Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/19

Rh even of Moscow itself—quaked with fear. It was a clear case of sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind! In the end Moscow sent armed expeditions against these bandits—to little effect, so well had she weeded out her black sheep into this rich border pasture—although many men were caught and hanged, as a certain Bandit Ballad narrates.

The smouldering fires broke out into a disastrous conflagration when the first False Dmitry —the Pretender—laid claim to the throne. These dare-devils pricked up their ears: their nostrils scented a fine feast, exactly to their taste:—and when the False Dmitry, the renegade monk, Grigory Otrepiev, made his appearance among them, they acknowledged him as their Tzar, in the face of positive proof that the lad Dmitry was dead and buried; and they settled the domestic question by throwing their forces against Moscow in his favour. In like manner, after Otreplev's death, they supported another pretender, "The Bandit of Tushino," as he is called. No one derived any advantage from this—except the False Dmitry. Truth to tell, the course of these desperadoes was not so mad as it appears on first sight. If they had pronounced against this Pretender, the Poles, who were pushing his claims and prowling about the Ukraina, would have