On reaching Moscow, Yakovlev must have had some doubts about the sincerity of the Tsik. Anyhow, he resigned his commissaryship and eventually joined the White forces, and then mysteriously disappeared. An interview with him, published in a Red organ at the time of his journey in charge of the Imperial captives, contains some very instructive features. It passes over in silence the attempt to evade Ekaterinburg and falsifies the dates of arrival and departure at Tiumen so that the glaring discrepancy between this and the arrival at Ekaterinburg (two days instead of half a day) should not be noticed; ignores, in fact, all the local soviet intrigues and protests, quite needlessly, that he did not mention politics in his conversation with Nicholas. Vasily Vasilievich Yakovlev had been a naval officer and was therefore of Russian noble blood. He had committed some political offence, had spent many years abroad--in Berlin. Who were his real chiefs? It is not difficult to guess. Two other commissaries went to Tobolsk to remove the remainder of the family--Tatiana had been left in charge of the invalid and household. Olga, the eldest daughter, did not enjoy her mother’s confidence in the same degree. She took far more interest in literature than in the practical affairs of life, and would hide herself in a corner with a book or tell stories to the soldiers, utterly forgetting domestic trifles. Anastasia, still a child, and rather backward, could be left in Tatiana’s care. Maria went with the Imperial couple because she was too grown-up to remain under her sister’s care. She was a very attractive girl, and it used to be rather a joke among the grand duchesses to twit her on her “conquests” among the Komisars. The two successors of Yakovlev were:--A sailor named Hohriakov and a certain Rodionov. The latter was afterwards identified as a former gendarme officer. He used to inspect the passports at the German frontier, and served some time in the Russian Embassy at Berlin as a spy on Russian revolutionaries. When taxed with it, he admitted the impeachment. The sailor, a typical good-natured peasant, soon made friends with all the children. Rodionov, on the contrary, went out of his way to torment and ill-treat them. He forbade the grand duchesses to lock their doors at night, informing them with a leer that he had a perfect right to come into their rooms whenever he liked. With every appearance of enjoyment, he announced that in Ekaterinburg they would have to observe stricter rules, which he himself had devised. Hohriakov was nominally senior to Rodionov, but the latter did what he pleased.