in which I was now in the midst. I was looking about to find the
German _agent provocateur_, but I failed to find him. Perhaps, having
bidden the people to rise, he had himself escaped. Most probably.

Above us bullets whistled as the Cossacks came suddenly round a side
street and made a desperate attack upon the barricade I had entered only
a few minutes before. A dozen of those fighting for their freedom fell
back dead at my feet at the first volley. They had been on top of the
barricade, offering a mark to the troops of the Czar. Before us and
behind us there was firing, for at the rear of us was another
barricade. We were, in fact, between two deadly fires.

Revolver in hand, I stood ready to defend my own life. In those exciting
moments I disregarded the danger I ran from being struck in that
veritable hail of lead. Men fell wounded all around me, and there was
blood everywhere. A thin, dark-headed young fellow under thirty--a
Moscow student, I subsequently heard--seemed to be the ringleader, for
above the firing could be heard his shouts of encouragement.

"Fight! my comrades!" he cried, standing close to me and waving the red
flag he carried--the emblem of the Terror--"Down with the Czar! Kill the
vermin he sends to us! Long live Germany! Long live freedom! Kill them!"
he shrieked. "They have killed your wives and daughters. Men of
Ostrog--remember your duty to-day! Set an example to Russia. Do not let
the Moscow fiasco be repeated here. Fight! Fight on as long as you have
a drop of life-blood in you, and we shall win, we shall win! Down with
the Autocrat! Down with the----"

His sentence was never finished, for at that instant he reeled backwards
with half his face shot away by a Cossack bullet.

The situation was, for me, one of greatest peril. I had had no
opportunity of finding the governor of the town to present my
credentials, and thus obtain protection. The whole place was in open
revolt, and when the troops broke down the defences, as I saw they must
do sooner or later, then we should all be caught in a trap, and no
quarter would be given.

The massacre would be the same as at Moscow and many other towns in
Western Russia, wherein the populace had been shot down
indiscriminately, and official telegrams had been sent to Petersburg
reporting "order now reigns."

I sought shelter in a doorway, but scarcely had I done so than a bullet
embedded itself in the woodwork a few inches from my head. At the
b