ect that perhaps they had been
swindled. Foremost among these was the sinister turncoat Shuiski,
who had not derived from his perjury all the profit he expected,
who resented, above all, to see Basmanov--who had ever been his
rival--invested with a power second only to that of the Tsar himself.
Shuiski, skilled in intrigue, went to work in his underground, burrowing
fashion. He wrought upon the clergy, who in their turn wrought upon the
populace, and presently all was seething disaffection under a surface
apparently calm.

The eruption came in the following May, when Maryna, the daughter of
the Palatine of Sandomir, made her splendid entry into Moscow, the
bride-elect of the young Tsar. The dazzling procession and the feasting
that followed found little favour in the eyes of the Muscovites, who now
beheld their city aswarm with heretic Poles.

The marriage was magnificently solemnized on the 18th of May, 1606.
And now Shuiski applied a match to the train he had so skilfully laid.
Demetrius had caused a timber fort to be built before the walls
of Moscow for a martial spectacle which he had planned for the
entertainment of his bride. Shuiski put it abroad that the fort was
intended to serve as an engine of destruction, and that the martial
spectacle was a pretence, the real object being that from the fort the
Poles were to cast firebrands into the city, and then proceed to the
slaughter of the inhabitants.

No more was necessary to infuriate an already exasperated populace.
They flew to arms, and on the night of the 29th of May they stormed
the Kremlin, led on by the arch-traitor Shuiski himself, to the cry of
"Death to the heretic! Death to the impostor!"

They broke into the palace, and swarmed up the stairs into the Tsar's
bedchamber, slaying the faithful Basmanov, who stood sword in hand to
bar the way and give his master time to escape. The Tsar leapt from
a balcony thirty feet to the ground, broke his leg, and lay there
helpless, to be dispatched by his enemies, who presently discovered him.

He died firmly and fearlessly protesting that he was Demetrius
Ivanovitch. Nevertheless, he was Grishka Otrepiev, the unfrocked monk.

It has been said that he was no more than an instrument in the hands of
priestcraft, and that because he played his part badly he met his
doom. But something more he was. He was an instrument indeed, not of
priestcraft, but of Fate, to bring home to Boris Godunov the hideous
sins that sta