ON A newly constructed rostrum, publicly exposed to the devouring eyes of the populace, stood the famed beauty of Kravetz. With bowed head she submissively waited. A slight wind played havoc with her loosened flood of dark hair. The women saw it. They noted its abundance and glorious luster. Their hearts were sinful with envy.
Her divine form with its sensuous lines was suggested by a single wrapper that inadequately covered her quivering body. Like a martyr saint, she calmly expected her destruction. Slowly, inevitably, the clock approached the hour of noon.
In the southern part of Russia, some hundred kilometers back from the Black Sea, lies a fertile expanse of land, sparsely populated. As far as the eye can reach roll verdant pasture lands and arable ground.
This pleasant and productive territory of Kravetz was once under the dominion of a Count Daramkoff. Sacrilegious and tyrannical, Daramkoff ruled his peasants with the hand of a despot. But it is unkind to speak evil of the dead. And Daramkoff is dead.
The district with its scattered, low, whitewashed huts, acres of waving rye and rich brown tillable earth, pleased the eye as one let it survey the landscape, until it rebelled at the incongruous appearance, in this scene of contentment and harmony, of a small lake. Its stagnant water was putrid and infested with disease-carrying mosquitoes. A stunted growth of trees bordered this lake on one side. The opposite border presented a huge excavation, jagged piles of heavy stones, loads and loads of lumber and countless barrels of hardened mortar.
It was apparent that the erection of some edifice had been suspended. The confused growth of weeds, the decayed appearance of the stacked lumber, the wild grass struggling up between the rocks, the hardened mounds of earth, the deep cellar foundation crowded with underbrush and saplings, all indicated that this chaotic condition was not of recent years.
The natives tell tourists about this weird section. The region is haunted by a woman. Men are her chief victims. Echoing across the land come from the unfinished mansion the agonizing cries of this woman. Sometimes she sings. It is hard to resist listening to her song. The charm of her voice at night, like a siren’s at sea, has lured many a young man to his death in the murky water of the lake.
