Yes, nowadays my life was a strange one, full of romance and constant change, of excitement—and sometimes of insecurity.
For what reason had the great Hartmann been sent so far afield?
On leaving the railway, I travelled for two days in a sleigh over those endless snow-covered roads and dark forests, until my horses, with their jingling bells, pulled up before a small inn on the outskirts of the dismal-looking town of Ostrog. The place, with its roofs covered with freshly-fallen snow, lay upon the slight slope of a low hill, beneath which wound the Wilija Goryn, now frozen so hard that the bridge was hardly ever used. It was January, and that month in Poland is always a cold one.
I had crossed the frontier at the little village of Kolodno, and thence driven along the valleys into Volynien, a long, weary, dispiriting drive, on and on until those bells maddened me by their monotonous rhythm. Cramped and cold I was, notwithstanding the big fur coat I wore, the fur cap with flaps, fur gloves, and fur rug. The country inns in which I had spent the past two nights had been filthy places where the stoves had been surrounded by evil-smelling peasantry, where the food was uneatable and where a wooden bench had served me as a bed.
At each stage where we changed horses the post-house keeper had held up his hands when he knew my destination was Ostrog. "The Red Rooster" was crowing there, they said significantly.
It was true. Russia was under the Terror again, and in no place in the whole empire were the revolutionists so determined as in the town whither I was bound. I saw at once the reason why Hartmann was there—to secretly stir up strife, for it is to the advantage of Germany that Russia should be in a state of unrest. To observe the German methods was certainly interesting.
Ostrog at last! As I stood up and descended unsteadily from my sleigh my eyes fell upon something upon the snow near the door of the inn. There was blood. It told its own tale.
From the white town across the frozen river I heard revolver shots, followed by a loud explosion that shook the whole place and startled the three horses in my sleigh.
Inside the long, low, common room of the inn, with its high brick stove, against which half a dozen frightened-looking men and women were huddled, I asked for the proprietor, whereupon an elderly man, with shaggy hair and beard, came forth, pulling his forelock.
"I want to stay here," I said.