha, who were sitting together on a big, low lounge that had been
drawn up to the fir