d and shouted had turned from graver matters to notice her.
She saw, as the carriage dashed away, that the crowd was strongly
leavened with uniforms of police; there was not time to see more
before a corner was turned and the square cut off from view. She sat
back among her cushions with a shrug directed at those corners in her
affairs which always shut off the real things of life.

The carriage went briskly towards her hotel, traversing those wide
characterless streets which are typical of a Russian town. The
pavements were empty, the houses shuttered and dark; save for the
broad back of the coachman perched before her, she sat in a solitude.
Thus it was that the sound which presently she heard moved her to
quick attention, the noise of a child crying bitterly in the
darkness. She sat up and leaned aside to look along the bare street,
and suddenly she called to the coachman to halt. When he did so, the
carriage was close to the place whence the cry came.

"What is it? What is it?" called Truda, in soft Russian, and stepped
down to the ground. Only that shrill weeping answered her.

She picked her way to the pavement, where something lay huddled
against the wall of the house, and the coachman, torpid on his box
behind the fidgety horses, started at her sharp exclamation.

"Come here!" she called to him. "Bring me one of the lamps. Here is a
horrible thing. Be quick!"

He was nervous about leaving his horses, but Truda's tone was
compelling. With gruntings and ponderously he obeyed, and the
carriage-lamp shed its light over the matter in hand. Under the wall,
with one clutching hand outspread as though to grip at the stones of
the pavement, lay the body of a woman, her face upturned and vacant.
And by it, still crying, crouched a child, whose hands were closed on
the woman's disordered dress. Truda, startled to stillness, stood for
a space of moments staring; the unconscious face on the ground seemed
to look up to her with a manner of challenge, and the child,
surprised by the light, paused in its weeping and cowered closer to
the body.

"Murder?" said Truda hoarsely. It was a question, and the coachman
shuffled uneasily.

"I think," he stammered, while the lamp swayed in his gauntleted hand
and its light traveled about them in wild curves--"I think, your
Excellency, it is a Jew."

"A Jew!" Truda stared at him. "Yes." He bent to look closer at the
dead woman, puffing with the exertion. "Yes," he repeated, "a Je