The Argosy — page 125: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

BY RIGHT OF SWORD. ; 317, I should probably be many weeks, and perhaps months, carrying it out. From the first I abandoned all thought of making a dash straight for the frontier by train. Every outlet of the kind would be watched most jealously, alike by the police and the Nihilists; while the fact of Olga slipping through would increase a thousandfold the vigilance to prevent my following. If Paula Tueski managed to get the permit, Olga would make her escape quickly by train, going either northwest to St. Petersburg, and away by steamer, or west across the German frontier, or southwest down into Austria. ‘I‘wo days would do the business. z My escape was to be a very different affair. I meant to leave Moscow on foot or pony back, disguised as a peasant woman, and as soon as I was well clear of the city, some twenty or thirty miles out, I intended to change that disguise and play the part of a horse dealer, making for the two big horse fairs that were coming on soon at Rostov and Jaroslav—about one hundred and one hundred and fifty miles north, respec- tively. For this purpose I proposed to buy up enough horses and ponies on my way to divert suspicion and sustain my part. , At Jaroslav I should sell these for what they would fetch, and in the con- fusion of the fair time change my character again. There I should strike the Volga, and:my plan was to escape by river—to work my way on. the boats. down the Volga to Tsaritsin, and thence across by train to the Don. At the mouth of the Don, or at Taganrog, I calculated to be able to ship on a steamer across the Sea of Azov, and thence across the Black Sea, and out through the Bosphorus. This was the outline, subject, of course, to any changes which necessity or expediency should suggest ; and I preferred it because, if I could cut the trail between Moscow and the river, that was about the very last place in which I should be looked for; while the time that must be occupied on the river would give me the necessary opportunity for obtaining such papers as I should require.to get away. I had perfected the plan, thought out many of its details and discounted its risks, and had laid in “many of the necessary disguises. But I was not destined to use them, for the direction of matters was wrested out of my hands by a stroke that checkmated me. In the afternoon a letter came to me from Olga, vaguely worded, to the effect that Paula Tueski had sent for her, had given her what had been prom- ised, and that all matters were now complete. She wished me to see her at seven o’clock. I scribbled a line saying I would be there at the time. The messenger, Olga’s maid, went off. with it; and almost before I thought she could have had time to get home and back again she came hurrying in again breathless and excited, and all white with fear. I thought at first she had been molested in some way in the streets—Mos- cow is not Hden—and I asked her what was the matter. The reply, uttered in gaspsand jerks of terror, and with spasmodic sobs, filled me, in my turn, with consternation. Olga had been arrested during the girl’s absence, and my aunt, the Comicbooks (<@)