Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 36, Number 69, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 April 1904 — The Secret Dispatch [ARTICLE]

The Secret Dispatch

By JAMES GRANT

CHAPTER XIX. An exclamation of dismay ami grief escaped Ralgonie on beholding this appalling spectacle; the weird and ghastly Horror of which was enhanced by the uncertain light in which it was exhibited, and which imparted a wavering and almost life-like action to the corpse, ns with its long hair floating, head and arms pendent, it swayed to and fro in the morning wind ngninst the castle wall. “The Lord have mercy upon us! cried Basil Mierowitz, covering his face with Kis hands, and permitting the musket ■with which he had armed himself to fall ho the ground with a clash, which, together with his most mournful exclamation, alone broke the silence. “Behold.” said Bernikoff, In cruel trivmpli. “This is your emperor—now let him hend your troops. Doubtless he will make a liue figure on the imperial ■throne.”

“Oh'. Bernikoff.” exclaimed Basil, “you ■re like Judas, as we may see hint at Ih* Kazan Church —one hand on the t month denoting treachery, and the other •a a bag of money." “Thou best, lieutenant! my fingers know more of the grip of steel than of gold,” said the other ’ furiously, as he Marled the hilt of his broken saber at the speaker. “So —so —this has been yovir work and idedsion? Thou art a cruel judge; but aemember the law of Peter the Great—” “Which makes the judge answerable JH his decision. Then shall I content me, traitor, and be answerable for my decision as well as for its execution. I Hava done my duty to the Czarina.” - “Yon have done a deed for which hell most blush and angels weep,” was the forcible reply of Mierowitz. who seemed ao overcome by grief and horror as to stw* all self-possession; for he now ordered his men to disperse to the woods — to seek safety in flight; and then calmly taking off his sword and holt and sash, kt threw them on the ground, saying: “Since my imperial master is dead, further resistance would be vain in me. He was almost immediately afterward struck to the earth and made prisoner ky Ltent.Twh-ekin. who. with a party of. dismounted Cossacks, had sjjslen through -the casemates and galleries to a postern •pening on the rear of the iliawhridge, and these, after firing a confused volley with their pistols and musketoons. fell with their sharp crooked sabers upon the Movr thoroughly disheartened adherents as Mierowitz. Lieut. Usakoff and .Tagonski alone made any vigorous resistance, resolving hot to lie taken alive. Fighting desperately, almost back to Back, the former armed with the saber •f Mazeppa affd the"latter;with- a musket, and both bleeding from many wounds, they' were? driven through the onter barrier toward the town. On the ’pathway Jngouski stumbled over a commde and was taken; but Apollo Csakoff, With a shout in which triumph and despair were mingled, lenped into the Neva, the waters of which swept him away, wild he was seen no more by his puroners.

When Tsehekin's Cossacks joined in ftc melee with the fugitives, Balgonie ■prang through the wicket, sword in food, resolved to succor his friend nt all hazards, and fortunately arrived just in time to save him from the bulky giant Kioholus I’nulovitcb. who. with a clubfeed musket, was about to give him a Slow that must inevitably have proved ital. Pnulovitch lie ran through the heart, •ed spurning him off the blade with his toot, hurled the snorting ruffian to the gremud. and raised hi* friend, with the assistance of a soldier and Lieut. Tscliektn. “Made prisoner, and liv you. too, Carl!” said Basil, reproachfully and in a low voice, for lie was faint with Grounds nnd bruises. “By me. but to save you.” “Seek rather to save Natalie, if you va*.“ he whispered: "she is. she is ” .“Where, where';" said Balgonie, impetuously nnd imploringly. But there was m> reply. Basil had Sainted, and was borne into the Castle i*f Schlusselburg, a prisoner of state. ' Balgonie never saw the face of his Oriend again!

So ended for n time a scheme, the importance of 'which was only equaled by flu bold recklessness —the scheme of two eoteiltern Officers to revolutionize'tho vast •aspire of Russia. and to subvert the Sm dominion of Catharine II.: and such ir«* the terrible sequel to the "Secret iKspatch" of Halponie. I».y had completely broken when he ni summoned by HernikofT. Shudder* Sag as be jiassed through the court of Ok* castle nad under the very window •okere the corpse was yet sw items' j swarnfully to and fro in the morning I freeze, Charlie sought the presence of j toil detestable personage, the thunder of j artose wrath be feared was about to descend upou himself. He found the eobmel in bis shirt afeeres and almost covered with blood, srkiefa was flowing from a wound in his tmiHt and another i>n the head, from vrifceuce it was trickling to the ends of pas hos and snaky-gray mustaches. To toth of these cuts the barber was about An apple dressings, while the patient soVrrd h intself by scheming out some ■nrodful punishment for Jagoitski, who, vikb several others, bad fallen into bis ■estle hands. Balgonie, whose thoughts ran chiefly ■•• a how to discover and succor Natalie. sr»» roused to attention by Lernikofl' •f/Hu: grimly: “<VH Iv.inovitcb Unlgoiiic, for aiding to the cnidure of the rebel Mierowilz. ■ (bank you; suspicions 1 had. but they me* gone. You are now. perhaps; to re2Mta the Regiment of Xtnoieusko, and ■toil bear a dispatch from me to Lieut. <6hl Wcymnrn.nnd I,lent. Col. CitHchKto relating the ulfair of the Inst twelve Pmm. Vlasliet shall prepare it, and I mttM sign it Place a feather in the ■tot last the captain linger as lie did at (Boagal Nay, look not at me thus, Hcot, 4toi willed It that Prince Ivan should Ire jpi ia my charge; and the devil, together my duty to the Empress, inspired

me to destroy him. What is done is done, and is the will of God; and you know, or ought to know, our Muscovite proverb—the Czar is high, and God is every where!” “Three times lias this old reprobate mentioned that terrible name, and each; time bowing his sinful head!” thought Charlie, with disgust and wonder. “Hali!” resumed Bernikoff, pursuing his own thoughts,, and clenching his teeth in rage and pain, “did that suckling of ff lieutenant think to deceive me —I, who have been forty years in the Russian army, and have to deal with the most cunning scoundrels between the Black Stftnrnff the Bairlct Jngouski. too. I'll' fill his mouth with gunpowder, put a fuse betwoen tus' teeth and blow bis head off.” He gnashed his teeth with pain, and added. "Be ready to ride in an hour, captain; till then, leave me!”

CHAPTER XX. The empress' court of Secret Chancery soon decided on the fate of Basil Microwitz, liis father, and his cousin, Mariolizza, who had been passive, though suspected in the matter, had their cases taken into future consideration, so they were kept close prisoners white their property and possessions were given tip to pillage and military execution. Basil was condemned to lie broken alive upon the wheel; but the empress, who had a particular tenderness for handsome men, “mitignted his punishment to the less severe one of being beheaded.” A brief paragraph in the London Gazette of the 23d of October records this brave fellow’s death, just fourteen days alter his rash affair at Schlusselburg. “M. Mierowitz, in pursuance of his sentence, was publicly beheaded on Wednesday. last; he behaved at his execution as lie had done throughout the whole transaction with the greatest resignation. Six of the soldiers and underofficers who were engaged with him were so severely whipped that it is said three of them are since dead. Many more are to he punished. One/ Usakoff, a lieutenant, who was privy to the design, was accidentally drowned.” —Notwithstanding his rank and years, Mierowitz was retained in a dungeon among a number of miserable Russian rogues and Polish prisoners, clad in filthy sheepskin', many of them being afflicted with_..tbe terrible disease known as matted hair, which hung ovfr their necks in clotted lumps, every tube being swollen and dilated witli globules of blood, and there he died. The lower vaults of Schlusselburg were those built by Ivan the Terrible for the reception of a few of the revoluters of Novgorod, after he ha<l put twentyfive thousand of her citizens—to—tiro sword. They were prisons like the frightful cells of the Bastile; those of the Inquisition, or of old castles of the Middle Ages—a rival to that Chillon to which Byron's genius has given a greater name than ever its terrors won it. One of the lower vaults of Schlusselburg was a den, the floor of which was below the rocks whereon the seals of Ladoga basked in the sunshine, and which was consequently liable to be flooded during those inuu-

dntinns that, at certain seasons, overflow all the country for a great way north, so that no crops will grow upon the eminences’. Vaulted with stone, it was nearly square, aud measured twelve feet each way, with a floor that sloped down nt one end. having been unevenly hewn out when the rock was pierced: and from a portion of this rock sprang the solid arch of granite blocks which formed the roof. A narrow slit, six inches broad by twelve high, nnd having even in that small space a thick iron bar, admitted to the interior n feeble ray of light. This slit was partly built of stone, but its sill was the living rock of Schlusselburg. It opened toward the lake, but gave no prospect save the clouds. The prisoner, when seated on the stone bench which forined abed or seat alternately, could only see the changing hues of the sky, and know by the darkness which gradually obscured this mere shothole that day was passing away, and that another night, chill, dark, dreary and hopeless, was nt hand.

As the floor sloped down some twelve inches or more, the lower end was always full of water, into which the slime that gathered on the vault of the arch fell nt intervals with n regular splash that, to the silent and apparently forgotten prisoner, became maddening in its monotony of sound, by day nnd night, by morning and evening, by dawn nnd sunset. Then, as the tides rose and fell, or ns the waters of the vast inland lake of Lndoga nre affected by the Baltic stopping the downward flow of the Neva, or l»y rains flooding the many tributaries that join them, so did this dark pool in the dungeon rise and fall, when the current oozed through secret and unknown channels or crannies in the granite rocks. It was in this vault, or one of those adjoining—’-such a den as that in which I Dante placed his demon —that the wife of Count Orloff, the beautiful daughter of the Empress Elizabeth, wns drowned, ! ten years after the date of this history, when the waters of the Neva rose ten feet; and, us they subsided, bore her body to the Gulf of Finland. No one couid live very long in such a ! plni <*• —low. damp, cold and horrible. : And well did Bernikoff know this, when. I in the blind transports of rage and ngj ony resulting from his double wounds, ; lie barbarously consigned Natalie Micrownn to such a place—ay, even Natalie, j the soft nnd delicate, the high-bred and tenderly nurtured daughter of Mierowitz; I and she Jtad now . been in the under- • ground vault for three days ami nights—-seventy-two hours —which to her had resembled a horrible and protracted nightmare. -

She was yet of her lirother's execution, a week befdrr. Retrnyed by one of their most trusted adherents, ns tlie price of his o\*u Illicit \v4dls and Kntinkn had beep taken. Of the fate of the latter she krtew nothing. Kor her self, the |>oor girl only knew she was placed there to await the pleasure of her empress and ths grand chancellor.

Ilope was dead, completely, in he» heart; and though the desire to live wni strong, her former life seemed all a dream; or something that .had happened Tdngl long ago! Crouching on a damp pallet that lay on, the couch of stone, her hair disheveled, her dress more than ever torn, discolored and disordered, her snowy hands and arms stripped of every ornament and ring, her tender feet well nigh shoeless, her eyes half closed, and surrounded by dark inflamed circles, her cheeks sunk and haggard—it would be difficult to recognize in her the once beautiful and brilliant Natalie, whose coquetry had excited the ready jealousy of Catharine; tho Natalie of the imperial salons at Moscow, at Granienbaum, or the, palace of Tsarky Selo; or the Natalie of that princely old chateau near the Louga—the proud, bright-eyed and beautiful gild whom Charlie Balgonie had loved and worshiped as a goddess. She was pale as white marble —cold as death —a prey to litter confusion rather than profound grief. When she did rouse herself to calm reflection and the renliliej of her position, thought wellnigh drove her mad. ■ Her old father—his sturdy figure, his venerable beard anil white eyebrows, his

silver hair queued by a simple ribbon, his quaint, old-fashioned costume of the first Peter's time, rose vividly before her, nnd with a gush of memory came all the peculiarities of disposition, his warmth of heart nnd temper, bis kindness and irritability. his pride of race and family. Where were all these now?

Her lover, too —his voice, and eyes, nnd gentle manner came next, to add to her pangs—for him, too, must she relinquish forever. No shelter was there now for her save the cold grave, which was perhaps to receive them all —Basil, Lsakoff and Mariolizzn.

Suddenly a scream escaped lier: she was in total darkness. Amid her sleep or stupor a fourth night had come on — a night of storm, too, for she heard the roar of the ntitnmn rain ns it descended like a vast sheet upon the lake without. Cold and slimp things had often crossed her slender ankles, making her shriek nnd shudder; hut now site became sensible that her feet were completely immersed in water; that the wind was bellowing without and rolling the waves against the rocks, nnd that the current of the lake was flooding the floor of hr/ vault and rising fast within it. It rose with appalling rapidity, and now the terror of a dreadful death-made Natalie utter a succession of piercing shrieks, mingled with prayers to heaven. But her cries were unheard, for the same cohl, icy tide that flooded her cell filled all the corridors by which it and others on the same floor were approached. Rapidly, it .rose, this dark, silent nnd terrible tide —rapidly and without a sound. She sprang upon her stone couch, hut already tjip pallet was floated away, Up yet rose the invading water, and it was soon nearly to her waist, and gasping and shuddering- cries were mingled with her prayers. A little more and the narrow slit through which she could hear the bellowing wind and see the black clouds careering past one red and fiery northern star —the last gleam of life and of the out’ i- world —-would vanish from Lev-eyes, as-sue perished in that -inisera--ble tomb, even as the Princess Orloff and many others have done, helpless and unheeded in their dying agony, drowned miserably like the prison rats that swarmed around them/ In the last energies of her despair she made her way to the enormously thick door which closed this trap of stone, and. applying her lips to the joints, shrieked loudly agftjn and again for succor, nnd beat wildly nnd fruitlessly with

with her tender hands upon its massive planks and iron bolts. Her brain seemed bursting, for she was suffoentiug as the air lessened. She thought she saw a red light shining through the crannies of the doorway, but whether this were fancy or reality it wns impossible to say, as a faintness came over her, nnd shq sank down choking and drowning in the flood that rose within the walls and against the door the prison. (To be continued.)