and
Vassilitzi, attending a big procession and meeting in Marchalkowskaia,
with their usual object,--to maintain order as far as possible, and
endeavor to prevent conflicts between the troops and the people. It was
astonishing how much Loris had achieved in this way, even during these
last terrible days of riot and bloodshed. He was ever on the alert; he
seemed to know by instinct how to seize the right moment to turn the
temper of the crowd or the soldiers, and avert disaster; and his
splendid personality never failed in its almost magnetic effect on every
one who came in contact with it. He was a born leader of men!

And, although he was always to the fore in every affair, as utterly
reckless of his own safety as he was anxious to secure the safety of
others, he had hitherto come unscathed through everything, though a
couple of our men had been killed outright, several others badly
wounded, and the rest of us had got a few hard knocks one way or other.
I'd had a bullet through my left arm, the arm that was broken in the
scrimmage outside Petersburg in June, a flesh wound only, luckily,
though it hurt a bit when I had time to think of it,--which wasn't
often.

By the time we got into the street, the affair was over. The Cossacks,
urging their ponies at the usual wild gallop, and firing wantonly up at
the houses, since the people who had been in the street had rushed for
cover, were almost out of sight; and on the road and sidewalk near at
hand were several killed and wounded,--mostly women,--besides Madame
Levinska, who had been the cause of it all, and had paid with her life.

She was a hideous sight, she who five minutes before had been so gay, so
audacious, so full of vivacity. The brutes had riddled her prostrate
body with bullets, slashed at it with their whips, trampled it under
their horses' hoofs; and it lay huddled, shapeless, with scarce a
semblance to humanity left in it.

I head a low, heartfelt cry, and saw Anne beside me, her fair face ashen
white, her eyes dilated with horror and compassion, as she stared at her
friend's corpse.

"Go back!" I said roughly. "You can do nothing for her. And we will see
to the rest; go back, I say. There may be more trouble."

"My duty is here," she said quietly, and passed on to bend over a woman
who was kneeling and screaming beside a small body,--that of a lad about
eight or nine years old,--which lay very still.

It was, as I well knew, useless to argue with An