“Thank you,” said Peter, and he rose, and bowed. “You shall find Kirsakoff,” said Michael, staring at his hand on the table. “By morning I shall know where he may be found—perhaps. We must not act hastily.” The palsied head was shaking gently, and the old man was lost again in thought. “Yes, yes,” Katerin put in hastily. Peter saw tears in her eyes. She followed after him as he turned to go back through the rooms, and they left Michael and Wassili alone. Peter stopped at his own door, and looking back over Katerin’s shoulder, saw against the light of the room he had just left, a shadow cross—and then the figure of Wassili peering after them. “Good-night,” said Katerin. She seemed nervous and worried. She also had caught a glimpse of the old _moujik_ outlined against the glow of her father’s lamp. Peter seized her hands in sudden impulse and pressed them heartily. “I cannot tell you of my gratitude, Vashka,” he whispered. “It was you who helped me in this—and I have waited long! You are going to persuade your father to tell me where I shall find Kirsakoff!” She gently drew away from him, and he released her hands. “I shall do what I can,” she whispered. “But take care—this house is full of enemies. If we are to defeat the Ataman, be wary. Bolt both your doors to-night!” Then she slipped away to her father. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XX THE BLOW PETER, alone once more in his room, found that a strange calmness had come to him once the secret of his purpose in returning to the Valley of Despair was in the keeping of two other persons. There was for him in that fact something of the relief of the confessional. For twenty years he had nursed in his soul the grievance of his father’s death, and his own imprisonment—nursed it most secretly, pent it up within his consciousness, till it seemed that his body had become a kind of culture tube of germinating hate. For the first time since he had left Chita as a boy, he found an easement of his soul burden. These people to whom he had told his story, understood his deepest emotions regarding his father. No American could ever have understood fully, Peter was well aware. Prison to an American implies disgrace, some sort of stain upon the character which is never fully lived down. But to this old exile, as Peter supposed Kirsakoff to be, Peter’s story was an honor to him. For the old man had suffered the horrors of the exile system, mixing, as it did, the highest type of Russian with the lowest—the thinker with the cutthroat.