"Then I will tell you what I told Captain Kennedy." Saskia, looking
into the heart of the peats, began the story of which we have already
heard a version, but she told it differently, for she was telling it
to one who more or less belonged to her own world. She mentioned names
at which the other nodded. She spoke of a certain Paul Abreskov.
"I heard of him at Bokhara in 1912," said Sir Archie, and his
face grew solemn. Sometimes she lapsed into French, and her hearer's
brow wrinkled, but he appeared to follow. When she had finished
he drew a long breath.

"My aunt! What a time you've been through! I've seen pluck in
my day, but yours! It's not thinkable. D'you mind if I ask
a question, Princess? Bolshevism we know all about, and I admit
Trotsky and his friends are a pretty effective push; but how on
earth have they got a world-wide graft going in the time so that
they can stretch their net to an out-of-the-way spot like this?
It looks as if they had struck a Napoleon somewhere."

"You do not understand," she said. "I cannot make any one understand-
-except a Russian. My country has been broken to pieces, and there
is no law in it; therefore it is a nursery of crime. So would
England be, or France, if you had suffered the same misfortunes.
My people are not wickeder than others, but for the moment they are
sick and have no strength. As for the government of the Bolsheviki
it matters little, for it will pass. Some parts of it may remain,
but it is a government of the sick and fevered, and cannot endure
in health. Lenin may be a good man--I do not think so, but I do not know-
-but if he were an archangel he could not alter things. Russia is
mortally sick and therefore all evil is unchained, and the criminals