“Did the French stay there for the night?”
“Then what were you about, Michael Ivanovitch,” cried Ivan with sudden energy--“what were you about that you did not set the village on fire and burn it over their heads?”
Michael’s remaining hand fell by his side with a gesture of mingled admiration and regret. “Great St. Nicholas!” he exclaimed.
“We never thought of it,” cried Michael. “Would to God we had! What a sight it would have been!”
“You may yet see a greater, Michael Ivanovitch.”
There was silence, and the tumult outside became audible once more to both.
At last Michael resumed. “I am forgetting what I came for. Since that night my head is confused. I live those last hours over and over again. I hear nothing, I see nothing except that bed of leaves in the forest, and the torches flickering upon those sad faces all around, and that one sweet white face--except when I sleep and dream of killing Frenchmen. Ay, killing Frenchmen, that is it! Ivan Barrinka, I come here to beg of you--if you like it, on my bended knees--to speak one word for me to our lord the Czar,--only one word.”
“My good friend--for my friend you are, in the love we both have for the dead--I would speak a hundred if I could; but the Czar is in St. Petersburg, and I am here. I scarce hope ever to see again the face that is to us all as the sun in the heavens.”
“Then give me a written word for him. You are a boyar, and can do it.”
“Nay, I should not presume so far. He does not even know of my existence--_yet_.” The last word was spoken proudly, with an evident under-current of meaning. “But what is it you want, Michael?”
“Yes, and no. When I went to fetch that picture, they caught me, and put their Emperor’s mark on my hand. Was I to carry _that_ with me all my life, and after my life in the resurrection, before the judgment-seat of God? I had a good hand still, and a good axe in it, and with these I struck off what they had defiled. Now there is not an inch of me that does not belong to the Czar.”
“Nobly done, brother!” cried Ivan, embracing him. “I am proud of my old Nicolofsky playfellow. Michael, will you cast in your lot with me, and let us serve the Czar together?”
“Ay, Barrinka; but there is the difficulty. No use in _my_ offering myself for a recruit. No officer would take me, because I want my hand. That is why I pray you to ask the Czar to let me fight for him in spite of that loss. You could tell him I would serve him so faithfully.”