neath the ikon, fast asleep.

In a few moments the door from the hall opened hastily, and a woman's
voice whispered in frightened haste:

"My lady! Khazyaceka! His Excellency Prince Michael is coming up-stairs!
He is almost here!"

CHAPTER I

THE CZAR'S BALL

After the night of what she came gradually to call the Holy Dream, the
years passed more swiftly, with less of inward tumult, for Sophia
Ivanovna Gregoriev. It was now the close of the year 1851; and the reign
of the Iron Czar was wavering towards its dark end. Meantime the son of
the chief of the secret section in Moscow was eleven years and three
months old: a straight-limbed, quiet child, the son of his mother. And
all Sophia's recent life, that life which had entwined itself wholly
about the promised babe, was mingled the inexplicable strangeness of her
dream-memory. To her, New Year's night had become a sacred time; and she
loved to keep a vigil through it in her own, lonely way. This year,
however, it was to be marked in a different manner. For Michael
Gregoriev had planned that, on the first night of 1852, he, and perforce
his wife, should make a final effort to obtain that social recognition
which had never been the accompaniment of his political advancement.

At this time--as, indeed, to-day, there stood, in the south-central part
of trans-Moskva Moscow, only two private buildings of any note. One of
these was the low-spreading palace of the Governor; the other that of
Prince Michael Petrovitch Gregoriev. The first had stood in its gardens
for a century and a half. The other was nearly fifty years older. The
dwelling of the Gregorievs was at some distance from its stately
neighbor, however; for it stood on the southeast corner of the Konnaia
Square, approachable by carriage only through the Serpoukhovskaia. Its
surroundings were of the humblest sort; for it was a long way south of
the Merchants' quarter, and so far from the sacred precincts of the
Kremlin that the voice of Ivan Veliki had melted into an echo ere it
reached the Gregoriev gateway.

It is certain that neither age nor environment made this old place less
grewsomely interesting: this ancient dwelling of a family whose unsavory
annals were lost in the gloom of Tatar rule. The Gregorievs were closely
bound to the gloomy stone pile; and would dwell there, in all
probability, as long as their line continued. Michael, the present
Prince, was loyal to his house. Yet its situation was