"'Receive it thus!' replied Feodor, who plunged a sword into his heart, the further to suppress all proof of guilt.
"The young tyrant died of a poison administered by his Chancellor, and others inherited his crown; but all to perish miserably in succession. And no less than four pretenders all appeared, each calling himself Demetrius, to contest for the throne; and all the land was deluged with blood.
"Some twenty years after the alleged death of the brother of Ivan, a young Cossack of the Volga was bathing in that river with some of his companions, who saw with surprise that he had chained round his neck a cross of brilliants, and that certain words in the old Muscovite character were pricked upon his back. They were examined by a neighbouring priest and found to be—-
'This is Demetrius, son of the Czar.'
"Then all exclaimed that the true Demetrius had been found at last, and that a miracle from Heaven had saved him. His life was soon in peril, so he fled to Holstein, the Duke of which, after keeping him long in prison, sold him to the Emperor Michael, by whom he was savagely quartered alive. And it is the fate of this hapless heir of Russia, whose story he thinks in some points resembles his own (although he really knows but little of his own annals), that haunts the unfortunate Ivan in his gloomiest hours."
CHAPTER XVI.
THE TRATKIR.
With evident suspicion and mistrust, Bernikoff viewed the growing intimacy between his prisoner Ivan and the Scottish Captain; and though he neither recommended that it should cease or interdicted it, as he might and perhaps ought to have done, he made many mental notes thereof.
Though Balgonie sympathised with Ivan to the fullest extent, he knew too well the danger of doing more; and he felt that he had his own share of secret sorrow and anxiety, and might yet have greater to endure. The girl he loved with all the strength of a first and romantic passion was already a political fugitive; her father and cousin were prisoners, and perhaps in chains; her brother and his kinsman, Usakoff, already viewed as criminals; and with the terrors of despotism hanging over them all.
Natalie a fugitive—and where? In the wild forests, perhaps, where wolves and outlaws lurked: what perils and privations might she not be suffering! Natalie so delicate, so pure, so gently nurtured, and so highly bred.