The Mission of Poubalov — page 93: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

STRANGE EXIT OF POUBALOVD. 53 find treachery and oppression. It is not for you, Peter, to make light of Poubalov. You have felt his hand as well as I,” **¥es,” admitted Peter, ‘‘but in the Strobel matter you do not forget what the police have discovered, do you? Well might you suspect the dirty spy, were it not that one does not go far, it seems, to find the woman in the case.”’ _ “Bah! sneered Litizki; do you forget that there are two ‘women in the case? And have you seen either of them? No. Well, I have seen both. I have no unkind word for Lizzie White, with whom they say he went away; but I tell you, friends, Ivan Strobel could not have preferred her to Miss Hilman.’’ He pronounced the name softly as if it aroused a feeling akin to reverence. ‘‘You should see her,’’ he continued; ‘‘she is a very angel of beauty and goodness. Happy would be the man whose privilege it was simply to worship her; and as for him whom she would permit to love her— Bah! talk to me not about the woman in the case until you have seen Miss Hilman.’’ His friends listened gravely. They found nothing ludi- crous in Litizki’s occasionally extravagant language. When he was stirred to something /ike eloquence, it was almost always by a memory of the wrongs he had suffered, and then no language could have been too imaginative to ex- press the bitterness with which his sympathetic hearers listened. ‘‘Where did you see her, Litizki?’’ asked one of them. _ *‘*Never mind now,’’ he replied; ‘‘I have seen her since S$trobeldisappeared. She is bearing up bravely, and scorns the suggestion that he eloped with Miss White. She is devoting her life to finding him, and it is my opinion that every poor Russian in Boston ought to do the same.”’ He looked furtively from face to face in the group, to observe the effect of his words. Most of them stared at the floor. ) ‘Strobel was a good man,’’ said one, after a long pause; **but what could any of us do?”’ __ “Do?” repeated the tailor, and his indignant eoplye TOks.co