When the decision of the judges was at last confirmed by the Khan, the execution was summary. November 22, 1318, Kavgady saw Uzbek in the morning, and received the order to execute Michael. Toward midday, while the prince, who had grown mortally weary of life, was repeating the fifty-fifth psalm: “My heart is sore pained within me, and the terrors of death are fallen upon me,” an attendant rushed up, and cried: “Kavgady and Yuri are coming with a number of people.” “I know why they are coming,” said Michael. The two men halted on the market-place, at a distance of a stone’s throw from the prisoner’s tent, and Michael was summoned. The executioners seized him and threw him to the earth, but he sprang up quickly. They threw him again, beat him with fists, and then with their heels stamped his life out. When they had killed him, they put the corpse out on the steppe, where they left it. Yuri went to look at the body. “Why art thou looking?” asked Kavgady, reproachfully. “He was to thee as thy father. Have him covered!” One of Yuri’s men removed his upper garment and covered the body. Soon after this, Michael’s attendants came out, tied the corpse firmly to a plank, and then, by Yuri’s order, bore it to Moscow. CHAPTER XIV IVAN KALITÁ In 1319, Yuri returned from the Horde with the Khan’s patent making him Grand Prince. According to old Russian rules, he was equal to the sons of Prince Michael. If they were superior through inheritance from a father who had held the position of Grand Prince, a position which Yuri’s father had never held, he surpassed them through his grandfather Nevski, who was senior to their grandfather, Yaroslav. In descent, men might hold them equal. But Yuri surpassed the Tver prince in wealth, and in the number of his warriors, and with the patent of the Khan he became chief, and all yielded. Yuri hastened to Vladimir and took the throne, merely making a short halt at Moscow, to leave there Michael’s son Constantine, with his father’s boyars and servants. Yuri had taken Constantine from the Horde, partly as a relative, partly as a prisoner; the boyars were really prisoners. No one in Tver knew exactly what had taken place; all were in doubt and anxiety, and when Yuri’s return was reported, men were sent to Vladimir to discover the truth. They brought tidings to Tver that Prince Michael was dead and his body had been taken to Moscow and buried. As soon as Yuri appeared in Vladimir, Dmitri, Michael’s eldest son, took possession of Tver in accordance with the will of his father. Then he sent his younger brother, Alexander, to Yuri, to ask for the body of his father. Yuri refused at first to deliver it, but he at last consented, and the body was taken back to Tver.