Mironoff blessed his daughter, and embraced
his wife, and then faced death. There was no fight in the poor old
pensioners who made up our garrison, and both Mironoff and myself were
soon captured, bound with ropes, and led before Pugatchef.

The commandant indignantly refused to swear fidelity to the robber
chief, and was hanged there and then in the market square; an old
one-eyed lieutenant was soon swinging by his side. Then came my turn,
and I gave the same answer as my captain had done. The rope was round my
neck, when Pugatchef shouted out "Stop!" and ordered my release. A few
minutes later, and poor old Vassilissa, who had come in search of her
husband, was lying dead in the market square, cut down by a Cossack's
sword. Pugatchef's arrival had prevented Marya's escape to Orenburg, and
she was now lying too ill to be moved, in the house of Father Garassim,
the parish priest.

Pugatchef gave me leave to depart in safety, but before Saveluetch and I
left the fort, the rebel bade me come and see him. He laughed aloud when
I presented myself.

"Who would have thought," he said, "that the man who guided you to a
lodging on that night of the snowstorm was the great tzar himself? But
you shall see better things; I will load you with favours when I have
recovered my empire."

Then he invited me again and again to enter his service, but I told him
I had sworn fidelity to the crown; and finally he let me go, saying:
"Either entirely punish or entirely pardon. Tell the officers at
Orenburg they may expect me in a week."

It hurt me to leave Marya behind, especially as Pugatchef had made
Chvabrine commandant of the fort, but there was no help for it. Father
Garassim and his wife bade me good-bye. "Except you, poor Marya has no
longer any protector or comforter," said the priest's wife.

At Orenburg I was in safety, but the town was soon besieged, and I could
not persuade the general to sally out and attack the rebels. All through
those dreary weeks of the siege I was wondering anxiously about Marya,
and then one day when we had been driving off a party of cossacks, one
of the rebels, whom I recognised a former soldier at Belogorsk, lingered
to give me a letter. It was from Marya, and she told me that she was now
in the house of Chvabrine, who threatened to kill her or hand her over
to the robber camp if she did not marry him, and that she had but three
days left before her fate would be sealed. Death would be easier, sh