A strange look came into Sandoff’s eyes, and he shrugged his shoulders.
“You do well to attack me,” he said. “Could not your own eyes have told you the truth? What, think you, brought me here? It was the passport I gave your sister on that night two years ago. I am suffering for her sake, and for yours. Did you know nothing of it?”
Shamarin drew a short, fierce breath. His face changed color, and a tear forced itself into each eye.
“As God is my witness,” he said with emotion, “I did not know of this thing. I thought it was you who betrayed us—your perfidy that decoyed us to the railway station. And so the fulfillment of your oath to Vera proved your ruin! I wish to God she had never gone near you on that night. It were better for me to have been caught and to have suffered alone. Can you ever forgive me?—I must seem to you the basest, the most ungrateful of men. My sudden passion when I recognized you destroyed my reason, else I must have suspected the truth.”
“It was but natural,” replied Sandoff gently. “Say no more.”
He leaned forward and took the hand that Shamarin extended to him. For a moment the two men were united by a common bond of misery, despite the great gulf that had separated their lives in former days.
The Cossacks had paid no attention to this brief conversation, but just at that moment their officer, Lieutenant Zagarin, pushed his way to the spot with a flushed and angry face.
The cause of the quarrel mattered not to him, nor did he make any distinction between the offenders, though it was perfectly plain that Shamarin had been the aggressor.
“You mutinous dogs!” he cried harshly. “You deserve to be shot. I will be lenient this time—but beware in future. Chain these men to their barrows,” he added, turning to the Cossacks, “and put them to work in that spot yonder, where the soil is so hard. See that they get no supper when they return tonight—or on the following night either.”
Remonstrance or explanation would have been worse than useless. The officer’s command was speedily obeyed, and in a short time Sandoff and Shamarin were working by themselves in a small hollow on the western side of the river, opposite their companions. A single Cossack was detailed to guard them.