In truth, the more he seemed to withdraw the more eager became all to make him accept. Priests, nobles, people, besieged him with their supplications. He refused, and again refused, and for six weeks kept all Russia in suspense. Not until he saw before him the highest grandees and clergy of the realm on their knees, tears in their eyes, in their hands the relics of the saints and the image of the Redeemer, did he yield what seemed a reluctant assent, and come forth from his cell to accept that throne which was the chief object of his desires. But Boris on the throne still resembled Macbeth. The memory of his crimes pursued him, and he sought to rule by fear instead of love. He endeavored, indeed, to win the people by shows and prodigality, but the powerful he ruled with a heavy hand, destroying all whom he had reason to fear, threatening the extinction of many great families by forbidding their members to marry, seizing the wealth of those he had ruined. The family of the Romanofs, allied to the line of Rurik, and soon to become pre-eminent in Russia, he pursued with rancor, its chief being obliged to turn monk to escape the axe. As monk he in time rose to the headship of the church. The peasantry, who had before possessed liberty of movement, were by him bound as serfs to the soil. Thousands of them fled, and an insupportable inquisition was established, as hateful to the landowners as to the serfs. All this was made worse by famine and pestilence, which ravaged Russia for three years. And in the midst of this disaster the ghost of the slain Dmitri rose to plague his murderer. In other words, one who claimed to be the slain prince appeared, and avenged the murdered child, his story forming one of the most interesting tales in the history of Russia. It is this which we have now to tell. About midsummer of the year 1603 Adam Wiszniowiecki, a Polish prince, angry at some act of negligence in a young man whom he had lately employed, gave him a box on the ear and called him by an insulting name. "If you knew who I am, prince," said the indignant youth, "you would not strike me nor call me by such a name." "Knew who you are! Why, who are you?" "I am Dmitri, son of Ivan IV., and the rightful czar of Russia." Surprised by this extraordinary statement, the prince questioned him, and was told a plausible story by the young man. He had escaped the murderer, he said, the boy who died being the son of a serf, who resembled and had been substituted for him by his physician Simon, who knew what Boris designed. The physician had fled with him from Uglitch and put him in the hands of a loyal gentleman, who for safety had consigned him to a monastery.