explained swiftly. "To them one of our blood ranks second only to the
Czar himself. My father saw to it always that here we were surrounded
only by such faithful ones. These people and their ancestors before them
have been in the service of us and of our ancestors for many, many
generations--since before the freeing of the serfs, of course."

It was Boris who brought Ivan back to the errand that had caused his
sudden appearance.

"Have you brought the parts for the wireless?" he asked. "It was as my
father foresaw. The first thing the Germans did was to come here and
render the installation useless, as they supposed."

"It need not remain useless," said Ivan. "Everything needful I have
brought. The station may be working by to-night. Except that there can
not be anything worth sending for a few hours, it might be set up now.
Better not to use it and risk betraying our secret until there is real
need of it."

Boris turned to Fred to explain.

"We have spies all through East Prussia, and through Galicia and
Silesia, too, of course," he said. "They can find out a good many things
of interest and importance to our army. But it is one thing to obtain
such knowledge and quite another to find some means of sending it back
to our people. We hope, if we are not sent away from here too soon, that
we can make this house very useful that way. It stands high, you see,
and we have a very powerful wireless. The Germans knew this and they
thought they had made it useless."