‘Trifon, thou art dying! The Lord have mercy upon thee!’ prayed the old Gurij, as he knelt by the bedside.
‘Ellen!’ muttered Trifon once more, and died with a smile upon his face. He saw her beatified, and she received him.
Tradition gives another incident which is related as occurring after Trifon’s death. While the Czar and the Grand-Duke Theodore (who came to the throne after his father in 1590) were carrying on a war in Esthonia against the Swedes, under Karl Horn, in 1584, the Czar had fixed his camp during the siege of the town at Rugodew, or Ivangorod, and had deposited his baggage and pitched his tent not far from the town. The crafty Esthonians, however, unperceived, directed all their cannons against the baggage and the tent. While the Czar, wearied with the fatigue of battle, was resting in his tent, a venerable monk appeared before him, and said:
‘Czar, arise and leave thy tent, that thou mayest not suffer death before thy time.’
The Czar inquired, ‘Who art thou?’
The monk answered: ‘I am Trifon, on whom thou didst confer thy mantle as an alms to set others a good example. Therefore saith the Lord my God to thee, Tarry not, arise from this place.’
The Czar got up at once and left the tent. The Esthonians immediately began firing at the baggage and tent with their well-aimed cannon, and a cannon-ball which hit the tent fell on the bed where the Czar had been reclining.
The Czar then stormed Narva, but was driven back. To save the city and to escape a fresh storming of it, Ivangorod was delivered to the Russians by Karl Horn, and Theodore made his entry into the town ‘clad in white cloth of gold, and drawn by his soldiers in a large sledge, under which a stove was arranged for warmth.’ The Czar praised God and rejoiced over his deliverance. He related the episode with the monk to his boyars, and sent messengers to the monastery at Petschenga to seek for Trifon. But the old man had already departed to the habitations of eternal life, and the monastery lay in ruin. [[20]]
[1] He thus gave away that over which he had not undivided proprietary rights, viz.: the whole of the so-called debatable land over which both Norway and Russia claimed taxes, and which was parcelled out in 1826 for the first time. [↑]