66 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
chances of the coming of that glorious future of which many patriots were dreaming, and he knew better than to forfeit his place and position voluntarily and to no good. But for the knowledge that he was already deeply com- promised and might be charged at any moment, though he had every reason to believe his secret was well kept, he would have resisted the Governor's arrogant order. It would have been an inopportune moment to have defied the administrative authority the town on the eve of open revolt, the Governor anxious to signalize the opening of his government.
The count ground his teeth and vowed to himself as speedy a vengeance as a calm discretion would permit him to take in the interest of the great cause to which he was secretly pledged. He had been publicly insulted; but that was as nothing compared with the outrage which had been committed upon the beautiful girl with whom he had spoken on the previous day upon the road he was now traversing. While he bit his lips and clenched his right hand with rage and indignation, the tears streamed down his rugged cheeks, as the two pictures of human misery rose up before him the pale, lovely face of the Jew's daughter as he had seen her on the previous day, her great violet eyes full of mute appeal, her bronzed locks in picturesque masses about her face, her red lips and white teeth, her fine noble figure, and the mad, bloodshot eyes that had met his gaze near the scaffold, to which she had been brutally and ruthlessly condemned.
" Are we men or fiends that we can do such deeds ? What sort of miserable cowards are we to stand by and see them done ? "
His hand upon his sword, he turned his horse in the direction of the once happy but now wretched town of Czarovna, but only to wheel round again and continue his ride home. He resolved, however, if the poor creature
