d
order them, in Peter's name, to return to Moscow. If the princess were
to go on, she would not be received at the monastery, the messenger
said, but would find the gates closed against her.

So Sophia and her train turned, and despairingly retraced their steps
to Moscow.

The next day an officer, at the head of a body of the Guards three
hundred in number, was dispatched from the monastery to demand of the
Princess Sophia, at her palace, that she should give up Thekelavitaw,
in order that he might be brought to trial on a charge of treason.
Sophia was extremely unwilling to comply with this demand. She may
naturally be supposed to have desired to save her instrument and agent
from suffering the penalties of the crime which she herself had planned
and had instigated him to attempt; but the chief source of her extreme
reluctance to surrender the prisoner was her fear of the revelations
which he would be likely to make implicating her. After hesitating for
a time, being in a state during the interval of great mental distress
and anguish, she concluded that she must obey, and so Thekelavitaw was
brought out from his retreat and surrendered. The soldiers immediately
took him and some other persons who were surrendered with him, and,
securing them safely with irons, they conveyed them rapidly to the
monastery.

Thekelavitaw was brought to trial in the great hall of the monastery,
where a court, consisting of the leading nobles, was organized to hear
his cause. He was questioned closely by his judges for a long time,
but his answers were evasive and unsatisfactory, and at length it was
determined to put him to torture, in order to compel him to confess his
crime, and to reveal the names of his confederates. This was a very
unjust and cruel mode of procedure, but it was in accordance with the
rude ideas which prevailed in those times.

The torture which was applied to Thekelavitaw was scourging with a
knout. The knout was a large and strong whip, the lash of which
consists of a tough, thick thong of leather, prepared in a particular
way, so as greatly to increase the intensity of the agony caused by the
blows inflicted with it. Thekelavitaw endured a few strokes from this
dreadful instrument, and then declared that he was ready to confess
all; so they took him back to prison and there heard what he had to
say. He made a full statement in respect to the plot. He said that
the design was to kill Peter himself, hi