AS THE bells of the little church ceased tolling seven Sonya paused a moment from her pacing. “Just about now they’ll be slipping his uniform into his cell,” she said.

“Yes,” said Drexel.

“Ah—I do hope that nothing will go wrong!” she breathed.

She resumed her restless pacing, and again the silence of suspense settled between them.

Presently they heard a knock below. Soon the housekeeper entered and held out a letter to Drexel.

“A messenger just brought it,” he said.

The note was on heavy fashionable paper and gave off an odour of violets. Drexel glanced it through, and let out a low cry.

“What is it?” asked Sonya.

“Listen. ‘Come to me instantly. Do not fail. It is a matter of life-and-death importance.’ The note is from Countess Baronova.”

Sonya thought for a moment. “You must go,” she said.

“Not till this affair is over,” he returned. “I cannot leave you.”

“You must go. She would not have sent that unless the matter was of truly great importance. You can be back in an hour; Borodin will not be here till nine.”

He yielded to her judgment, and half an hour later he rang the bell of the countess’s apartment. A maid ushered him into the drawing-room and told him the countess would be in immediately. But one minute passed—three—five—ten—and no countess. His patience would wait no longer. He opened the entrance door and rang the apartment bell. The maid reappeared.

“Tell the countess that I will return later,” he said.

But on the instant a voice called out, “Wait, Mr. Drexel,” and the countess came toward him through the hall. She was strikingly dressed, as always; but she was even more pale, more worn, than when he had last seen her, and there was a new agitation in her manner.

“I’m so glad you came!” she said, in a voice that trembled with relief.

“I could not have come had I thought there would have been so much delay,” he returned rather stiffly.

“I have purposely delayed. I confess it.”

“Why?—after you desired to get me here in haste?”

“To make certain of keeping you here as long as possible. I have just discovered you are in great danger.”

“Danger from what?”

“I know only in a vague way. In moving among the officials I pick up hints of things; that is my value as a revolutionist. From what I have heard— But promise to tell no one you learned this from me. It might ruin me among the officials and thus ruin my worth to the cause.”

“I promise.”

“From what I have just heard, you and your group are in danger of arrest.”

“Immediate arrest?” cried Drexel.

“This evening. Within the hour.”

“Good-night, countess!” And seizing his cap he sprang for the door.

But she caught his arm. “No! No! You must not go!”

“But I must warn the others!”

“It’s too late! Even now the police may be there. You can do nothing.”

His mind saw Sonya, alone, with gendarmes pouring in upon her. “Let go!” he cried fiercely. “Let go!”

He tore her hand from his arm, but she threw her back against the door, panting, her dark eyes flashing wildly.

“If you go, it’s to your certain death!” she gasped. “Prince Berloff has arranged this. He will see that you do not escape. He wants to kill you.”

“Why?”

“If you could be killed—by accident—with no blame attaching to him—is there not some way in which it would benefit him?”

“Yes. But, countess—you must let me pass!”

“It will be to your death!”

“Perhaps. But I must warn the others!”

“No! No! I will not let you!” she cried.

“You leave me no other way!” and seizing her wrists he dragged her struggling from the door. He shook off her hands that again sought to detain him, and plunged down the stairway—leaving her collapsed upon the floor, white, motionless, on her face a stare of ghastly horror.

He leaped into his waiting sleigh and thrust a five-ruble note into the driver’s hands. “Back—at your best speed!” he cried—and though the driver laid the end of his lines upon the flanks of his galloping horse, Drexel constantly breathed, “Faster! Faster!”

He imagined every disaster as befalling Sonya. But when he had reëntered the little court, and rushed up the stairway, and burst into the room, it was to find Sonya still safely there—and not so poorly defended as he had thought, for Freeman was with her.

“Come,” he said breathlessly, “we must fly! The police may be here any moment!”

Sonya went suddenly white. “Then they have found out our plan?”

“I do not know. But we’re in instant danger of arrest. Come!”

“What! Desert our plan?” demanded Freeman. “Desert Borodin?”

“But how will our being arrested aid him?”

“I do not believe there is any danger,” returned Freeman. His thin lips curled slightly with disdain. “Somebody’s fear has got the better of his nerve!”

“But I’ve had definite warning!”

“From whom?”

“I promised not to tell.”

“Bah!” The terrorist’s lean face wrinkled contemptuously. “If there was such a warning, its purpose was to frighten us and make our plan fail. We are going to stay here!”

Drexel turned to Sonya. “Come, Sonya!” he begged.

She wavered, but before she could answer the housekeeper entered with a letter for her. She tore it open.

“From Sabatoff,” she said. Then she gave a low moan of despair. “We’ve failed!”

“What does it say?” asked Drexel.

“‘Plan discovered. White One and Razoff arrested; Delwig seized. Escape!’”

“That means we have been sold to the Government!” cried Freeman.

“Yes—one of our group must have turned traitor!” cried Sonya.

The terrorist’s face grew dark. “And it’s plain who the traitor is!” He whipped out his pistol and sprang toward Drexel. “Well—he’ll never betray again!”

But Sonya threw herself before the black weapon. “He is not the traitor!” she cried. “No more than yourself!”

“He sold us to the police—that’s how he knows in advance the police are after us. And he’s trying to play innocence by warning us when it’s too late.” Freeman’s eyes flashed vengeful fury. “Stand aside!”

Sonya held her place. “I tell you he is innocent!” she said with ringing voice. “If you kill him, it will be plain murder!”

Her words had an effect, for he slowly lowered the pistol. “Well, I apologise if I’m—”

But Drexel waited not for apology. “Come on!” he cried; and seizing Sonya’s arm he made for the stairway, and dashed down and out into the court, with Freeman and the housekeeper following. But here they suddenly paused. Entering the gateway, the only exit from the high-walled court, they saw a group of shadowy figures. They were too late.

“Shall we surrender?” asked Sonya.

“Not I!” said Freeman grimly, and drew his pistol.

“Not I,” said Sonya.

She turned to Drexel. “I forgot. It would be better for you if we surrendered. You’re an American—you’re not so deeply involved as we—the Government cannot be so hard on you.”

“I’m in more danger from the gendarmes than any of you,” he returned. “We’ll not surrender.”

“Then back to the house,” she said. “We can hold it for a time. Our comrades may gather and come to our rescue. If not—anything is better than falling into the gendarmes’ hands.”

They rushed into the house, locked the door, and waited on the lower floor for the attack. In the minute of waiting Sonya’s mind went apprehensively to Borodin.

“If the police have learned everything,” she breathed to Drexel, “then they probably have learned that Borodin is Borski. If they have”—there was a sob in her throat—“oh, my poor brother!”

Freeman started. “What! Is Borodin really Borski?—the leader of the South Russian revolt?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And your brother?”

“Yes.”

“Ah!” he exclaimed. “No wonder you have dared everything to release him!”

Sonya sighed tremulously.

“Perhaps it may not go so bad with him,” said Drexel, desiring to comfort her. “If they have discovered all about him, his being Prince Valenko may make his fate lighter.”

Freeman cut off her reply. “Is Borski then Prince Valenko?” he exclaimed, astounded. “The son of the military governor?”

He did not wait for her answer. “Then you are the famous Princess Valenko!” he cried.

“I am Princess Valenko,” she returned quietly.

“Wonderful!” he ejaculated. “But all St. Petersburg thinks you are dangerously——”

The expression of his amazement was cut short. The footsteps and low voices of the gendarmes sounded without. The four, all with pistols drawn, grimly waited the gendarmes’ action.

It came in a moment. A heavy fist pounded on the door and a deep bass bellowed to them: “Open the door! Surrender!”

Sonya caught Drexel’s arm. “Captain Nadson’s voice!”

“Yes.”

“If I’m captured he’ll recognise me, and I’ll have to face that charge of trying to kill Prince Berloff,” she said.

“You’re that woman?” cried Freeman—and added fiercely in the same breath: “The person who tried to do that to Prince Berloff will not be taken while I’m alive!”

“The gendarmes with him must be Nadson’s Hundred!” breathed Drexel.

He said it with something like a shiver. For these men, as Sonya had told him, were thugs, ex-convicts, and many indeed had been taken directly from prison and forgiven their robbery or murder on condition that they undertake this service; and all were big, bold, merciless men.

The fist again pounded. “Open that door!” roared the captain.

The four said not a word.

The next instant the door creaked and bent under the impact of heavy shoulders. And in the same instant Freeman’s pistol spat twice into the thin panels. There was a sharp cry.

“Come—try it again!” taunted the terrorist.

There was again silence without. “They’re planning some new attack,” said Sonya.

They were—and it came the next moment. In the room on their right a window crashed. Freeman flung open the door and saw a burly figure scrambling through the broken sash. Again his pistol flashed. The gendarme went sprawling on the floor and did not move.

“Come on—more of you!” shouted Freeman in savage joy.

None of the gendarmes accepted the challenge to enter, but a bullet did and tore off half an ear. The terrorist did not flinch; but as the pistol flashed without, he fired at the flash. There was a cry of pain.

He stepped to one side, out of range, but kept his pistol levelled at the window. “One more!” he called. With his lean, sardonic face, his lips curling away from his white teeth, he looked half devil.

Again there was silence without—this time a longer silence. Then suddenly there was a crash at the door. A panel splintered out, and the end of a heavy pole burst through. At the same moment figures began to leap into the window on the right, and there was a splintering of glass on the floor above and a heavy thud against the window-sill.

“It’s on in earnest now!” said Freeman grimly, and turned his pistol again at the window on the right.

“Come on—we’ll hold the upper floor!” Sonya cried to Drexel and sprang up the stairway.

They rushed into Ivan’s room, whence the crash had come. The end of a ladder stuck through the demolished window and scrambling up it was a gendarme. Drexel fired; the man fell, and none was so bold as to spring to his deadly place upon the ladder.

The crashing at the downstairs door sounded louder. They rushed back to the stairway. The door was almost down.

“We can hold this floor but a moment longer!” shouted Freeman.

“Come up here, then!” called Drexel. “The stairway’s easier to defend!”

He sprang into a bedroom and dragged out a chest of drawers, which he placed at the head of the stairs as a barricade, and this Sonya reinforced with a mattress which she dragged after him.

Crash! Crash! went the battering-ram.

“Come up!” shouted Drexel.

The landlord plunged up the stairway and over the barricade. But Freeman crouched before the door, like a panther ready for the spring.

Crash! The splintered door flew from its hinges.

“There’s nothing left but a dash for life!” Freeman cried up to them, and the dare-devil sprang over the door and straight out among the gendarmes.

“Don’t kill him—we want his secrets!” roared the captain.

There was the sound of a whirlwind scuffle without, which testified to the terrorist’s desperate strength. But it quickly ceased. “Handcuff him!” the captain ordered. “Now in after the others!”

The three crouched down and their pistols looked blackly over the barricade. There was a wild rush of gendarmes through the door and up the stairway. The three pistols spoke as one. Two men fell. But the gendarmes rushed on up, firing as they came; their bullets thudded into the barricade and the walls behind the defenders. Bang—bang—bang went the three pistols. The gendarmes faltered before the deadly fire, then fell back.

“Up after them!” roared the captain, himself safely without, and poured on his men dynamic curses and more dynamic threats.

Their evil faces gleaming, the gendarmes charged again. The three met them with a rapid fire, the pistols’ flame and smoke almost in the gendarmes’ faces. But they surged on up. Two fell dead against the breastworks. A huge, ferocious fellow following stepped upon their bodies and vaulted the barricade. He died in mid air. But he had given death for death, and fell upon the landlord’s body.

But Sonya and Drexel had not time to glance at the dead. Bang—bang—bang went their pistols; and before this fierce, protected fire the gendarmes again turned and fled pell-mell from the house.

The captain first cursed his men, then his voice raged in through the open door: “We’ll have you out of there in five minutes!” And to his men he said: “When they come out, seize the woman and kill the foreigner.”

He moved away. Several minutes passed. Sonya and Drexel wondered what their assailants were doing. Then a low crackling sound came to their ears.

“They’ve fired the house!” cried Drexel.

“Yes,” said she.

“They have us now. It’s stay here and be roasted, or march down into their arms.”

The former alternative seemed not many minutes off. The air began to grow furnace-hot; smoke oozed through the floor.

“Shall we go down and surrender?” asked Sonya.

“If we do, I’ll be dead the minute we step outside the door. Did you hear Captain Nadson give special orders to kill the foreigner?”

“Yes, but why especially kill you?”

“He is so ordered by his master, Prince Berloff.” And Drexel repeated what the countess had told him.

“And to think,” cried Sonya, “that it is I that put you in the prince’s power—I that brought you to this fate. Oh, if at least I could only save you!”

Her eyes sank in frantic thought, and she saw the two dead bodies. She sprang up, rushed into Ivan’s room, and then rushed back again.

“You shall not die here!” she cried excitedly. “We have still a chance! Quick! On with that gendarme’s coat and cap!”

“But what—”

“The gendarmes are away from that side of the house. I’ll slip down the ladder—you come after, and lead me away as your captive. In the darkness it may succeed. At least it’s a chance!”

Drexel threw away his pistol, tore the long coat from off the limp gendarme, slipped it on instead of his own and put on the dead man’s cap.

“I’m ready—come!” he cried, and made for Ivan’s room.

She stopped him with a hand upon his arm. “I deceived you. That chance is no chance at all. The house is surrounded.”

“Surrounded!” He rushed into the next room and to the window, she following him. “Yes! But if you knew it, why suggest——”

“To get you into that uniform.”

“Why?”

“Your wits will tell you later. Promise me one thing. If you promise, you will make me meet much easier whatever is to happen.”

“Yes, yes, I promise.”

“You are not to leave this room for two minutes. And now I’m going down.”

She held out both her hands to him, and the fiery light that glowed in through the window showed him a face calm, beautiful—in it a new look that made him catch his breath. They gazed a moment into each other’s eyes. Then she loosed her hands, and before he knew what she intended she had drawn down his head and had kissed him on his forehead.

“Sonya!” he cried, “Sonya!” and he caught her wildly to him, and for one heaven-scaling moment all that lay on the yonder side of that moment was forgotten.

She gently freed herself, for the flames had leaped through the floor and were now springing toward the ceiling. “I must go,” she said softly.

“And is this to be the end of it all?” he cried in agony. “Only this one moment?”

“So it seems.” There were tears in her eyes, and in the flame-light they gleamed like stars.

They moved into the next room and closed the door, and crossed to the door that opened on the stairway.

“And now a last good-bye,” she said.

“No!” he cried. “We shall go down together!”

“You have promised,” she returned.... “Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” he whispered brokenly.

She bent again to his lips, then stepped out upon the stair-landing. “I surrender!” her clear voice called loudly, steadily. And Drexel, breaking his promise so far as to watch her to the last through the crack of the door, saw the captain appear, and saw her slender, noble figure move calmly toward him down the dead-strewn stairs.