86 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
assassin's knife or the dynamiter's shell ; and in regard to the captive whose physical strength is not equal to the spirit of the martyr, you find yourself hoping that he may now once for all be released from the living death to which his companions are journeying.
It was only a picture, and hardly that. It was the rough hurried sketch of a first idea ; yet there were lines of suggestion in it that might have belonged to the finished intentions of a great work. The woman was more than a sketch ; or, if not, the brush was an inspired one ; for there was a world of suffering and agony in it, mental and phy- sical. You would say to yourself as you gazed at it, lt that woman was once a lovely girl ; she has endured wrongs the most terrible ; she has fought against a cruel destiny and been worsted at every turn ; but she has one hope left the desire for revenge ; and the artist who has told us this must know her history ; and her history is a tragedy."
When you look close into the picture you saw what appeared to be confused and random strokes, wild splashes of color, faces and forms hinted at ; but standing apart a little way you found that the work took form and shape and became a living story of human persecution, with a background of dreary waste and clouds full of wintry anger. The woman's face of all others stood out an almost finished study.
" And last night," said the young artist, " I dreamt I was that poor wretch falling by the way, and that an angel interposed between that woman and the victim of a tyran- nous rule, and I was borne to heaven ; and when we reach- ed the sunshine, the angel was the woman and she was beautiful."
1 ' Yes, it is given to genius to have dreams and to see visions," said Dick Chetwynd, laying a friendly hand upon the young man's shoulder, and at the same time standing
