The Heritage

Night was falling in the leafless beech forest which covered a spur of the Balkans. There was a thin sprinkling of snow on the rocky ground, but it was frozen hard, and showed no trace of the leather moccasins of the two men who were climbing the slope. Both wore unobtrusive uniforms of dull grey, almost concealed by huge brown greatcoats with hoods, and carried rifles slung across their backs; but while one was a stolid peasant, the other had a keen intellectual face, not devoid of a certain tincture of what may without offence be termed “slimness.” It was a face familiar to many Emathian mountaineers, and to a few startled Roumis, as that of Lazar Nilischeff, a prominent leader of revolt. As he and his follower mounted the path, two men, somewhat similar to them in aspect, but with a slight difference in their equipment, came out from among the trees to meet them, and one of them greeted Nilischeff with the formal politeness natural between those who are pursuing the same end with distinct purposes in view. Both were Thracian by race, and had received their university training at the city of Bellaviste; but while Nilischeff was a Thracian subject, and had crossed the frontier in the hope of adding a freed Emathia to his sovereign’s dominions, Dr Afanasi Terminoff was Emathian-born, and scouted any prospect other than that of actual independence for his unrestful country.


“You sent an urgent message for me?” said Nilischeff, as the two leaders went on together up the hill, leaving their subordinates to guard the path.


“The rich Englishman is dying,” said Terminoff gloomily, “and he begged me to find him a lawyer.”


“No doubt he wishes to make his will.” The only available lawyer tried hard not to exhibit indecent exultation. “He will leave his money to the Organisation, you think?”


“He has not told me,” was the curt answer, and the two men continued their climb in silence, the minds of both running riot over the possibilities of unlimited action called forth by the suggestion. The rich Englishman’s money had already provided a pleasurable earnest in the shape of rifles, ammunition, dynamite, and other materials of the revolutionary craft, but its owner had exercised a control over their employment which the recipients found somewhat galling.