The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-10-20
CHAPTER KY.
Count Zamovski Sleeps.

Count Zamoyski Sleeps.
 A glimmer of wan daylight in the Counts bedroom troubled him while he undressed and he drew the curtains with angry fingers. Down there in the dismal streets the Cossacks watched the night birds going home to bed and envied them alike their condition and its consequences. If Sergus rested moment at the win dow, it was to mark the presence Of these men and to take heart at it. And this is to say that few who knew him in the social world had any notion of the life he lived apart or guessed that au- thority stood to him for his shield and buckler against the unknown enemies his labors had created. Perhaps he rarely admitted the truth himself. Light and laughter and music were his friends in so far as they permitted him to forget the Inevitable or to deride 1t.
 Here in this room of eloquent shadows he was a different man indeed from the fine fellow of the opera and the barracks "a haunted secret man looking deep into the mysteries and weary for the sun The brilliant scene he had but just quit ted could now be regretted chiefly be- cause he needed the mental anaesthetic with which society alone could supply him. Pale and gaunt and inept in his movements, few would have recognized the Sergius Zamoyski of the dressing room or named him for the diplomatlst whose success had earned the warmest encomiums of harassed authority. Herein lay a testimony to his success which his bitterest enemy would not have denied him. None knew better than he that the day of reckoning had come for all who opposed revolution in Russia, none had anticipated that day with a greater per- sonal dread.
 He closed the curtains. thankful that the Cossacks stood sentinels without, and huneering for sleep which had been de- nied to him so often lately If he had any consolation of his thoughts 1t lay in the comparative secrecy of his present mls- sion and the fact that today would &C., complish it's purpose. The girl Lois had not confessed Richard Gessner's secret and she would stand presently where confession would not help her, As for this agreeable youth, who certainly had been her lover, he must be coerced into silence. threatened cajoled, bought. Ser gius remembered Aban's fine gospel of life and laughed when he recalled it This devotion to humanity this belief in great causes. what was it worth when il woman laughed and her rosy lips part ed for a kiss? The world is too busy for the pedants who would stem the social revolution, was his argument-the rich men have too much to do to hide their common frailties that they should put on the habits of the friars. Let this hot gospeller acquire a fortune and he would become as the others before a month had passed. The women would see to that for were not two of them already about the business?
 He closed his curtains and undressed with clumsy hand upon the buttons and many curse at the obstinate things The intense silence of the morn ing hour depressed him and he wondered that the hotel should sleep so soundly His own door was both locked and bolted he had q pistol in his travelling bag and would finger it with grim satisfaction tt such moments as these. Hitherto he had owed much to his very bravado, to a habit of going in and out among the peo- pie freely, and deriding all politics as a fools employment Latterly he had been wondering how far this habit would pro- tect him, had made shrewd guesses at the truth and had come to the stage of question. Yesterdays work helped him to confirm these vague suspicious How came it that Lois Boriskon was able to warn this young Englshman; why had she come Immediately to his hotel ana followed him to the old quarters of the city? This could only mean that her friends had telegraphed the information from London. that every step of the jour ney had been reported and that a prom ising plan of action had been decided upon Sergius dreaded this more than anything that could have happened to him. They will ask what share l had in it. he told himself; and he knew what the answer to that must be. Let them but suspect a hundredth part of the truth and he might not have % hours to live.
 It had been a splendid life so far and a sufficient atonement for the dreaded hours apart There in his own room he gave battle to the phantoms by recalling the faces of the pretty women he had cajoled and defeated, the houses of pride he had destroyed. the triumphs he had aumhered aud the recompense he haa