ree candles, fronted them as they
entered, and the screen glittered with gold. A priest knelt before the
altar, singing in a thin, cracked voice, so unmusically that the girl
winced. Save for the priest and the party, the building was empty.

He rose at the sound of their footsteps, and stood waiting their
approach. He was a young and singularly ugly man, and suspicion and fear
were written plainly on his face.

"God save you, little brother of saints!" said Malinkoff.

"God save you, my son!" replied the priest mechanically. "What is it you
want?"

"We need food and rest for this little lady, also hot coffee, and we
will pay well."

Malinkoff knew that this latter argument was necessary. The priest shook
his head.

"All the brethren have gone away from the monastery except Father
Joachim, who is a timid man, Father Nicholas and myself," he said. "We
have very little food and none to spare. They have eaten everything we
had, and have killed my pretty chickens."

He did not say who "they" were, and Malinkoff was not sufficiently
curious to inquire. He knew that the priests were no longer the power in
the land that they were in the old days, and that there had been
innumerable cases where the villagers had risen and slaughtered the men
whose words hitherto had been as a law to them. A third of the
monasteries in the Moscow Government had been sacked and burnt, and
their congregations and officers dispersed.

He was surprised to find this beautiful chapel still intact, but he had
not failed to notice the absence of the sacred vessels which usually
adorned the altar, even in the midnight celebration.

"But can you do nothing for our little mama?" asked Malinkoff.

The priest shook his head.

"Our guests have taken everything," he said. "They have even turned
Brother Joachim from the refectory."

"Your guests?" said Malinkoff.

The priest nodded.

"It is a great prince," he said in awe. "Terrible things are happening
in the world, Antichrist is abroad, but we know little of such things in
the monastery. The peasants have been naughty and have broken down our
wall, slain our martyred brother Mathias--we could not find his body,"
he added quickly, "and Brother Joachim thinks that the Jews have eaten
him so that by the consecrated holiness of his flesh they might avert
their eternal damnation."

"Who is your prince?" asked Malcolm, hope springing in his breast.

There were still powerful factions in Russia