The girl from nowhere

by Mrs. Baillie Reynolds

That the sinister order should have been conveyed to him was a part of the policy of the Brotherhood. They knew that the young man had thrown off their influence. To them he was a renegade, though he had not, by any overt action, proved himself so. As he went about at all hours, quite fearlessly, he could have been shot many times over by some lurking conspirator with practical certainty of immunity. But the Brotherhood knew its own business. It had to keep together a number of desperate men, of all nationalities, in faithful subservience. The way to do this was by fear, the fear of a vengeance that could not fail to fall upon the traitor; and it is well known that there is one sort of fear which more than any other will weaken the courage, even of a strong man, and wear down the resolution even of the most determined. It is the policy of the Sword of Damocles.

They worked by means of the threat of a fate that never failed to overtake, perhaps sooner, perhaps later, but certainly: the threat of a concealed power always on the watch. After a few weeks the strongest nerves are frayed by these tactics.

A message is received; the victim disregards it. Days pass; nothing happens. Then, one day, upon dressing-table, or pillow, or through the post, there is some small reminder of the existence of the deadly machinery which can compel obedience.

Such a jolt had the mind of Felix Vanston received that day. The brusque irruption of Streloff into the sleeping-room of Vronsky at the moment when the fatal papers were being dealt with was like the flash of the bull's-eye of a dark lantern. Cravatz was on the watch.

It was not so much the presence of the spy in the place which disturbed him. It was practically certain that Cravatz must be keeping him under observation. But Streloff's action of that day seemed to suggest the fact that Vronsky's own movements against Cravatz were known to the enemy. And this was serious.

Ever since the deadly message first came to Felix, Vronsky had been at work. Acting upon secret information which had come to him, he had been busily, privately, with the aid of the first detectives in Gretz, in Petropavlosk, in St. Petersburg, tracking down Cravatz to his just end. And now the threads of the case were all in his hands. In Felix's pocket lay the complete indictment. Acting upon the Governor's order, Cravatz could be at once arrested.

The young man had a moment of triumph in thinking that for the time he had outwitted the enemy. Streloff the spy was shut up in Vronsky's room, in charge of the vast and formidable Hutin; and Felix, the papers safely in his coat, was entering the cool, dim hall at Nicolashof, where the abundant flowers, the Persian rugs, the elegant furniture, showed traces of the English influence of Miss Forester.

"The ladies are in the garden," said the old man-servant who opened the door.

"Thank you, Petro Petrovitch," said Felix. "But first, please ask the Governor to give me ten minutes in his library."

He was shown into the big comfortable room, which overlooked a beautiful garden. Its walls were decorated with the antlers and wolf-skins and wild-boar tusks which Stepan Stepanovitch had secured as the spoils of his rifle. On the writing-table, where the father's eye could always rest upon it, stood a panel portrait of a beautiful young girl—Nadia Stepanovna, as she appeared when she made her first bow to the Czar at Court.