ne; so I went on with
my ambulance work in grim silence, keeping near her, and letting the
others go to and fro, helping the wounded into shelter and carrying away
the dead. Natalya had run out also and joined her mistress. Yossof was
not at hand; it was he whom we expected to bring the news we were
awaiting so eagerly. He had come with us to Warsaw, and though he lived
in the Ghetto among his Jewish kindred, was constantly back and forth.
He was invaluable as a messenger,--a spy some might call him,--although
he knew no language but Yiddish and Polack, and the queer Russian lingo
that was a mingling of all three. But of course he learned a great deal
from his fellow Jews. Hunted, persecuted, wretched as they are, the
Polish and Russian Jews always have, or can command, money, and the way
they get hold of news is nothing short of marvellous,--in the Warsaw
Ghetto, anyhow!

There was quite a crowd around us soon, as the people who had fled
before the Cossacks came back again,--weeping, gesticulating, shouting
imprecations on the Tzar, the Government, the soldiers,--as they always
did when they were excited; but, as usual, doing very little to help.

All at once there was a bigger tumult near at hand, and a mob came
pouring along the street, a disorderly procession of men and women and
little children, flaunting banners, waving red handkerchiefs, laughing,
crying, shouting, and singing, as if they were more than half delirious
with joy and excitement. And what was more remarkable, there were
neither police nor soldiers in sight, nor any sign of Loris or his men.
Many such processions occurred in Warsaw that day, when the great news
came,--news that was soon to be so horribly discounted and annulled;
and that, for me, was rendered insignificant, even in that first hour,
by the great tragedy that followed hard upon its coming,--the tragedy
that will overshadow all my life. Even after the lapse of years I can
scarcely bring myself to write of it, though every incident is stamped
indelibly on my brain. Clear before my eyes now rises Anne's face, as,
with her arm about the poor mother--who was half fainting--she turned
and looked at the joyous rabble.

"What is it?" she cried, and at the same instant Yossof hurried up, and
spoke breathlessly to her.

She listened to his message with parted lips, her eyes starry with the
light of ecstatic joy.

"What is it?" I asked in my turn, for I couldn't catch what Yossof said.

"It