The travelers began their journey on April 26. It was a horror. No conveyances were available except the peasant tarantass, consisting of a large wicker basket resting on poles in place of springs. Passengers lie or sit on the straw-covered floor, at the mercy of every jolt. The roads were what all country roads in Russia are in early spring—quagmires of clinging mud. The horses floundered about, up to their knees in ooze and to their chests in water when crossing rivers. Wheels were broken, horses exhausted, and passengers bruised and sore. But at last the two hundred and eighty versts to Tiumen, the nearest railroad station, were covered in safety, and an assuring message came back to Tobolsk on April 28: 'Traveling in comfort. How is the Boy? God be with you.'

But dead silence thereafter until May 7. Then a letter, from Ekaterinburg with the laconic announcement that they were well. Nothing more. Why Ekaterinburg? An agony of fear descended on the children at Tobolsk. Ekaterinburg was the headquarters of the Ural Soviets. What and who had diverted their parents to the stronghold of the Reds? The mystery remained unsolved—as, in fact, it remains to this day—until, on May 8, the officers and men of the guard who started out with, Jakolev returned to Tobolsk and told a story which, while it does not explain, at least describes the occurrence.

Once on the open road, Jakolev manifested a feverish desire to hasten forward without losing an instant. He seemed possessed by some secret, driving fear. Despite the appalling condition of the roads, he would permit neither, halts nor relaxation of speed. En route, the cavalcade passed the house of.Rasputin in Pokrovskoie; the wife and children of the murdered staretz were standing in the doorway and made the sign of the cross over the royal couple as they swept by. Arriving at Tiumen on the evening of the twenty-seventh, Jakolev conducted his prisoners to a waiting train arid started westward toward European Russia by the line passing through Ekaterinburg. But on approaching that city, with no intention of stopping, he learned, no one knows how, that the local authorities would not permit him to pass, but intended to arrest him. He doubled on his tracks and sped at full steam back to Tiumen and took the alternative, but longer, Cheliabinsk-Ufa route to Moscow. At the station of Koulomzino, the last stop before. Omsk, his train was again halted, this time by a massed contingent of Red Guards who declared that the Soviet of Ekaterinburg had pronounced him an outlaw for having attempted to rescue Nicholas Romanov and transport him to a foreign land.

The spy, Zaslavsky, had arrived in time!

Jakolev then uncoupled his engine and rode into Omsk, where he spoke by direct wire with someone in Moscow. He was ordered to proceed via Ekaterinburg. This he did, with train and passengers. The convoy had barely steamed into the station of that city when this amazing game of hare and hounds came to an abrupt end. Jakolev was surrounded by Red soldiers, his guard disarmed and thrown into a cellar. Jakolev himself went to the office of the local Soviet for a conference; he soon came out, crestfallen, his authority gone. The three royal prisoners were conducted to a house that had been hurriedly requisitioned from a wealthy Siberian merchant named Ipatiev and there imprisoned. It was to be their death chamber. After a few days the soldiers imprisoned in the cellar, Jakolev's Tobolsk detachment, were released; Jakolev himself left for Mocow and from there sent a message to his private telegraph operator at Tobolsk: -

Gather together the company and come back. I have resigned. I take no responsibility for the consequences.

With the exit and disappearance of the mysterious Commissar charged with his mission of 'particular importance' vanished the key of that bewildering performance. He is never to be heard from again; report had it later that he had been killed in battle, fighting on the side of the Whites. At the end of this artic1e I shall hazard a guess as to who Comrade Jakolev really was.

III

On May 23 the Tsarevitch Alexis and his three sisters arrived at Ekaterinburg from Tobolsk; the entire family was thus reunited, never again to be separated. But the two foreign tutors, Gilliard and Gibbs, were not permitted to continue in attendance on their pupils. They remained in Ekaterinburg, however, until the arrival of the White troops.