Argosy, Vol. 1 (1882) — page 360: what you’re looking at

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

TRAIN AND STATION. 351 “ No,” replied Dash slowly. He was not yet ready to reveal, even to his father, the state of his feelings for the young girl, or that he considered the relationship a barrier to a closer one. | ‘Do you think that there was any- thing in the outlaw’s statement that there was a gold mine on your land?” he continued. “There must be,” replied the father. “ He had noobjectin deceiving you,and that was no doubt what induced him to assume my name. BSesides, you know, there’s quite a gold fever in this region now.” Then followed Mr. Orloft’s wonder- ful story, which you may be sure Dash listened to with breathless interest and which was briefly this: Basil Orloff and his brother Oswald were the only sons of a well to do Rus- sian residing in St. Petersburg. Their father had invested quite extensively in American securities and lands. When the sons had passed their ma- jority, all of the father’s Russian prop- erty was confiscated for some political offense, though he was not exiled, and the two young men came to America to look after their possessions there. ~ Soon after their arrival they both fell in love, as it happened, with two sisters, and .eventually married them. Their father turned over all his American property to Basil, to be equally divided with his brother, but when Basil came to deed half of the lands in Colorado to Oswald, the transfer was made to the latter’s wife, on account of some complications the brother was in. Why this land had been deeded back to him, Basil did not know, as 1t was done after he had sailed for Russia. Soon after the division of the property, word was received from the father that he was very ill, and wanted one of his ‘sons to come to him at once, but that he must make the journey very secretly, as the country was in a turmoil. and he was under the serious suspicion of the Russian police. ‘Basil started at once, arranging with Portereff, Steffen & Co., of New York, to forward his mail, and leaving a sum of money with them for his wife, whom he had just married. The latter un- derstood that after her husband reached St. Petersburg she would hear from -him rarely, if at all, as it would-be ex- ceedingly dangerous for him if his iden- tity was discovered. The steamship on which Basil sailed was wrecked in a storm, and all on board were supposed to have been lost, but he and one or two others had been picked up by a vessel bound for one of the Baltic ports. He eventually reached his destination, only to find his aged father dead. He had expired when the police came to him and announced he was under arrest, to be exiled, by spe- cial ukase of the Czar. Basil was arrested at the side of his father’s dead body, and hurried off to Siberia, without the shadow of a hear- ing or a trial. What he passed through in the next two years would fill a vol- ume and make a stone weep. Meanwhile the wife had heard of the loss of the steamship on which her hus- band sailed, with all on.board; and nearly two years later, feeling that her husband was indeed dead, was married to Mr. Dykeman. Finally, after untold hardships, Basil Orloff escaped, and reached America again. He had some means, which he had carried from the mines with him, and immediately made inquires about his wife. He lost trace of her at Mrs. Fed- more’s, but 1f he had received the letter his wife had written him, which had been in the dead letter office so long, and fallen behind Mrs. Fedmore’s man- tel, he would have known he had a son. He then went to railroading, thinking that there he would have a possible chgnce of meeting his wife some day, and finally became a conductor on the Chicago & St. Louis R. R. Dash’s conclusion that the conductor had recognized his wife in Mrs. Dyke- EGOMMGIOOKS Go iin