“And you—­what about you?” asked Paul, with a little laugh—­the laugh that one brave man gives when he sees another do a plucky thing.

“I!  Oh, I am all right!  I am nobody; I am hated of all the peasants because I am your steward and so hard—­so cruel.  That is my certificate of harmlessness with those that are about the Emperor.”

Paul made no answer.  He was not of an argumentative mind, being a large man, and consequently inclined to the sins of omission rather than to the active form of doing wrong.  He had an enormous faith in Karl Steinmetz, and, indeed, no man knew Russia better than this cosmopolitan adventurer.  Steinmetz it was who pricked forward with all speed, wearing his hardy little horse to a drooping semblance of its former self.  Steinmetz it was who had recommended quitting the travelling carriage and taking to the saddle, although his own bulk led him to prefer the slower and more comfortable method of covering space.  It would almost seem that he doubted his own ascendency over his companion and master, which semblance was further increased by a subtle ring of anxiety in his voice while he argued.  It is possible that Karl Steinmetz suspected the late Princess Natasha of having transmitted to her son a small hereditary portion of that Slavonic exaltation and recklessness of consequence which he deplored.

“Then you turn back at Tver?” enquired Paul, at length breaking a long silence.

“Yes; I must not leave Osterno just now.  Perhaps later, when the winter has come, I will follow.  Russia is quiet during the winter, very quiet.  Ha, ha!”

He shrugged his shoulders and shivered.  But the shiver was interrupted.  He raised himself in his saddle and peered forward into the gathering darkness.

“What is that,” he asked sharply, “on the road in front?”

Paul had already seen it.

“It looks like a horse,” he answered—­“a strayed horse, for it has no rider.”

They were going west, and what little daylight there was lived on the western horizon.  The form of the horse, cut out in black relief against the sky, was weird and ghostlike.  It was standing by the side of the road, apparently grazing.  As they approached it, its outlines became more defined.

“It has a saddle,” said Steinmetz at length.  “What have we here?”

The beast was evidently famishing, for, as they came near, it never ceased its occupation of dragging the wizened tufts of grass up, root and all.

“What have we here?” repeated Steinmetz.

And the two men clapped spurs to their tired horses.

The solitary waif had a rider, but he was not in the saddle.  One foot was caught in the stirrup, and as the horse moved on from tuft to tuft it dragged its dead master along the ground.

CHAPTER II

BY THE VOLGA

“This is going to be unpleasant,” muttered Steinmetz, as he cumbrously left the saddle.  “That man is dead—­has been dead some days; he’s stiff.  And the horse has been dragging him face downward.  God in heaven! this will be unpleasant.”