“He will know if we do not go away again,” said Katerin. “How are we to fool him on that?” “Toosh! Who is to suspect that the two peasants who came this morning to pay me money were his Excellence the General and his daughter? It is how you get out again, as Dazo sees it, that gives me troubles. But I shall put you in rooms and no names in the book for the spies. So we must fool that stupid one below. Wait here for me, Excellence.” The Jew unbolted the door with cautious fingers and looked down the hall. Then he went out and closed the door after him to look down the stairs. He saw Dazo lying on the bench, his back to the stove, apparently napping. “Dazo!” yelled Slipitsky frantically, at the same time beginning a wild caper like a dance, “Dazo! Stop the two—the old man and the woman with the cabbages! Stop them I say, or I am ruined for twenty rubles! Oh, oh, oh!” Dazo rolled off the bench and sat up, staring about him in bewilderment, startled out of a sound doze by the screams of Slipitsky. “What is the trouble?” called the youth. “What has happened now?” “Enough has happened!” cried Slipitsky. “The two peasants who came in with the cabbages to pay me money! Stop them! Oh, I am ruined!” “But I saw no one!” cried Dazo. “I tell you no one has come in or gone out from this place while——” “Stop the talk and run!” screamed Slipitsky, wringing his hands in agony. “I signed the receipt but the rubles they gave me were bad! Twenty rubles, I say, I lose! They just went out the door while you were dreaming of the wife you beat in Irkutsk! They just went out the door! Run for them and drag them back by their hair! Run, run—hurry!” “You are crazy,” muttered Dazo, but he reached for his coat to the wooden hook on the wall, not sure now that the two strangers had not evaded him while he was asleep. “I am crazy for my twenty rubles!” raged Slipitsky, and Dazo pulled on his coat and dashed into the street. Slipitsky ran back to his little office and let himself in. “Come!” he commanded. “I will put you in rooms, now that I have sent that fool of a Dazo down the Sofistkaya looking for you.” Michael and Katerin followed him down the long hall. The Jew put a big brass key into a door, and, turning the lock, thrust Michael into the room and handed him the key. “Keep quiet till I come with food, and if any one knocks do not answer. We have fooled that fox of a Dazo, and we shall fool the Ataman!” And the old Jew put his fingers to his lips against the thanks which Michael and Katerin would have expressed, slipped out through the door and was gone, wailing through the hall about the fictitious twenty rubles which he had lost by the carelessness of Dazo, the spy. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XIII KATERIN PLANS TO MEET THE AMERICAN