Early in the siege the major in command, with two or three officers, yielding to a spirit of fear strange in English soldiers, proposed in council an unconditional surrender. "We were sent here," said Paul, darkly and haughtily, "to hold the fortress, not to cede it. If you do not know your duty, Major, there are those who will teach it you. I will shoot the first man that talks again of surrender, be he commandant or be he private." And without delay Paul took strong measures. He put his own superior, together with the recreant officers, under arrest, and he himself took the command. Upon this there arose from the garrison, when informed of what had taken place, a ringing British cheer that startled the enemy in their distant entrenchments. Paul henceforth was the soul of the fight,--at the head of every sortie, charging the enemy regardless of their number. The garrison attributed his conduct to sheer devilry; it was, in truth, the despairing mood of a man bent on finding death. Ever amid the clash of arms he seemed to see before him the beautiful face of her whom he had lost, and scarcely conscious of the fact, he would cry "Barbara! Barbara!" to the bewilderment of his men. The wild Afghans shrank back in dismay whenever the "Feringhee devil" turned his dripping sabre in their direction, deeming the "bar-bar-a" uttered by him to be a magic spell capable of dealing death around. When at last the long-desired relief came, and the story of the heroic defence of Tajapore became known to the world, Paul found that he had unintentionally become a famous person. At the end of his second year in India Paul made a remarkable discovery. Up till that time he had entertained the belief that Cardinal Ravenna had perished in the Dalmatian earthquake, though strange as it may appear, he had not thought of putting his opinion to the proof by ascertaining whether the Sacred College had actually lost a member in the year '45. However, being in the club-room at Poonah one day, he happened to be glancing over a continental newspaper, when his eye was caught by the following paragraph,-- "The Pope has been pleased to appoint Cardinal Ravenna to the archiepiscopal see of Slavowitz." Paul laid down the paper trembling with new hope. If the cardinal had survived the earthquake, why should not Barbara likewise? Could it be that she was really alive? Till that moment Paul had been ignorant of the name of Slavowitz, but a reference to a dictionary of geography informed him that it was the capital of Czernova, the latter being a small independent state on the borders of Austria and Russia. He resolved to set off immediately for this principality, for the purpose of interviewing the dark-dealing cardinal in whose breast was contained the secret of Barbara's history.