The wait is prolonged. Suddenly Yourovsky re-enters the room with seven Austro-Germans and two of his friends, Commissaries Ermakof and Vaganof, accredited executioners of the _Tchrezvytchaïka_. Medvedief is also present. Yourovsky comes forward and says to the Czar: “Your men have tried to save you but haven’t succeeded, and we are forced to put you to death.” He immediately raises his revolver and fires point-blank at the Czar, who falls dead. This is the signal for a general discharge of revolvers. Each of the murderers has chosen his victim. Yourovsky has reserved for himself the Czar and Czarevitch. For most of the prisoners death is instantaneous. But Alexis Nicolaïevitch is moaning feebly. Yourovsky finishes him off with a shot from his revolver. Anastasie Nicolaïevna is only wounded, and begins to scream as the murderers approach; she is killed by their bayonets. Anna Demidova, too, has been spared, thanks to the cushions which she holds in front of her. She rushes about, and finally falls under the bayonets of the assassins. The depositions of the witnesses have made it possible for the enquiry to reconstruct the ghastly scene of the massacre in all its details. These witnesses are Paul Medvedief,[76] one of the murderers; Anatole Yakimof, who was certainly present at the drama, although he denies it, and Philip Proskouriakof, who describes the crime from the story of other spectators. All three were members of the guard at Ipatief’s house. * * * * * When all is over, the commissaries remove from the victims their jewels, and the bodies are carried, with the help of sheets and the shafts of a sledge, to a motor-wagon which is waiting at the courtyard door, between the two wooden fences. They have to hurry for fear of the dawn. The funeral procession crosses the still-sleeping town and makes for the forest. Commissary Vaganof rides ahead, as a chance encounter must be avoided. Just as they are approaching the clearing for which they are making, he sees a wagon driven by peasants coming towards him. It is a woman of the village of Koptiaki, who set out in the night with her son and daughter-in-law to sell fish in the town. He orders them to turn round and go home. To make doubly sure he goes with them, galloping alongside the cart, and forbids them under pain of death to turn round or look behind them. But the peasant woman has had time to catch a glimpse of the great dark object coming up behind the horseman. When she gets back to the village she tells what she has seen. The puzzled peasants start out to reconnoitre, and run into a cordon of sentries stationed in the forest.