The Drevlians, the most savage of the Tatar tribes, had been forced to
pay him a large tribute, and were meditating upon their revenge. They
said: "Let us kill the wolf or we will lose the flock." They watched
their opportunity, seized him, tied him to two young trees bent
forcibly together; then, letting them spring apart, the son of Rurik
was torn to pieces.

No act of the wise regent Oleg was more fruitful in consequences than
the choice of a wife for the young Igor. Olga, who acted as regent
during the minority of her son, was destined to be not only the heroine
of the Epic Cycle in Russia, but the first apostle of Christianity in
that heathen land; canonized by the Church, and remembered as "the
first Russian who mounted to the Heavenly Kingdom."

When the Drevlians sent gifts to appease her wrath at the murder of
Igor, and offered her the hand of their prince, she had the messengers
buried alive. All she asked was three pigeons and three sparrows from
every house in their capital town. Lighted tow was tied to the tails
of the birds, which were then permitted to fly back to their homes
under the eaves of the thatched houses. In the conflagration which
followed, the inhabitants were massacred in a pleasing variety of ways;
some strangled, some smothered in vapor, some buried alive, and those
remaining reduced to slavery.

But an extraordinary transformation was at hand; and this vindictive
heathen woman was going to be changed to an ardent convert to the
Christian faith. Nestor, who is the Russian Herodotus, relates that
she went to Constantinople in 955, to inquire into the mysteries of the
Christian Church. The emperor was astonished, it is said, at the