The reader knows something of the cruel sufferings of our hero. Being a free-born American, a natural hater of tyranny in all its forms, and enduring it as he did, it is no wonder that he sought revenge, and that his heart should naturally go out in behalf of oppressed humanity, when he had tasted of that barbarian oppression himself.
With his identity thoroughly established, his passports all correct, and his heart full with the new doctrine that his initiation had developed in him, together with the mission which poor old Batavsky had intrusted him with, he bade good-by to Russia.
From St. Petersburg he went to Warsaw, and from there to Posen, Germany, where he felt for the first time since leaving his native land that he was in the domain of freedom.
Before leaving Russia he had sent home for his entire fortune, and at Berlin had it converted into German money, and it was so considerable that he soon became known as the rich cosmopolitan.
Gradually he made his way towards the little hamlet of Merz, near the border, and when the warm season began he went there with his servant, horses and carriage (one built to order for a special object), and took up his residence in a small town patronized almost entirely by the few travelers who find their way to this part of Germany.
He was now near the alleged hiding-place of Batavsky's rubles, and while seemingly only rambling over the wild country, he was studying the diagram that the old man had given him and trying to locate the hiding-place by the aid of it.
The location most nearly agreeing with the diagram was about a mile from the little tavern, and every day he would visit it with his gun, or sometimes with a sketch-book, the better to enable him to throw off suspicion should he chance to encounter anyone–a very improbable thing, however, since it was a desolate, uninhabited region, without roads and with nothing to attract anyone save its cragged grandeur.
Indeed, it was so barren of game that the landlord advised him to go in any other direction when in search of it.
But day by day he visited it, and the oftener he did so the greater the fascination of the rugged hills became to him.
The thought that a million rubles lay hidden away somewhere in the vicinity was a fascination in itself, but the more he went the more he felt that the spirit of the old exile was hovering about the place.