I was starting from here, that is, Thursday the 15th, a fever took me and I was obliged to return. In the morning, after taking some medicine, I felt a little better. The next day I wished to go, but the fever returned stronger than before. The next day I felt better, and after that ill again. Thus we know that it is a tertian fever, on account of which I must stay here some time yet, hoping in the mercy of God Almighty that my illness will not be prolonged. Hey! how much I suffer from my illness, and also from grief that time is lost, as well as from my separation from you! But, for God's sake, do not be sad. I have written you all the details only that you should not receive them from others with exaggerations, as usual."

On the 25th, although Peter was better, he sent for Menshikóf: "To my illness is added the grief of separation from you. I have endured it for a long time, but cannot stand it any more. Be good enough to come as soon as possible, so that I shall be merrier, as you yourself can judge. Bring with you an English doctor, and not many followers." But Menshikóf had already set out, and reached Moscow on the very day the letter was written. He immediately informed his friends at Vitebsk that he had found the Tsar much better, and announced their speedy arrival. By the 10th of June Peter was well enough to start, and they arrived at Vitebsk on the 19th. After a month's longer stay here, the ladies returned to Moscow, and in October another son was born and named Paul. The Arséniefs hastened to congratulate Peter, and the mother herself signed the letter "Catherine with two others."

What with the visit of the Tsar to Moscow and the sojourn of the ladies in the camp, both Peter and Menshikóf managed to enjoy for a good part of the time the society of their mistresses. Still Peter and Menshikóf were sometimes separated, and the ladies could not be with both at once. Peter had obtained a promise from Menshikóf that he would marry Dária Arsénief, and at times was fearful lest he should not keep his word. He evidently himself wished to marry Catherine, but still had some scruples about it during the life-time of his wife Eudoxia. In April, 1706, he writes to Menshikóf from St. Petersburg, where the ladies were then staying in Menshikóf's house: "As you know, we are living here in paradise, but one idea never leaves me, about which you yourself know, but I

place my confidence not on human will, but on the divine will and mercy." But while Peter was in "paradise," Menshikóf, in spite of the frequent letters, and the presents of dressing-gowns and shirts, felt lonely, and begged Peter, when he left St. Petersburg, to send the ladies to Smolensk. Finally, on the 28th of June, Peter and the ladies arrived at Smolensk from one direction, and Menshikóf from the other. Shortly afterward they all went to Kief, but Menshikóf had to go off with his dragoons on the campaign, and from the army sent his friend Dária a present of five lemons,-all that could be found,-and suggested to her to use them some time when the Tsar was present. Peter himself thanked Menshikóf for the lemons, and in a subsequent letter called him to Kíef: "It is very necessary for you to come by Assumption Day, in order to accomplish what we have already sufficiently talked about before I go." Menshikof came to Kief, and on the 29th of August, 1706, married Dária Arsénief. Two days afterward, Peter, Catherine, and the aunt Anísia Tolstói went off to St. Petersburg. Barbara Arsénief and Anna Menshikof remained in Kief. The family was divided, and Catherine now had a matron with whom she could travel.

The day after Peter's arrival in St. Petersburg the Neva overflowed its banks. Boats navigated the streets, and the water was nearly two feet deep in the palace of the Tsar. "It was very amusing," wrote Peter to Menshikóf, "to see how people sat on the roofs and trees, just as in the time of the deluge, and not only men, but old women." Peter was so merry over this new phase of his beloved town that he sent Menshikóf salutations, not only from Catherine and himself, but also from his favorite dog Lisetta.*

Menshikóf could scarcely have had a better wife. She, like Catherine, was a true officer's wife, looked after her husband's comforts, and accompanied him in most of his campaigns-sometimes even, it is said, on horseback.

It was not until 1711, after the affair in

the Pruth, that Catherine was publicly and officially acknowledged as Peter's wife. But after the marriage of Menshikóf and the breaking up of the common household, she rarely left the Tsar, accompanying him everywhere. The opposite of Eudoxia, Catherine was the wife that Peter needed. She rose to his level, and showed a remarkable adaptability in her new position. Her gifts of head and heart were such that she was able not only to share his outward life, his pleasures, and his sorrows, but also to take part in his inner life, enter into his views and plans, and sympathize with his aspirations. Her conversation cheered him, her presence comforted and consoled him, and aided him to bear his sudden attacks of nervous suffering. Their correspondence is simple, unaffected, and familiar, and shows constantly how well suited they were to each other, how warmly they loved each other, and what a human and lovable nature Peter had, in spite of his great faults and imperfections.

Long before the formal public nuptials in 1712, Catherine had given up the Catholic religion, in which she had been born, and the Lutheran, in which she had been educated, and had been received into the Russian

Church. The Tsarévitch Alexis acted as her godfather, for which reason she added to Catherine the patronym of Alexéievna.

A fatality seemed to attend the many children of this union. The boys all died in childhood or infancy. Two daughters, Anne and Elizabeth, lived, the latter to. become Empress.

Even when on the throne Catherine never forgot her origin. The widow of Pastor Gluck was given a pension, his children were well married, or were put in positions at court. She assisted the student Wurm, whom she had known when he lived in Pastor Gluck's house at Marienburg. At her request Peter hunted up her family. Her brother Carl Skavrónsky, a stable-boy at a post-station in Kurland, was brought to St. Petersburg and educated, and subsequently created a count. His descendants married into the well-known families of Sapiéha, Engelhardt, Bagratión, Vorontsóf, and Korff.

After Peter's death, Catherine's two sisters and their family came to St. Petersburg. Christina, the elder, was married to a Lithuanian peasant, Simon Heinrich, who, together with riches and honors, received the name of Hendrikof. Anna, the younger, had

99 66

CHAPTER 1.

MISS OCTAVIA BASSETT.

SLOWBRIDGE had been shaken to its foundations.

It may as well be explained, however, at the outset, that it would not take much of a sensation to give Slowbridge a great shock. In the first place, Slowbridge was not used to sensations, and was used to going on the even and respectable tenor of its way, regarding the outside world with private distrust, if not with open disfavor. The new mills had been a trial to Slowbridge-a sore trial. On being told of the owners' plan of building them, old Lady Theobald, who was the corner-stone of the social edifice of Slowbridge, was said, by a spectator, to have turned deathly pale with rage, and on the first day of their being opened in working order, she had taken to her bed, and remained shut up in her darkened room for a week, refusing to see anybody, and even going so far as to send a scathing message to the curate of St. James, who called in fear and trembling because he was afraid to stay away.

"With mills and mill-hands," her ladyship announced to Mr. Laurence, the mill owner, when chance first threw them together," with mills and mill-hands come murder, massacre, and mob law." And she said it so loud, and with so stern an air of conviction, that the two Misses Briarton, who were of a timorous and fearful nature, dropped their buttered muffins (it was at one of the tea-parties which were Slowbridge's only dissipation), and shuddered hysterically, feeling that their fate was sealed, and that they might, any night, find three masculine mill-hands secreted under their beds, with bludgeons. But as no massacres took place, and the mill-hands were pretty

.

regular in their habits, and even went so far as to send their children to Lady Theobald's free school, and accepted the tracts left weekly at their doors, whether they could read or not, Slowbridge gradually recovered from the shock of finding itself forced to exist in close proximity to mills, and was just settling itself to sleep-the sleep of the just-again, when, as I have said, it was shaken to its foundations.

It was Miss Belinda Bassett who received the first shock. Miss Belinda Bassett was a decorous little maiden lady, who lived in a decorous little house on High street (which was considered a very genteel street in Slowbridge). She had lived in the same house all her life, her father had lived in it, and so also had her grandfather. She had gone out, to take tea, from its doors two or three times a week, ever since she had been twenty, and she had had her little tea-parties in its front parlor as often as any other genteel Slowbridge entertainer. She had risen at seven, breakfasted at eight, dined at two, taken tea at five, and gone to bed at ten, with such regularity for fifty years, that to rise at eight, breakfast at nine, dine at three, and take tea at six, and go to bed at eleven, would, she was firmly convinced, be but "to fly in the face of Providence," as she put it, and sign her own death-warrant. Consequently, it is easy to imagine what a tremor and excitement seized her when, one afternoon, as she sat waiting for her tea, a coach from the Blue Lion dashed-or, at least, almost dashed-up to the front door, a young lady got out, and the next minute the handmaiden, Mary Anne, threw open the door of the parlor, announcing, without the least preface:

"Your niece, mum, from 'Meriker." Miss Belinda got up, feeling that her knees really trembled beneath her.

In Slowbridge, America was not approved

VOL. XXI.-42.

The

of—in fact, was almost entirely ignored, as a country where, to quote Lady Theobald, "the laws were loose, and the prevailing sentiments revolutionary." It was not considered good taste to know Americans, which was not unfortunate, as there were none to know,-and Miss Belinda Bassett had always felt a delicacy in mentioning her only brother, who had emigrated to the United States in his youth, having first disgraced himself by the utterance of the blasphemous remark that "he wanted to get to a place where a fellow could stretch himself and not be bullied by a lot of old tabbies.” From the day of his departure, when he had left Miss Belinda bathed in tears of anguish, she had heard nothing of him, and here upon the threshold stood Mary Anne, with delighted eagerness in her countenance, repeating:

"Your niece, mum, from, 'Meriker!"

And, with the words, her niece entered. Miss Belinda put her hand to her heart. The young lady, thus announced, was the prettiest, and at the same time the most extraordinary-looking, young lady she had ever seen in her life. Slowbridge contained nothing approaching this niece. Her dress was so very stylish that it was quite startling in its effect, her forehead was covered, down to her large, pretty eyes themselves, with curls of yellow-brown hair, and her slender throat was swathed round and round with a grand scarf of black lace.

She made a step forward, and then stopped, looking at Miss Belinda. Her eyes suddenly, to Miss Belinda's amazement, filled with tears.

"Didn't you," she said,—“ Oh dear, didn't you get the letter ? "

And she sank into the nearest chair, putting her hands up to her face, and beginning to cry outright.

"I-am Octavia B-bassett," she said. "We were coming to surp-prise you, and travel in Europe, but the mines went wrong, and p-pa was obliged to go back to Nevada."

'The mines?" gasped Miss Belinda. "S-silver mines," wept Octavia.

"And we had scarcely landed when Piper cabled, and pa had to turn back. It was something about shares, and he may have lost his last dollar!"

Miss Belinda sank into a chair herself.

"Mary Anne," she said, faintly, "bring me a glass of water."

Her tone was such that Octavia removed her handkerchief from her eyes, and sat up to examine her.

"Are you frightened ?" she asked, in some alarm.

Miss Belinda took a sip of the water brought by her handmaiden, replaced the glass upon the salver, and shook her head deprecatingly.

"Not exactly frightened, my dear," she said, "but so amazed that I find it difficult to-to collect myself."

Octavia put up her handkerchief again to wipe away a sudden new gush of tears.

"If shares intended to go down," she said, "I don't see why they couldn't go down before we started, instead of waiting until we got over here, and then spoiling everything."

"Providence, my dear," began Miss

Belinda.

But she was interrupted by the re-entrance of Mary Anne.

"The man from the Lion, mum, wants to know what's to be done with the trunks. There's six of 'em, an' they're all that 'eavy as he says he wouldn't lift one alone for ten shilling."

"Six!" exclaimed Miss Belinda. "Whose are they?"

"Mine," replied Octavia. ute. I'll go out to him.”

"Wait a min

Miss Belinda was astounded afresh by the alacrity with which her niece seemed to forget her troubles and rise to the occasion. The girl ran to the front door as if she was quite used to directing her own affairs, and began to issue her orders.

"You will have to get another man," she said. "You might have known that. Go and get one somewhere."

And when the man went off, grumbling a little, and evidently rather at a loss before such peremptory coolness, she turned to Miss Belinda.

"Where must he put them?" she asked.

It did not seem to have occurred to her once that her identity might be doubted, and some slight obstacles arise before her.

"I am afraid," faltered Miss Belinda, "that five of them will have to be put in the attic."

And, in fifteen minutes, five of them were put into the attic, and the sixth-the biggest of all-stood in the trim little spare chamber. and pretty Miss Octavia had sunk into a puffy little chintz-covered easy-chair, while