having been a great favorite with his master, amassed sufficient money
to enable his son, who inherited it, to purchase the extensive estate
of Olgogrod, and with it the sole proprietorship of 1600 human beings.
Over them he had complete control; and, when maddened by oppression,
if they dared resent, woe unto them! They could be thrust into a
noisome dungeon, and chained by one hand from the light of day for
years, until their very existence was forgotten by all except the
jailor who brought daily their pitcher of water and morsel of dry
bread.

Some of the old peasants say that Sava, father of the young peasant
girl, who stands by the side of an old woman, at the head of her
companions in the court-yard, is immured in one of these subterranean
jails. Sava was always about the Count, who, it was said, had brought
him from some distant land, with his little motherless child. Sava
placed her under the care of an old man and woman, who had the charge
of the bees in a forest near the palace, where he came occasionally to
visit her. But once, six long months passed, and he did not come! In
vain Anielka wept, in vain she cried, "Where is my father?" No father
appeared. At last it was said that Sava had been sent to a long
distance with a large sum of money, and had been killed by robbers.
In the ninth year of one's life the most poignant grief is quickly
effaced, and after six months Anielka ceased to grieve. The old people
were very kind to her, and loved her as if sue were their own child.
That Anielka might be chosen to serve in the palace never entered
their head, for who would be so barbarous as to take the child away
from an old woman of seventy and her aged husband?

To-day was the first time in her life that she had been so far from
home. She looked curiously on all she saw,--particularly on a young