understood. "And his father?"

"Was Stephen Bathory, King of Poland. Grishka Otrepiev is King
Stephen's natural son."

Boris seemed to fight for breath for a moment.

"This is true?" he asked, and himself answered the question. "Of
course it is true. It is the light at last . . . at last. You may
go."

Otrepiev stumbled out, thankful, surprised to escape so lightly.
He could not know of how little account to Boris was the
deception he had practiced in comparison with the truth he had
now revealed, a truth that shed a fearful, dazzling light upon
the dark mystery of the false Demetrius. The problem that so long
had plagued the Tsar was solved at last.

This pretended Demetrius, this unfrocked monk, was a natural son
of Stephen Bathory, and a Roman Catholic. Such men as Sigismund
of Poland and the Voyvode of Sandomir were not deceived on the
score of his identity. They, and no doubt other of the leading
nobles of Poland, knew the man for what he was, and because of it
supported him, using the fiction of his being Demetrius
Ivanovitch to impose upon the masses, and facilitate the
pretenders occupation of the throne of Russia. And the object of
it was to set up in Muscovy a ruler who should be a Pole and a
Roman Catholic. Boris knew the bigotry of Sigismund, who already
had sacrificed a throne--that of Sweden--to his devout conscience,
and he saw clearly to the heart of this intrigue. Had he not