Polish aristocrat is to have a little more to give. They have always
done it. They are ready to do it again. Look at the Bukatys and a
hundred others, who could go to France and live there peaceably in the
sunshine. I could do it myself. But I am here. The Bukatys are here.
They will finish by losing everything--the little they have left--or
else they will win everything. And I know which they will do. They will
win! The prince is wise. Prince Martin is brave; we all know that!"

"And when they have won will they remember?" asked one of the two
smaller men, throwing a brown and leathery crust into the river.

"If they are given anything worth remembering they will not forget it.
You may rely on that. They know what each gives--whether freely or with
a niggard hand--and each shall be paid back in his own coin. They give
freely enough themselves. It is always so with the aristocrats; but they
expect an equal generosity in others, which is only right!"

The men sat in a row facing the slow river. They were toil-worn and
stained; their clothing was in rags. But beneath their sandy hair more
than one pair of eyes gleamed from time to time with a sudden anger,
with an intelligence made for higher things than spade and oar. As they
sat there they were like the notes of a piano, and Kosmaroff played the
instrument with a sure touch that brought the fullest vibration out of
each chord. He was a born leader; an organizer not untouched perchance
by that light of genius which enables some to organize the souls of men.

Nor was he only a man of words, as so many patriots are. He was that
dangerous product, a Pole born in Siberia. He had served in a Cossack
regiment. The son of convict No. 2704, he was the mere offspring of a
number--a thing not worth accounting. In his regiment no one noticed him