eight-pfennig cigars. Now Death, the great Springer, whose moves are formulated in no chess annual, had taken old Kantor Garsuch and put him away with all the other captured pieces in the little Friedhof. And Herr Assistant-Kantor Heinrich Hesselbarth hoped to reign in his stead.

When, three years before, Herr Garsuch was considered to have got beyond his work, Heinrich Hesselbarth had been sent down to assist him. Hesselbarth was then a man of twentytwo, nervous and excitable, whose constitution had been too severely tried by over-pressure and under-feeding in boyhood, the rigorous training for his profession, and the exertions of military service. It was perhaps only the excitement of his life that had kept him in it at all, for, with a hysterical nature like his, there is no mean of existence between the extremes of absolute vegetation and the hurry-scurry of physical and mental activity. He was of a romantic nature, and probably the science of the future will analyze the romantic tendency as a common rash following and relieving an undue taxation of the nervous system. Certainly creatures of calm, torpid existence exhibit no such symptoms. When he came to Altpoppendorf, the romance of his nature found its outlet in an admiration that grew to love for the charming Fräulein Klara. Nobly, in the stillness of his room, did he tear his passion to rags, this tall, lean youth, with wild blue eyes and light hair tossed in confusion about a shapely head. Queen Klara, as we know, thought very favorably of him, mentioned him in her "Abendgebet," and sighed about him to the moon. For marvellous was the contrast of those stormy blue eyes of his with the fine, ascetic lines of his face. King Heinrich, too, was the only intellectual equal of Queen Klara here in this quiet village of Altpoppendorf, which, if it

gave chess to the world, exhausted itself mentally for good and all in the effort.

There was but one obstacle to Hesselbarth's succession to the Kantorship of Altpoppendorf, but that was a serious one. He was a comparatively poor hand at the noble Prussian game. Elsewhere he might have passed muster, but here, on the very temple steps, his miserable inferiority could not escape observation. He was only too conscious of his weakness. He remembered how more than once he had failed ignominiously to solve the weekly problems preliminary to confirmation set by Herr Garsuch to the upper classes, and what disgraceful defeats he had sustained at the hands of the scholars whom it should have been the pride and privilege of his position to put to a friendly rout. He had no head for the thing, though he had worked at it till his brow was red-hot iron and his feet two blocks of ice, and he had been obliged to restore his circulation to its normal course by warm footbaths. It was a serious matter for him: it was everything for him. The Worshipful Schultheiss did not indeed appoint the Kantor, but his recommendation had the greatest weight; and would he recommend a man whose knowledge of openings was ludicrous, and to whom he could give a castle? If Hesselbarth was not appointed, he must leave Altpoppendorf: that was nothing. He must leave Klara,-there was desolation in its most horrid shape! Can you wonder that the poor fellow upbraided the memory of her Grace of Quedlinburg, who had done such an inconsiderate thing for Altpoppendorf, and looked with hostility on her Grace's portrait that hung in the great guestchamber of the inn?

Heinrich Hesselbarth was sitting, on a sweltering July afternoon, in the halfdismantled schoolhouse of Altpoppendorf a few days after the funeral of

old Herr Garsuch, wondering what destiny had in store for him. Blissful dreams alternated with dismal visions, -dreams of Klara and love; visions of unhappy, purposeless exile. A loud rap broke in upon his reflections, and when he went to the door there was Paul Hiemer, grinning over the top of a note from the Schultheiss. Heinrich disliked almost involuntarily this Paul Hiemer, the pride of the school, the infant chess prodigy; and he had never been able to satisfy himself whether this dislike had its foundation in the youth's unctuous manner or in his superior knowledge and employment of chess openings. But to-day, when all Hesselbarth's nerves were fine-wire filaments, tense and red-hot, the face of the boy jarred him painfully. He took the note without a word, and closed the door sharply upon the astonished messenger.

"Very greatly honored Herr Assistant-Kantor Hesselbarth," ran the note, "can you give me the solution of the following problem?-White, so-and-so; black, so-and-so. White to play and mate in two moves.-Yours, Schmalz, Schultheiss."

Hesselbarth got down his board and set out the pieces. White to play and mate in two moves. It looked easy enough; but in an hour all the blood had gone to Heinrich's head, and he had not yet found the solution.

He pushed back his chair, catching for breath, and went to the window. The heat of the day was overpowering; there was an intolerable buzzing in the stagnant air; burning breaths came in from the torrid harvest-fields; and a blinding glare beat up from the white dust and cobbles of the village street. The great seed-flower beds stretched their rectangles of blazing, torturing color to the quivering horizon. Nowhere in this slake-oven of a world was there rest for aching eyes and hissing brain and panting lungs. And here

a

on this day of merciless heat he was set to play against destiny, against black, hostile destiny that had pursued him through the early years of high pressure and semi-starvation, through long night-wrestlings with complicated, uncongenial, unpractical subjects of study, and through the too cruel tortures of the military service. Two moves! Klara, position: those were the two moves. If he could make them, his Life's Problem was solved: the White had beaten the Black for good and all. He went back to the table and sat before the board. But the heat-demon rose up at him and laid its searing fingers on his brain; his eyes swam in a tide of blood; and the chess pieces came confusedly out of a red mist, monstrous, writhing, and distorted semblances of old Herr Kantor Garsuch, of the Worshipful Schultheiss, of the unctuous, grinning Paul Hiemer, of her Grace of Quedlinburg,— all pressing in between him and a sweet, cooling vision of a girlish face with lips half open. . .

Now the Worshipful Schultheiss had begun this day from a square of the foulest temper, under the influence of which he had sat down and composed a particularly nasty chess problem for the benefit of the person upon whom he should decide to vent his spite. Then an irritating and pressing business matter had brought the Herr Springer on to a second square of foul temper, and caused him to subtract a white pawn from the problem,-which was thus no problem, but a heartless snare, and to send it to Herr Heinrich Hesselbarth by the hands of Paul Hiemer. "The fraud is so palpable." said the Herr Springer to himself, "that even a good fool like Hesselbarth cannot be taken in by it; and if he is, then he does not have my recommendation, that's all. We have never had an idiot here at Altpoppendorf, and,

donnerwetter! we are not going to begin now."

But after his siesta and his four o'clock coffee, the Worshipful Schultheiss, springing at a tangent, lit on a benevolent square. He put on his great straw hat and called to his daughter Klara to come with him. They went together down the village street, where the children were languidly resting under dark doorways from the protracted delights of the Long Holidays. The westering sun was lengthening the shadows, and the tired oxen came lumbering in placidly from the fields. It was a peaceful scene; and down from the Harz stole cool evening air-currents, promising invigorating slumbers to sore-tried mortals.

The Worshipful Schultheiss took his way to the schoolhouse and went up the steps to the door on his toe-tips. He knocked, gently, loud, louder; but no answer came. Then he stealthily turned the handle and peered in. He looked back over his shoulder with a smile and beckoned Klara to come up. They stood together for a moment on the threshold, the little dried-up old man and the fresh young girl. The Assistant-Kantor had fallen across the table with his head upon his arms, the chessboard pushed to one side and the pieces tumbled anyhow on it.

"Hesselbarth," said the Worshipful Schultheiss, pulling off his great straw hat, for the remembrance of the heat of the day came suddenly upon him, “I wanted to explain. It was a little jest, that problem, you know. But, Hesselbarth, Hessel-ba-a-a-r-th!"

There was still no answer. Herr Schmalz smiled again at his daughter, and walked with his Springer action across the room.

"Hesselbarth," he said, standing over the young man and shaking his shoulder, "it was a little joke, I say."

Heinrich Hesselbarth raised his head

slowly and looked at the Worshipful Schultheiss. There was something in the young man's eye that brought home in a flash to Herr Schmalz's mind the execrable taste of the practical joke, even when connected with the noblest of games.

"Little joke, eh?" said Hesselbarth confusedly. "Why then, that is one of your accursed chess humors, I see. And," he added with a startling grimness, "you want my answer. Well, take it."

He jumped to his feet and caught up the chessboard, from which the pieces went flying in a black and white hail all over the room. Herr Schmalz would have fled, but surprise and fright chained him there to the consequences of his little jest. Up and up went the board in the Assistant-Kantor's lean, nervous arms; up and up so high and so long that the Worshipful Schultheiss had time to think of all his sins and to repent of the majority of them. Then it reached its zenith and descended with terrible force and rapidity flat on the Herr Springer's head. The Worshipful Schultheiss went to earth in a heap. Hesselbarth threw himself down in his chair, shrieking with laughter.

"It looks like one of those Chinese punishments," he gasped, pointing to Herr Schmalz, who was sitting half dazed on the ground with the ruined frame of the chessboard about his neck, and the blood making picturesque little red streaks in his light hair at twenty different points.

"Doesn't it, Klärchen?" asked Heinrich, for she had come in and was kneeling by her father. "You know; you have seen the pictures. Oh, it is . . . it is . . ."

Then suddenly the grim meaning of the situation dawned on his fevered understanding.

"Klärchen, love, what have I done?" he cried.

And he whimpered weakly.

But Herr Schmalz had come to himself-that better self of his that he and his neighbors had somewhat lost sight of for a considerable number of years: such a salutary working had the shock already had on that crease in his character.

"Never mind, Hesselbarth," he said; "you haven't hurt me. And it served me right. I was a fool. I won't remember this, and I promise I will do my best for you in every way." And he kept his word.

In the evening of the day on which that Graf Albrecht von Regenstein. Raubritter, proposed to carry into effect the abduction of her Grace of Quedlinburg, a stranger rode up to the gates of the Castle of Regenstein and asked for an audience with the lord of the stronghold. Introduced into the Raubritter's presence, he recounted that the fame of his lordship's prowess at chess had come to his ears, and, being of the mind to try a bout with such a renowned champion of the noble game, he had turned aside from his road in the hope that his lordship would not Blackwood's Magazine.

disappoint him of a trial of skill. Graf Albrecht was at that season in want of a worthy opponent, for he had been unfortunate enough lately, when in his cups, to hang his chaplain,-the only one of his suite who could bring things even to a draw against him. So the board was laid out, and the Raubritter and the Stranger set to. They played all night; and when the sun rose-her Grace the Abbess being now safe within her walls-the mysterious Unknown vanished,-not so quickly, however, but Graf Albrecht had recognized in the strong morning light the grinning and distorted countenance of his late chaplain. And when the attendants came in to their master, his hair was white.

The anonymous writer was refuted with great skill and boldness by the Herr Kantor Heinrich Hesselbarth of Altpoppendorf, son-in-law of his Worship the Herr Schultheiss Schmalz. The Herr Kantor, who, by the way, is renowned for his skill as a chessplayer beyond the bounds of his village, they say at Altpoppendorf that his wife has made him what he is, and he does not deny it,-drove the nameless enemy in disgraceful rout. The history of the discussion is too long to enter into here; but, generally speaking, Herr Hesselbarth showed conclusively that the new-found legend was never drawn from that old volume of which the pages are memories and traditions, and the book-markers the centuries. Charles Oliver.

For the

second time in twelve months, Russia has passed through an experience unique in the history of representative institutions. She has held a general election under martial

law. The event, which has turned out to be a decisive victory for the popular parties, gives one proof the more of the political precocity of the Russian masses, and of their adaptability

to conditions which would have stricken any Western democracy with despair. The conditions of last year were sufficiently difficult. Then, as now, almost the whole area of the Empire lay under coercive laws, of varying degrees of stringency; the right of meeting was restricted, if, indeed, it could be said to exist at all; the press was muzzled; outside every pollingbooth hung long lists of suspected persons, who were debarred from political rights, and prudent electors of progressive opinions either concealed their views under some colorless label, or passed the interval between the second and third stages of the complicated process of indirect election, in timely journeys, or in hiding. M. Stolypin's system of intervention has been more discriminating than that of M. Durnovo. It has been something more than a mere unthinking application of the traditional repression which the bureaucracy adopted in the past towards every movement of opinion. It rested on some calculations of strategy; it was an attempt to adapt the electoral tactics of a Bismarck or a Bülow to the country of Plehve and Trepoff. The general scheme of repression remained-the various euphemisms which cover martial law, the press censorship, the restriction of public meetings, the drumhead courts-martial, which worked with a celerity and a ruthlessness unequalled in Europe since the French Terror, the machinery of arbitrary arrests, the constant procession of trains of exiles towards Siberia, the menace of the "Black Hundreds," whose function it was, under official patronage and police guidance, to terrorize the progressives of the towns.

But M. Stolypin did not simply make war on the Russian people, as his predecessors had done. He showed himself to be a sort of Liberal, a man of the new order, an apprentice to

Constitutionalism, by making war only on the majority of the people. He invented an ingenious system, by which every political party was required to register itself, and to provide itself with a political "yellow ticket." He accorded the rights of registration, and the status of a legal party, to every shade of opinion, from the "Black Hundreds," whose council of titled reactionaries and anti-semitic priests organized all the secret "pogroms," to the tame Liberals of the "Pacific Regeneration" group. He refused this status to the one party which really had a great popular following, the Cadets (Constitutional Democrats), who formed the majority, and directed the tactics of the late Duma. His object, apparently, was to crush the Cadets between the extreme Left, which knew how to work underground, and the extreme Right, which was allowed to work in daylight. The official element, and the wealthier landowners, were shepherded in the "Octobrist" group-a party of moderates which originally favored the Zemstvo movement, upholds the Duma as a deliberative assembly, supports M. Stolypin, and wishes to remain within the letter of the Tsar's concessions of October, 1905. For the timider Cadets, M. Stolypin was at pains to keep open the refuge of the cautious but sincere little group of aristocratic Liberals, known as the Party of Pacific Regeneration.

The brunt of the repression fell on the Cadets. The Viborg Manifesto, with its advocacy of passive resistance, alienated their Right wing; its hasty abandonment disgusted the Left. It was followed by a threat of political persecution against all who signed it, and the result was that nearly all of their more distinguished members were disqualified as candidates. They faced the electors a prescribed and divided party, with untried and often