and while Paul slept in their garret in the slums, Ivan, his father, sat long into the night, until the candle burned out in the socket, reading documents with long, gold seals on them. It was a promise from an influential Russian official, toward a restoration of Strogoff's estates, if the exile should return and swear anew his allegiance to the Czar. Now Strogoff's vain struggles in the new world had sobered him. Many of the wild dreams of youth had disappeared, and he was ready and quite prepared to accept good fortune again, even if it meant a sacrifice of those poetic dreams that had caused the misfortunes of his earlier days.
He had but enough money left to barely get back to St. Petersburg alone, and the great question was: What could be done with Paul? He finally saw the keeper of the lodging, and received every assurance that Paul would be cared for until his father could send for him. So Ivan kissed the sleeping boy, and ere the sun had started on his course, was on the broad Atlantic, his brain busy with teeming projects for the newer and noble future that seemed to spread out before him.
Politics in Russia, however, are even worse and more complicated than in New York under Tammany. By the time Ivan reached the seat of Russia government, his friend had lost imperial favor. The plots against the life of the Czar had rendered a restoration to wealth and power of great difficulty, and almost an impossibility. Then began a struggle which slowly but surely sapped the vital energy of the returned exile. Each day brought forth fresh complications. Three times during a period of ten years the poor devil was compelled to fly to save himself from the enforcement of the old sentence, that
