e in
authority. Force in its most brutal form holds sway throughout the
Empire.

What wonder then that the discontented masses writhe in their despair
and seek redress! What wonder that Nihilism should flourish and the
service of dynamite be enlisted to accomplish what moral suasion failed
to achieve! The years beginning with 1879 were disastrous for Russia.
They marked the decadence of those reforms which ten years before had
given promise of such glorious results.

In one of the most populous portions of Kief, in the shadow of the
Petcherskoi convent, stood a large, modern house. As is the case with
the generality of Russian dwellings, it was tenanted by a number of
families who came and went, beat their children, ill-treated their
servants and transacted their daily affairs, rarely becoming acquainted
with each other.

It was a many-storied building, of plain exterior. The lower floor was
occupied by the worthy family of Pavel Kodasky, a clerk in the employ of
the government. His wife filled the responsible position of _concierge_
to the immense house. The third and fourth floors were the abode of
families equally worthy but unimportant to our story, while the upper
floors were inhabited by a vast number of students and officers who, in
consideration of cheap rent and convenient proximity to the university
and the barracks, had here furnished themselves with comfortable
bachelors' quarters.

The second floor still remains to be spoken of. It was occupied by a
young officer of prepossessing appearance, who was widely known in the
aristocratic circles of Kief. The dark-eyed Russian beauties adored him
for his handsome bearing, his flashing eyes, his gallant and fearless
demeanor; the gay young officers and dandies that hovered about the
Governor's court admired him for his reckless habits, his daring
escapades and his lavish expenditure of a fortune which seemed
inexhaustible.

Loris Drentell, the young lieutenant of the Seventh Cossack Regiment,
might well be thankful to Fortuna for the gifts she had lavished upon
him. The reader will remember having met the young man before, when he
was but a baby in his nurse's arms at the Drentell villa at Lubny. The
promise he then gave of becoming a spoiled child was fully realized.
Indulged by his father and neglected by his mother, his every wish
gratified as soon as expressed, enjoying unlimited freedom in the use of
a vast fortune, Loris developed a disposition in whic