there was no heir to the throne. With him ended the line of
Rurik, which alone the Russians recognized as legitimately entitled to
rule the empire; and now a new czar must be chosen. The nobles
quarrelled, of course. They agreed in thinking that one of their order
should be elevated to the throne; but they could by no means agree which
one it should be. Each resented the pretensions of all the others, and
it speedily became manifest that the patriarch's nomination, upon
whomsoever it might fall, would turn the scale and elect a czar. The
patriarch was Boris's own creature, appointed for the sole purpose of
forwarding that minister's plans; and he promptly nominated Boris to the
vacant throne. The election was a prearranged affair; and presently
Boris was waited upon--in the convent to which he had retired with the
declared purpose of leading a monastic life in future--and informed of
his selection by the people as Czar of all the Russias. He modestly
declined, of course; and, equally of course, his modesty only made the
people the more clamorous. After some weeks of petty dalliance Boris
finally allowed himself to be persuaded, and was crowned czar, in due
form, in the year 1598.

He was not long in discovering that his position was insecure, and
incapable of being made safe. Whatever policy he might adopt--and he was
disposed, it appears, to govern wisely and well--was sure to displease
some of his subjects; and in the hands of a hostile faction, his want of
hereditary claim upon the throne was a powerful weapon. What he had
seized by crime he must keep by tyranny and violence, and a three years'
famine added greatly to his embarrassments. Whatever he did excited
discontent; and to make his wretchedness complete, he fancied himself
haunted by the ghost of the murdered Dmitri. There were symptoms of
mutiny everywhere, which daily threatened to culminate in open revolt.
It needed only a match to fire the mine.

In 1603, when matters were at their worst, there appeared in Poland a
young man who claimed to be the murdered Dmitri. His story was that, by
means of an adroit substitution, another boy had been killed in his
place; that he had escaped; and he claimed the throne of the Ruriks. He
strongly resembled the prince he claimed to be, and his identity seemed
to be established, also, by other evidence than mere personal
resemblance. There was no "strawberry mark on his left arm," but both he
and the dead prince, if, inde