Freeman smiled cynically. “Whose misfortune it was to stand between you and his fortune. Yes, I remember.” “We dropped it then because the revolutionists refused to be involved. They will now be burning to avenge the general’s execution of their comrades. Might not this be a good time to take it up again?” Freeman’s sinister intelligence read what was in the prince’s mind. “With the two children out of the way, why wait years for the general’s natural death to give you possession of his fortune--eh, prince? Besides, if you waited, he might come to suspect your part in to-night’s business and will his fortune elsewhere. You are right--this is the very time.” “Then you will undertake the matter at once?” “I will begin on it to-morrow--as soon as Drexel is done for. Prince, allow me to congratulate you. Victory over the revolutionists--two vast fortunes the same as won to-night--a beautiful bride to-morrow--and the Prime Ministership certain to be yours! How the devil must love his favourite child!” The prince frowned, but his heart leaped at the summary of his success. They settled the further details of their plans, and an hour later Freeman, in coarse prison clothes, was thrust into the dungeon with Sonya and Borodin. CHAPTER XXV A DESPERATE PLAN The death silence that broods over the sombre dungeons of Peter and Paul brooded also over the library of Sabatoff. Drexel and the Keeper of the Seals sat looking each at the other’s drawn face, or paced the room with frantic strides, now and then glancing at the cold impassive clock whose ticking seemed the relentless footsteps of the approaching hour when Sonya and Borodin must mount the scaffold. They had nothing to say to each other. They could do nothing. They could only dumbly wait till the clock knelled four. And never a dream had either of them of the deadly intelligence Freeman was even now subtly drawing from the condemned pair--that at almost the same hour the end came in the Fortress, so Freeman planned, the end would also come here. Eight!... Nine!... Ten! As if revealed by lightning flashes, Drexel had swift visions of Sonya. He saw her in her dungeon, now and then lifting her head to listen to the slow pacing of the death watch at her door, or to the tower of the Fortress Cathedral, far up in the night, chiming “The Glory of God in Zion”; saw a look of despair darken her face as she thought how near her end was, how little she had done, how desperate was her people’s need; saw her led forth from her cell and through the silent corridors of this great catacomb whose tenants were the living dead, and out to where waited the gallows-tree; saw her mount the steps, her face white but calm, and lighted with a glory as though granted a Mosaic vision of the land she might not enter. And then he saw---- He gave a low cry. Sabatoff glanced at him but did not speak. “Can we not do something?” Drexel moaned. “What?” “Oh, anything! Anything!”