oice.

"Very well," I said, stating who I was.

"Then listen, please. The message he has written reads: 'Colonel
Ivan Svetchine has been tried by court martial, which sat until half an
hour ago. He has been condemned on a charge of dealing with the enemy and
revealing military secrets to Germany, and ordered to be executed for
treason. The execution is fixed to take place in the Peter and Paul
Fortress at dawn on Saturday.'"

I replaced the telephone receiver with a heavy heart. Yet another
innocent man was to die as victim of Rasputin's overweening vanity and
evil influence in every quarter.

When I entered and told the monk, who was already in bed in a
half-drunken state, he merely turned over and continued snoring.

On Friday night, when, as usual, we had returned from Tsarskoe-Selo in
one of the Imperial motor-cars, I was told that a lady was waiting to see
the Starets, but she would give no name. She was persistent that she must
see him, and had already waited nearly three hours.

When I entered the waiting-room, a small chamber at the end of a
corridor, I found it to be the wife of the condemned man. She was dressed
in dead black, her beautiful face tear-stained and deathly pale.

"Ah! Monsieur Rajevski!" she cried, rushing towards me. "You know
me--Madame Svetchine--eh?"

"Yes, madame," I said. "I remember you."

"You will let me see him--won't you?" she cried in great distress, as she
gripped my hand nervously. "He has, I hope, forgiven me; surely he----"

"I gave him your letter," I said.

"Yes--and what did he say?" she gasped in eagerness.

"Well, the truth is that he said nothing," I replied, adding: "He was
much occupied with other things."

"Ah! I must see him!" cried the frantic woman. "I was wrong to speak as I
did. The Father is the great power in Russia. I must throw myself upon
his mercy."

I promised to take her to him, and left her to inform Rasputin of the
arrival of his expected visitor.

With an evil glint in those terrible eyes of his, he rubbed his hands
together.

"Good, Feodor!" he said, striding across the room. "I will see the woman.
Oh, yes, if she wishes to see me I will not deny her that pleasure," he
added with biting sarcasm. Truly, he was weird and horrible in the hour
of his triumph.

A few moments later I ushered the pale, wan woman in black into his
presence.

"Holy Father!" she cried wildly, "forgive me--say that you forgive the
unconsidered words of a weak