Boolba?" asked Petroff eagerly

"I think he lives," said Kensky, and shook his head. "I am too weak and
too old a man to have killed him. I put the cord about his neck and
twisted it with a stick. If he can loosen the cord he will live; if he
cannot, he will die. But I think he was too strong a man to die."

"Did he know it was you?" asked Petroff.

Kensky shook his head.

"What is the hour?" he asked, and they told him that it was two o'clock.

"Sophia Kensky dies at four," he said, in such a tone of unconcern that
even Malinkoff stared at him.

"It is right that she should die," said Kensky, and they marvelled that
he, who had risked his life to save one of the class which had
persecuted his people for hundreds of years, should speak in so
matter-of-fact tones about the fate of his own blood. "She betrayed her
race and her father. It is the old law of Israel, and it is a good law.
I am going to sleep."

"Is there a chance that you have been followed?" asked Malinkoff, and
Kensky pulled at his beard thoughtfully.

"I passed a watchman at the barricade, and he was awake--that is the
only danger."

He beckoned to Malcolm, and, loth as the young man was to leave the
girl's side, now that she was showing some signs of recovering
consciousness, he accompanied the old man from the room.

"_Gospodar_," said Israel Kensky (it sounded strange to hear that old
title), "once you carried a book for me."

"I remember." Malcolm smiled in spite of himself.

"'The Book of All-Power,'" repeated the Jew quietly. "It is in my room,
and I shall ask you to repeat your service. That book I would give to
the Grand Duchess, for I have neither kith nor child, and she has been
kind to me."

"But surely, Kensky," protested Malcolm, "you, as an intelligent man, do
not believe in the potency of books or charms of incantations?"

"I believe in the 'Book of All-Power,'" said Kensky calmly. "Remember,
it is to become the property of the Grand Duchess Irene. I do not think
I have long to live," he added. "How my death will come I cannot tell,
but it is not far off. Will you go with me now and take the book?"

Malcolm hesitated. He wanted to get back to the girl, but it would have
been an ungracious act not to humour the old man, who had risked so much
for the woman he loved. He climbed the stairs to the little bedroom, and
waited at the door whilst Kensky went in. Presently the old man
returned; the book was now stitched in a canvas