ith a savage
growl--

"Be quiet, will you?"

"Let that woman go!" I commanded in the best Russian I could muster.

In an instant, with a glare in his fiery eyes, for the blood-lust was
within him, he turned upon me and sneeringly asked who I was to give
him orders, while the poor girl reeled, half stunned by his blow.

"Let her go, I say!" I shouted, advancing quickly towards him.

But in a moment he had drawn his big army revolver, and ere I became
aware of his dastardly intention, he raised it a few inches from her
face.

Quick as thought I raised my own weapon, which I had held behind me, and
being accredited a fairly good shot, I fired, in an endeavour to save
the poor girl.

Fortunately my bullet struck, for he stepped back, his revolver dropped
from his fingers upon the stones, and stumbling forward he fell dead at
her feet without a word. My shot had, I saw, hit him in the temple, and
death had probably been instantaneous.

With a cry of joy at her sudden release, the girl rushed across to me,
and raising my left hand to her lips, kissed it, at the same time
thanking me.

Then, for the first time, I recognised how uncommonly pretty she was.
Not more than eighteen, she was slim and petite, with a narrow waist
and graceful figure--quite unlike in refinement and in dress to the
other women I had seen in Ostrog. Her dark hair had come unbound in
her desperate struggle with the Cossack and hung about her shoulders,
her bodice was torn and revealed a bare white neck, and her chest heaved
and fell as in breathless, disjointed sentences she thanked me again and
again.

There was not a second to lose, however. She was, I recognised, a
Jewess, and Krasiloff's orders were to spare them not.

From the main street beyond rose the shouts and screams, the firing and
wild triumphant yells, as the terrible massacre progressed.

"Come with me!" she cried breathlessly. "Along here. I know of a place
of safety."

And she led the way, running swiftly, for about two hundred yards, and
then turning into a narrow, dirty courtyard, passed through an evil,
forbidding-looking house, where all was silent as the grave.

With a key, she quickly opened the door of a poor, ill-furnished room,
which she closed behind her, but did not lock. Then, opening a door
on the opposite side, which had been papered over so as to escape
observation, I saw there was a flight of damp stone stairs leading down
to a cellar or some subterranea