BY ORDER OF THE CZAR. 25
could he hope to escape? He was now known to the police, denounced by Negrusz a sleuth hound of the St. Petersburg Detective Force, who had found reason to suspect Ferrari about the time of the murder of the Czar. While, however, he was making up his mind to act, Ferrari, in the very house where Negrusz thought he had him safe, had managed to disappear, which was sufficient evidence to satisfy Negrusz if ever he again encountered him. From that moment Ferrari had assumed one of his various dis- guises, which he had only laid aside on his way to Czar- ovna, and this was the last visit he had intended to pay to his friends in Southern Russia.
Ferrari had, for several years, been associated with the propagandists ; but until this night his hand had shed no blood in the Nihilistic cause, and now that he had whetted his knife he felt a thirst for more.
What should he do ? Take advantage of the disturbance and sensation of the affair at the Klosstocks to sneak back into the Ghetto and find shelter there ? Or make his way to some distant village ? Or seek refuge for a time in the adjacent woods ?
There was a certain Count Stravensky, a landowner near Czarovna, of whom Ferrari had in secret conclave heard as " one of us." If he only knew whether he might trust the count ! If he only knew where to find his place !
This Count Stravensky was one of the old nobility, who had been grossly insulted by the Pristav of the district during a search for secret printing presses, and piqued at the treatment his complaint had received, and nettled at his exclusion from Court, he had indeed joined the forces of that vast agitation which was shaking the social order of Russia to its foundations. As the count is des- tined to figure in these columns, it may be well to refer to the peculiar kind of persecution to which even the highest as well as the lowliest of the land are subjected Jew and
