ll looked miserable enough, poor
wretches. Some were wounded, scarcely able to stand, and their guards
urged them forward by prodding them with their bayonets.

I wondered why I wasn't among them, and guessed if they tried to make me
march that way, I'd just stay still and let them prod the life out of
me!

I still felt dazed and queer, and my broken left arm hurt me badly. It
hung helpless at my side, but my right arm had been roughly bandaged and
put in a sling, and I could feel a wad over the other wound, held in
place by a scarf of some kind. My mouth and throat were parched with a
burning thirst that was even worse than the pain in my arm.

The group of officers dispersed, and Mirakoff crossed over to me.

"Well, you are recovering?" he asked curtly.

I moved my lips, but no sound would come, so I just looked up at him.

He saw how it was with me, and ordered the soldier to fetch water. He
was a decent youngster, that Mirakoff, too good for a Russian; he must
have had some foreign blood in him.

"This is a serious matter," he said, while the man was gone. "Lucky I
chanced on you, or you'd have been finished off at once, and shoved in
there with the rest"--he jerked his head towards the new-made grave.
"I've done the best I could for you. You'll be carried through the wood,
and sent in a cart to Petersburg, instead of having to run by the
stirrup, as the others who can stand must do. But you'd have to go to
prison. What on earth induced you to come here?"

The man came back with the water, and I drank greedily, and found my
voice, though the words came slowly and clumsily.

"Curiosity, as I told you."

"Curiosity to see '_La Mort_,' you mean?"

"No; though I've got pretty close to death," I said, making a feeble
pun. (We were, of course, speaking in French.)

"I don't mean death; I mean a woman who is called '_La Mort_.' Her
name's Anna Petrovna. She was to have been there. Did you see her? Was
she there?"

I forgot my pain for the instant, in the relief that his words conveyed.
Surely he would not have put that question to me if she was already a
prisoner. Loris must have got away with her, and, for the present, at
least, she was safe.

CHAPTER XXII

THE PRISON HOUSE

"There was a woman," I confessed. "And that's how I came to be chipped
about. They were going to murder her."

"To murder her!" he exclaimed. "Why, she's one of them; the cleverest
and most dangerous of the lot! Said to b