which I supposed was due to his rank, in spite of the greasy clothes he wore.  Since the explosion an indefinable change has come over these workmen.  They salute the Prince still when we meet them on the street, but there is in their attitude a certain sly sympathy, if I may so term it; a bond of camaraderie which is implied in their manner rather than expressed.  Jack says this is all fancy on my part, but I don’t think it is.  These men imagine that Prince Ivan Lermontoff, who lives among them and dresses like them, is concocting some explosive which may yet rid them of the tyrants who make their lives so unsafe.  All this would not matter, but what does matter is the chemical reaction, as I believe Jack would term it, which has taken place among the authorities.  The authorities undoubtedly have their spies among the working-men, and know well what they are thinking about and talking about.  I do not believe they were satisfied with the explanations Jack gave regarding the disaster.  I have tried to impress upon Jack that he must be more careful in walking about the town, and I have tried to persuade him, after work, to dress like the gentleman he is, but he laughs at my fears, and assures me that I have gone from one extreme to the other in my opinion of St. Petersburg.  First I thought it was like all other capitals; now I have swung too far in the other direction.  He says the police of St. Petersburg would not dare arrest him, but I’m not so sure of that.  A number of things occur to me, as usual, too late.  Russia, with her perfect secret service system, must know that Prince Lermontoff has been serving in the British Navy.  They know he returned to St. Petersburg, avoids all his old friends, and is brought to their notice by an inexplicable explosion, and they must be well aware, also, that he is in the company of the man who fired the shell at the rock in the Baltic, and that he himself served on the offending cruiser.

“As to my own affairs, I must say they are progressing slowly but satisfactorily; nevertheless, if Jack would leave St. Petersburg, and come with me to London or New York, where he could carry on his experiments quite as well, or even better than here, I should depart at once, even if I jeopardized my own prospects.”

The next letter, some time later, began: 

“Your two charming notes to me arrived here together.  It is very kind of you to write to a poor exile and cheer him in his banishment.  I should like to see that dell where you have swung your hammock.  Beware of Hendrick Hudson’s men, so delightfully written of by Washington Irving.  If they offer you anything to drink, don’t you take it.  Think how disastrous it would be to all your friends if you went to sleep in that hammock for twenty years.  It’s the Catskills I want to see now rather than Niagara Falls.  Your second letter containing the note from Captain Kempt to Jack was at once delivered to him.  What on earth has the genial Captain written to effect such a transformation