knowledge to evil account. The moment might be propitious to the
pretender, however false his claim. Therefore Boris dispatched a
messenger to Wisniowiecki with the offer of a heavy bribe if he
would yield up the person of this false Demetrius.

But that messenger returned empty-handed. He had reached Bragin
too late. The pretender had already left the place, and was
safely lodged in the castle of George Mniszek, the Palatine of
Sandomir, to whose daughter Maryna he was betrothed. If these
were ill tidings for Boris, there were worse to follow soon.
Within a few months he learned from Sandomir that Demetrius
had removed to Cracow, and that there he had been publicly
acknowledged by Sigismund III. of Poland as the son of Ivan
Vassielivitch, the rightful heir to the crown of Russia. He
heard, too, the story upon which this belief was founded.
Demetrius had declared that one of the agents employed by Boris
Godunov to procure his murder at Uglich had bribed his physician
Simon to perform the deed. Simon had pretended to agree as the
only means of saving him. He had dressed the son of a serf, who
slightly resembled Demetrius, in garments similar to those worn
by the young prince, and thereafter cut the lad's throat, leaving
those who had found the body to presume it to be the prince's.
Meanwhile, Demetrius himself had been concealed by the physician,
and very shortly thereafter carried away from Uglich, to be
placed in safety in a monastery, where he had been educated.

Such, in brief, was the story with which Demetrius convinced the
court of Poland, and not a few who had known the boy at Uglich
came forward now to identify with him the grown man, who carried
in his face so strong a resemblance to Ivan the Terrible. That