"Heaven be praised!"
"She had a letter written to send you, but I thought it might be unsafe to have on my person, both for you and myself."
"You were right."
"So I took her verbal message."
"Oh, tell me of my poor dear sister!" the man almost cried, and thereupon Barnwell related his acquaintance with her, together with the story of his life in Siberia, as already known to the reader.
Then he repeated the message Zora had entrusted him with, while tears streamed down the brother's face.
"Poor girl, what a fate is hers! But if she lives she shall yet be free. Oh, sir, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your kindness to her and to me, and if we are never able to repay you, Heaven surely will do so," said Vola, greatly moved.
"I am amply repaid by being able to do someone a kindness. But my mission has not yet begun. I have a trust to keep of which I have not yet spoken. You, of course, know of Batavsky?"
"I have heard of him, but he worked and was exiled before my time almost–at least, before I began to work."
"Well, at his death I received from him a certain charge that may possibly enable me to benefit his compatriots in Russia; but he told me to become an active Nihilist, that I might be the better able to work successfully."