ared that
she was drowned. You have brought me back to life."

"Who are you?" I asked roughly.

"I am a man from Archangel," he said simply; "a Russian man."

"What is your name?"

"Ourganeff."

"Ourganeff!--and hers is Sophie Ramusine. She is no wife of yours. She
has no ring."

"We are man and wife in the sight of Heaven," he said solemnly, looking
upwards. "We are bound by higher laws than those of earth." As he spoke
the girl slipped behind me and caught me by the other hand, pressing it
as though beseeching my protection. "Give me up my wife, sir," he went
on. "Let me take her away from here."

"Look here, you--whatever your name is," I said sternly; "I don't want
this wench here. I wish I had never seen her. If she died it would be
no grief to me. But as to handing her over to you, when it is clear she
fears and hates you, I won't do it. So now just clear your great body
out of this, and leave me to my books. I hope I may never look upon your
face again."

"You won't give her up to me?" he said hoarsely.

"I'll see you damned first!" I answered.

"Suppose I take her," he cried, his dark face growing darker.

All my tigerish blood flushed up in a moment. I picked up a billet of
wood from beside the fireplace. "Go," I said, in a low voice; "go quick,
or I may do you an injury." He looked at me irresolutely for a moment,
and then he left the house. He came back again in a moment, however, and
stood in the doorway looking in at us.

"Have a heed what you do," he said. "The woman is mine, and I shall have
her. When it comes to blows, a Russian is as good a man as a Scotchman."

"We shall see that," I cried, springing forward, but he was already
gone, and I could see his tall form moving away through the gathering
darkness.

For a month or more after this things went smoothly with us. I never
spoke to the Russian girl, nor did she ever address me. Sometimes when
I was at work in my laboratory she would slip inside the door and sit
silently there watching me with her great eyes. At first this intrusion
annoyed me, but by degrees, finding that she made no attempt to distract
my attention, I suffered her to remain. Encouraged by this concession,
she gradually came to move the stool on which she sat nearer and nearer
to my table, until after gaining a little every day during some weeks,
she at last worked her way right up to me, and used to perch herself
beside me whenever I worked. In this position she us