the Long Walk or lagged through a fitful game on the
open spaces between the trees. Few observed these two men who thus
earnestly recalled the drama of their lives; none remarked their odd
association, for were not both obviously foreigners, and who shall
dictate a fashion to such as they? Indeed, they conversed without any
animation of gesture; the one convulsed by fears he did not dare to
express, the other by hopes on the threshold of realization.

"I speak freely," said Boriskoff with unaffected candor, "for to do that
I have come here. And first I must set your memory right in a matter
that concerns us both. You did not leave Poland to serve your country;
you left it to betray us. Spare your words, for the story has been told
many times in Warsaw and in London. Shall I give you the list of those
who are tortured to-day at Saghalien because of what you did? It would
be vain, for if you have any feeling, even that of a dog, they are
remembered by you. You betrayed the man who trusted you; you betrayed
your country--for what? Shall I say that it was for this asylum in a
strange land; for power, for the temptations which all must suffer? No,
no. You have had but one desire in all your life, and that is money. So
much even I understand. You are ready now to part with a little of that
money--so little that it would be as a few grains from the sands of the
sea--to save your neck from the rope, to escape the just punishment
which is about to fall upon you. Do not believe that you can do so. I
hold your secret, but at any hour, at any minute, others may share it
with me. Maxim Gogol--for I shall call you by your true name--if one
word of this were spoken to the Committee at Warsaw, how long would you
have to live? You know the answer to that question. Do not compel me to
dwell upon it."

He spoke in a soft purring tone, an echo of a voice, as it were, beneath
the rustling leaves; but, none the less, Richard Gessner caught every
word as though it had been the voice of an oracle. A very shrewd man, he
had feared this knowledge, and fear had brought him to this covert
interview. The Pole could betray him and betrayal must mean death--and
what a death, reluctant, procrastinating, the hour of it unknown, the
manner of it beyond any words terrible. Such had been the end of many
who had left Poland as he had done. He had read their story and
shuddered even in his imagined security. And now this accusation was
spoken, not as a wh