my demand the bald-headed man simply smiled, and replied:

"My order is that you be conveyed to Schluesselburg. You will there have
plenty of leisure in which to repent not having replied to my questions."

To Schluesselburg! My heart fell within me. Once within that dreaded
fortress, the terrible oubliettes of which are below the surface of the
Lake Ladoga, my identity would be lost and I should be quickly forgotten.
From Schluesselburg no prisoner ever returned!

Would any of the conspiring trio, whose tool I had been, raise a finger
to save me? Or would they consider that having served their purpose it
would be to their advantage if my lips were closed?

"Schluesselburg!" I gasped. "No--no, not that!" I cried. "I am
innocent--quite innocent!"

"You give no proof of it," coldly replied the Chief of Police, rising as
a sign that the inquiry was at an end. "My orders are that you be sent to
Schluesselburg without delay." Then, turning to the two agents of the
Okhrana, he added: "You will report this to your director at
Tsarskoe-Selo. I will send my order to the Ministry for confirmation
to-night. Take the prisoner away!"

And next moment I was bundled down to a dirty cell in the basement, there
to await conveyance to that most dreaded of all the prisons in the
Empire.

By a single stroke of the pen I had been condemned to imprisonment for
life!

CHAPTER II

RASPUTIN ENTERS TSARSKOE-SELO

I CONFESS that I felt my position to be absolutely hopeless.

I was a political suspect, and therefore I knew full well that to attempt
to communicate with anyone outside was quite impossible. The Chief of
Police of Kazan, honestly believing that he was doing his duty and
unearthing a subtle plot against the life of the Empress, on account of
the revolver in my possession, had condemned me to imprisonment in the
Fortress of Schluesselburg. Its very name, dreaded by every Russian,
recurred to me as I recollected Kouropatkine's significant words. Had he
not threatened that, if I revealed one single word of the secret doings
of the holy Starets, my tongue would be cut out within those grim dark
walls of that prison of mystery?

We Russians had from our childhood heard of that sinister fortress, the
walls of which rise sheer from the black waters of Lake Ladoga--that
place where the cells of the political prisoners, victims of the thousand
and one intrigues of the Russian bureaucracy, consequent upon the
autocracy of