“Ay, so it is a long time, in one way, and in another a short time. It seems but yesterday that I was a boy here in Chita. You, sir, have worked all your life to see Russia a free land. And like you, I have learned to bide my time.”
“Things must look strange to you here,” said Katerin. “The city has grown in twenty years.”
“Yes, outwardly things look different. But the hills, the old prison, the streets—I see them as they were. During my years in America I never forgot, though I confess I had little hope of ever coming back. But the war gave me my chance. I was going to France, but when the government decided to send troops here, I volunteered for service in Siberia. Was it not God-given that I should be allowed to come back to my native land—and to come to Chita?”
“True,” said Katerin, “if the debt, as you call it, which you owe to the Governor, is such that God would have it paid.” She moved her chair in such way that she was nearer the table, and so that she was closer to her father. Also, she managed so that she cut more light from her father’s face.
“And what is the debt?” asked Michael. “If it is not a secret—if I am to tell you where you may find the Governor, perhaps you will see it in such way that you can trust me with the secret.”
“It was Kirsakoff’s orders which brought about my father’s death.”
Katerin’s teeth shut down upon her lower lip, and her fingers closed slowly upon the sides of her chair. She sat rigid, staring at Peter, and her face became paler. Michael did not move, but his breath began to come faster, and he wheezed, as if his chest had tightened and he was about to cough.
“Killed your father?” asked Katerin, in low tones.
“No, Kirsakoff did not strike with his own hand,” went on Peter, still gazing fixedly at the lamp. “But he ordered my father back to the prison, and when my father ran after the Governor to beg for mercy, a Cossack soldier cut my father down with a sword. And I was thrown into the big prison on the hill—I, a poor helpless boy who had done nothing.”
Wassili moved uneasily behind the chair of Peter, and Katerin gave the moujik a glance of disapproval.