litary affairs, and ruled the fort
as completely as she did the household. This really suited Ivan Mironoff
very well, for he was a good-hearted, uneducated man, staunch and true,
who had been raised from the ranks, and was now grown lazy. Both husband
and wife were excellent people, and I soon became attached to them, and
to the daughter Marya, an affectionate and sensible girl.

As for Chvabrine, he at first professed great friendship for me; but
being in love with Marya, who detested him, he began to hate me when he
saw a growing friendliness between Marya and myself.

I was now an officer, but there was little work for me to do. There was
no drill, no mounting guard, no reviewing of troops. Sometimes Captain
Mironoff tried to drill his soldiers, but he never succeeded in making
them know the right hand from the left.

All seemed peace, in spite of my quarrels with Chvabrine. Every day I
was more and more in love with Marya, and the notion that we might be
disturbed at Fort Belogorsk by any repetition of the riots and revolts
which had taken place in the province of Orenburg the previous year was
not entertained. Danger was nearer than we had imagined. The Cossacks
and half-savage tribes of the frontier were again already in revolt.

_II.--The Rebel Chief_

One evening early in October, 1773, Captain Mironoff called Chvabrine
and me to his house. He had received a letter from the general at
Orenburg with information that a fugitive Cossack named Pugatchef had
taken the name of the late Czar, Peter III., and, with an army of
robbers, was rousing the country, destroying forts and committing murder
and theft. The news spread quickly, and then came a disquieting report
that a neighbouring fort some sixteen miles away had been taken by
Pugatchef, and its officers hanged.

Neither Mironoff nor Vassilissa showed any fear, and the latter declined
to leave Belogorsk, though willing that Marya should be sent to Orenburg
for safety. An insolent proclamation from Pugatchef, inviting us to
surrender on peril of death, and the treachery of our Cossacks and of
Chvabrine, who went over at once to the rebels, only made the commandant
and his wife more resolute.

"The scoundrel!" cried Vassilissa. "He has the impudence to invite us to
lay our flag at his feet, and he doesn't know we have been forty years
in the service!"

It was the same when Pugatchef was actually at our door, and the assault
had actually begun. Old Ivan