her price even than the gardens of Semiramis;
and that, too, for a poor peasant girl who alone in that Babel of hate
had retained in her heart the priceless feeling of Love.

When the garden was finished and planted with all the flowers the
island could afford, the Master led Mashinka to the door, which had
hitherto been closed to her, opened it, and said simply:

"The garden is yours!"

[Illustration: "The garden is yours!"]

And as the girl, weeping with joy, threw herself at his feet, pressed
his hand to her lips and covered it with her tears--did not the
captive spirit throb rebelliously within its weak bodily prison, and
ask: "Is not a single tear like these--a single cry of joy--sweeter
far than a sea of blood, and a chorus of death-shrieks from the
throats of thousands of vanquished enemies?"

At the thought, he pushed the girl away from him and rushed up to his
laboratory, there to continue the work of destruction.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VI

Compensation

One day, while the inmates of the tower were preparing for one of
their fiendish festivals, the Master's little son came into Mashinka's
room. He had just come up from the underground "chapel." The boy's
face looked sorely troubled. When Mashinka asked what ailed him, he
whispered softly to her:

"Something makes me so sad--what it is I cannot tell. But this at
least I know--I hate my father!"

Then Mashinka took the boy's cold hand in hers and tried to soothe
away the pain that filled his heart. She taught him how he ought to
love both his Heavenly and his earthly father, even though both should
chastise their child so severely that love was moved to give place to
fear.

Thus the evil seeds which the Master was perpetually striving to sow
in his son's heart by night, were ever rooted up again in the daytime
by the poor Volhynian peasant girl.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VII

The Meeting

This terrible life had now gone on for twelve long years. Most of the
actors in the drama had become grey. Several had died, and the total
number in the tower had now fallen to forty. Even the master-spirit of
Dago had snow-white hair, and seemed some twenty years older than he
really was.

During that time some six hundred vessels had been shattered on the
rocks of Dago. Some eighteen thousand men had perished, and a fortune
of a hundred millions of thalers had been destroyed.

But still the demon of revenge and destruction was unsatis