"Not to any nihilist?" 

 "Alexander, Alexis, you and I are the only living beings who ever heard of it. No one else has ever known of it." 

 "Will you pardon me, prince, if I tell you that you are mistaken?" 

 "Mistaken! Do you mean, Mr. Derrington, that you doubt my word?" 

 He got upon his feet and I saw that he was angry, believing that I had wantonly offended him. I arose also and began to pace up and down the room taking care that each turn would bring me nearer to the heavy curtains which hung about one of the great windows. The prince repeated his question, this time in a louder and angrier tone than before, and when I made no reply was about to leave the room; but I made a sign that compelled him to pause. At the same instant, being sufficiently near the curtain, I made a quick leap forward and with all my strength struck with my fist the exact point behind which I thought the head of the concealed person should be located. 

 My aim was true and the blow was sufficient, for the body behind the curtain crashed against the hardwood casing of the window and then sank to the floor, motionless, and in another instant I had dragged into view the senseless form of a man in the livery of the palace servants—a man whom the prince instantly recognized as a trusted servitor of the czar—one who had been told that a guest was expected to occupy that chamber, and who had been detailed to wait upon me—one who had been especially selected for his loyalty and discretion. 

 "That man heard and knew, and to-morrow the nihilists would have heard and known. Let us hope that they do not already know more than they should," I said, indicating the spy, and smiling up at the prince. 

 The fellow was evidently not a Russian. He was a tall man, lithe and sinewy rather than muscular, but he had a handsome, Patrician face; and despite his condition of insensibility, or perhaps because of it, he seemed strangely out of place in the predicament in which he was now discovered. 

 It was an extremely fortunate thing that I had become sensible of his presence in the room almost from the first, and that I had been able, therefore, to direct the conversation and my line of conduct, to the point of the present denouement. I could realize just how shocked Prince Michael was by the event; just how puzzled his own reasoning powers were for the moment, because of this discovery of a spy concealed in the 

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