“You have preserved your martial curtness, I see. I’m glad it wasn’t serious, since you are so constructed that you can’t bring yourself to shoot a few of them down to cool their blood. Ah! You can flatter yourself that your father and you were and are merciful proprietors! But, mark my words, my boy, you will get yourself shaken out of the saddle if you continue to ride without a martingale. The efforts of our worthy agitators will be crowned with success sooner or later; never doubt it; and when you have to call in a _sotnia_ or two of whole-hearted Kossàks in order to prevent murder and sudden death, those _mujiks_ of yours will rue the day when you gave them their head so imprudently. Here I am, however, galloping my favorite hobby again, instead of thinking of your _Lesghise_. Let me see--an English officer, did you say?” He raised himself from the downy depths of his great arm-chair, and hobbled--for he had a gouty foot--to a large safe in the corner, draped and concealed beneath a Persian silk fabric that had the bloom of a ripe plum upon its soft folds. Refusing Basil’s aid, he opened the ponderous steel door, turned on an electric bulb near by, and after a few moments’ search returned to his seat, holding in his hand a thick-set volume bound in dark-green morocco, and gold-lettered at the back “Daily Journal.” “Here,” he laughed, “behold the heart of hearts of a police tyrant, the _sacro-sanctum_ of his labors--a _précis_ of great and minute events that may or may not come to a head and endanger the peace of the Empire! Nobody, until now, has ever seen even the outside of this spicy little work.” Basil inclined his head to thank the General for his flattering confidence, and sat immovable while his companion flipped over the pages covered from top to bottom with close, small-writ lines, interspersed here and there with annotations in red ink, as he could clearly discern from where he sat. Half an hour passed in complete silence, Basil lighting one cigarette from the butt of another, the General poring tirelessly over his patient handiwork. On a console a large malachite clock--an Imperial gift of gratitude--between two superb vases of the same luscious-looking stone, suddenly rang out an admirable rendition of the bells of St. Isaac’s, and Basil listened with curious attention and a sort of retrospective enjoyment, as if the harmony belonged to a happy life he liked to have recalled to him; but that had passed away for ever. The final cadences of the Northern midnight, like the soul in music of snowy Russia, died away upon the air of the high-ceiled library: a room stamped, so to speak, with the General’s powerful individuality expressed in bronze and carven wood and trophies of arms, gorgeous textiles from far regions, and antique tapestries; and the old man, with two fingers between the pages of his “Daily Journal,” suddenly looked up.