land was flocking to the house of Wisniowiecki to do honour to this
false son of Ivan the Terrible, that Boris found the chief cause of
uneasiness. There was famine in Moscow, and empty bellies do not make
for loyalty. Then, too, the Muscovite nobles did not love him. He had
ruled too sternly, and had curbed their power. There were men like Basil
Shuiski who knew too much--greedy, ambitious men, who might turn
their knowledge to evil account. The moment might be propitious to
the pretender, however false his claim. Therefore Boris dispatched a
messenger to Wisniowiecki with the offer of a heavy bribe if he would
yield up the person of this false Demetrius.

But that messenger returned empty-handed. He had reached Bragin too
late. The pretender had already left the place, and was safely lodged
in the castle of George Mniszek, the Palatine of Sandomir, to whose
daughter Maryna he was betrothed. If these were ill tidings for Boris,
there were worse to follow soon. Within a few months he learned from
Sandomir that Demetrius had removed to Cracow, and that there he had
been publicly acknowledged by Sigismund III. of Poland as the son of
Ivan Vassielivitch, the rightful heir to the crown of Russia. He
heard, too, the story upon which this belief was founded. Demetrius had
declared that one of the agents employed by Boris Godunov to procure
his murder at Uglich had bribed his physician Simon to perform the deed.
Simon had pretended to agree as the only means of saving him. He had
dressed the son of a serf, who slightly resembled Demetrius, in garments
similar to those worn by the young prince, and thereafter cut the lad's
throat, leaving those who had found the body to presume it to be
the prince's. Meanwhile, Demetrius himself had been concealed by the
physician, and very shortly thereafter carried away from Uglich, to be
placed in safety in a monastery, where he had been educated.

Such, in brief, was the story with which Demetrius convinced the court
of Poland, and not a few who had known the boy at Uglich came forward
now to identify with him the grown man, who carried in his face so
strong a resemblance to Ivan the Terrible. That story which Boris now
heard was soon heard by all Russia, and Boris realized that something
must be done to refute it.

But something more than assurances--his own assurances--were necessary
if the Muscovites were to believe him. And so at last Boris bethought
him of the Tsarina Maria, the moth