the Delavan House in Albany on the morning of Sunday, December 8th. I spoke Saturday night in Utica, took the night express for Albany, and reached the Delavan House about two o'clock. Volkhófski had not yet arrived, and as it was uncertain when he would come I went to bed. Early in the morning a bell-boy knocked loudly at my door and handed me a slip of paper upon which, in Volkhófski's hand-writing, were the words, "My dear fellow, I am here."
If any of the guests of the Delavan House happened to be passing through that corridor on their way to breakfast three minutes later, they must have been surprised to see, at the door of No. 90, a man with disheveled hair and nothing on but his night-shirt locked in the embrace of a traveler who had not had time to remove his Pacific-coast sombrero and heavy winter overcoat.
Volkhófski was in better health than I had expected to see him, but his face was worn and haggard, and at times there was a peculiar anxious hunted expression in his eyes which showed that he had recently been under great mental and emotional strain. We talked almost without intermission for twelve hours, and he related to me at length the story of his escape. When he wrote me the last time from Siberia in May, 1889, he was living with his little daughter Véra in Irkútsk, where he had found congenial employment, and where he was trying, by means of hard work, to lighten the sense of loneliness and bereavement that he had felt since the death of his wife and his daughter Katie. Hardly had his life begun to seem once more bearable when there came upon him a new misfortune in the shape of an order from the governor-general[1] to leave the city. He had committed no new offense, and there was no reason, so far as he was aware, for this arbitrary and imperative order; but General Ignátief seemed to be of opinion that the presence of a liberal author and journalist, and moreover a "political," in the city of
- ↑ Governor-general Ignátief, brother of the well-known diplomatist. He is now governor-general of Kiev.
