Count Preskoff's old steward received his orders with scarce a look of surprise, singular though they must have seemed to him. A Russian is accustomed to unquestioning obedience to the orders of his superior, and although never before had Count Preskoff issued such strange and unaccountable commands to the steward, the thought never occurred to the latter of questioning them for a moment.  
When he had left the room, the Count turned to the midshipmen, and his brow relaxed. "I cannot tell you," he said, "under what obligation you have placed me and my family. Little did we think that any little kindness we might show to you, strangers and prisoners here, would be returned by a service of a hundredfold greater value. The danger which hangs over us may for the time be averted by your discovery. I know my enemy too well to suppose that it is more than postponed, but every delay is so much gained. I have news to-day that the Czar is alarmingly ill. Should Heaven take him, it would be the dawn of a better era for Russia. His son is a man of very different mould. He has fallen into disgrace with his father for his liberal ideas, and he is known to think, as I do, that serfdom is the curse of the empire."
 
"But surely," Dick Hawtry said, "if we draw out a document signed by us and Alexis, saying that we overheard the plot to obtain false evidence against you, the emperor would not believe other false accusations which your enemies might invent?"
 
"You little know Russia," the count said. "I believe that Nicholas, tyrannical and absolute as he is, yet wishes to be just, and that were such a document placed in his hands, it would open his eyes to the truth. But my enemies would take care that it never reached him. They are so powerful that few would dare to brave their hostility by presenting it. Nor, indeed, surrounded as Nicholas is by creatures whose great object is to prevent him from learning the true wishes of his people, would it be easy to obtain an opportunity for laying such a document before him. Even were the attempt made, and that successfully, such doubts would be thrown upon it, that he might well be deceived. It would be said that the evidence of Alexis, a serf devoted to his master, was valueless, and that you, as strangers, very imperfectly acquainted with the language, might well have misunderstood the conversation. Count Smerskoff would swear that he was only repeating statements which Paul had previously made to him, and that he only promised money because Paul insisted that, as a first condition of his informing against me, he should receive funds to enable him to leave this part of the country, where his life would assuredly be unsafe. I will thankfully take such a document from you, my friends, for it may be useful, but I must not trust too much to it. Now come with me," he continued, as the steward reappeared. "You have seen how a Russian noble can be kind to his serfs; you will now see how he punishes traitors."
 
Followed by the steward and the two midshipmen, the count proceeded to the stables. Here, by the light of the lantern, they saw Paul standing, bound against the manger. His features were ghastly pale and contracted with fear. His conscience told him that his treachery had been discovered. Alexis and the two servants were standing by, in the attitude of stolid indifference habitual to the Russian peasant.
 
"Demetri, you, Ivan, and Alexander will be the court to try this man whom I accuse of being a traitor, who has plotted against my life and liberty, who would have sent me to the gallows or Siberia, and seen my wife and children turned beggared and disgraced on the world. You will form the court, and decide whether he is innocent or guilty. If the latter, I will pass sentence. Alexis and these English gentlemen are the witnesses against him."
 
The midshipmen first, and then Alexis related the conversation they had overheard.
 
"You have heard the evidence," the count said, turning to Demetri. "What is your opinion? is this man innocent or guilty?"
 
"He is guilty," the old man said, "of the basest treachery towards the best and kindest master in Russia, and he deserves to die."
 
"And so say we," said the other two together, looking with loathing horror at the prisoner; for in Russia for a serf to conspire against his master was a crime deemed almost equal in atrocity to parricide.
 
"You hear, Paul," his master said, sternly looking at him; "you have been found guilty, and must die. Alexis, you restrained yourself for my sake from taking the life of this wretch when you heard him plotting against me; you will now act as executioner."
 
"Right willingly," the man replied, taking down a huge axe which hung by the wall.
 
The wretched prisoner, who had hitherto maintained an absolute silence, now burst into an agony of cries, prayers for mercy, and curses. Seeing in the unmoved countenances of his judges that nothing would avail, and that Alexis was approaching him; he screamed out a demand for a priest before he died.
 
"That is reasonable," the count said. "Go into the house, Demetri, and ask Papa Ivanovitch to come hither"—for in the family of every Russian noble a priest resides, as a matter of course.
 
Presently the priest arrived with the steward.
 
"Papa Ivanovitch," the count said, "you are, I know, devoted to the family in which your father and grandfather were priests before you. You can, therefore, be trusted with our secret, a secret which will never go beyond those present. You are here to shrive a man about to die."
 
Then the count related the incidents of the discovery of the treachery of the prisoner, and the priest, who shared with the serfs their veneration and affection for their lord, could scarcely overcome his repugnance and horror of the prisoner so far as to approach and listen to him.
 
For five minutes all present withdrew from the stable, leaving the priest and the prisoner alone together. Then the door opened and the priest came out.
 
"It is finished," he said. "May God pardon the sinner!" and he moved away rapidly towards the house.
 
Alexis spoke a word to his fellow-servants, and these lifted a heavy log from the wood-pile in the courtyard, and carried it into the stable. Then they seized Paul, and in spite of his screams and struggles laid him with his head across the log. Alexis raised the heavy axe in the air; it flashed in the light of the lantern; there was a dull, heavy thud, and the head of the traitor rolled on the ground.
 
"Now," the count said, unmoved, "put a horse into a cart, take picks and shovels, and carry the body of this traitor out to the forest and bury it there. Dig a hole deeply, that the wolves may not bring it to light. Demetri will give each of you to-morrow fifty roubles for your share in this night's work, and beware that you never let a syllable concerning it pass your lips, even when you are together and alone. Alexis, on you I bestow your freedom, if you care to have it, and also, as a gift to yourself and your heirs after you, the little farm that was vacant by the death of Nouvakeff last week."
 
So saying, followed by the two midshipmen who had been awed, but not disapproving spectators of the tragedy, he returned to the house, and led the way back to his study.
 
"You do not disapprove," he asked gravely, "of what I have done? It is not, I know, in accordance with your English ideas, nor even in Russia may a noble take a serf's life, according to law, though hundreds are killed in fits of hasty passion, or by slow ill-treatment, and no inquiry is ever made. Still, this was a case of life against life. My safety and happiness and that of my dear wife and daughters were concerned, and were the lives of fifty serfs at stake, I should not hesitate."
 
Although the boys felt that the matter, if brought before an English court of justice, might not be favorably considered, their sympathies were so thoroughly with the count, that they did not hesitate to say that they thought he could not have acted otherwise than he had done, and that the life of the traitor was most justly forfeited.
 
"I shall now have a respite for a short time," the count said. "Count Smerskoff will of course be perturbed and annoyed at the non-appearance of his spy, and will after a time quietly set inquiries on foot. But I will tell Demetri to give it to be understood that Paul has asked for leave of absence for a few days to go to a distance to visit a friend who is ill. He was always a silent and unsociable fellow, and the others will not wonder at his having started without mentioning his intention to any of them."
 
"What are we to say to the ladies, sir?" Jack asked. "We must invent some reason for our mysterious absence."
 
"Yes," the count agreed. "I would not burden them with such a secret as this on any account."
 
"I have an idea, sir," Jack said after a pause. "You know that beautiful pair of ponies which were brought here yesterday for sale? The ladies were in raptures over them, but you said that the price was preposterous, and that the owner wanted as much for them as you had given for your best pair of carriage horses. Now, sir, if you were to order Alexis to go over at daybreak to the town to purchase them, and have them at the door in a pony-carriage by breakfast-time, this would seem to explain the whole mystery of the coachman's coming to see you, and our private conference."
 
"It is a capital plan," the count assented; "admirable, and I will carry it out at once. It is true I refused to buy them, for we have all contributed to the extent of our means to enable the emperor to carry on the war, and I am really short of money. But of course the purchase of the ponies is not a matter of importance, one way or the other."
 
Upon the party returning to the drawing-room, they were assailed with questions; but the count told his daughters that their curiosity must remain unsatisfied until after breakfast on the morrow; and with this assurance they were obliged to be satisfied, although Olga pouted and told Jack that he had entirely forfeited her confidence. Fortunately it was now late, and the lads were not called upon long to maintain an appearance of gayety and ease which they were very far from feeling.
 
When they retired to their rooms, they had a long talk together. Both agreed that, according to English law, the whole proceeding was unjustifiable; but their final conclusion was that things in Russia were altogether different to what they were in England, and that, above all things, it was a case in which "it served h............