set in a blaze, while the foreign powers and
the parties to the treaty which Russia had systematically broken were
appealed to and urged to assist. It was a wild scheme, but not half so
wild as many that have succeeded.

The four thousand heroically waiting the word that was to send them on
their forlorn hope heard the news in silence, and all silently moved
away.

"It is for another time--it is for another time!" said Kosmaroff and
Martin repeatedly and confidently, as the men moved past them in the
darkness.

In Warsaw there was a queer silence, and every door was shut. The
streets had been quite deserted, and they were now full of soldiers,
who, at a given word, had moved out from the barracks to line the
streets.

At midnight they were still at their posts, when the first stragglers
came in from the south, silent, mud-bespattered, bedraggled men, who
shuffled along in their dripping clothes in the middle of the street
in groups of two and three. They hung their heads and crept to their
houses. And the conquerors watched them without sympathy, without anger.

It was a miserable fiasco.

XXXV

ACROSS THE FRONTIER

Those who listened at their open windows that night for the sound of
firing heard it not. They heard, perhaps, the tread of slipshod feet
hurrying homeward. They could scarcely fail to hear the Vistula grinding
and grumbling in its new-found strength. For the ice was moving and
the water rising. The long sleep of winter was over, and down the great
length of the river that touches three empires men must needs be on the
alert night and day.

Between the piers of the bridge the ice had become blocked, and the
large, flat floes sweeping down on the current were pushing, hustling,
and climbing on each other with grunts and squeaks as if they had been
endowed with some low form of animal life. The rain did not cease at
midnight, but the clouds lifted a little, and the night was less dark.
The moon above the clouds was almost full.

"There is only one chance of escape," Kosmaroff had said--"the river.
Meet me on the steps at the bottom of the Bednarska at half-past twelve.
I will get a boat. Have you money?"

"I have a few roubles--I never had many," answered Martin.

"Get more if you can--get some food if you can--a bottle of vodka may
make the difference between life and death. Keep your coat."

And they parted hurriedly on the hill where the road rises towards the
Mokotow. Kosmaroff tur