CASTLE ORGHINAMink-wrapped against the biting cold, Melissa stood on the little platform on which her turret chamber opened and gazed out across the frostbound Dniester. Below her the castle wall, red brick brownly toned by age, with great stone blocks let in, dropped sheer to the icy hummocks of the river bed. To either side, beyond the line of crenellated battlements high above her head, the flat whiteness of the snow-covered steppe stretched to the low horizon, with hoary wooden windmills, sails stripped and arms still, looming through the smother of fine snow.
Across the river the cluster of pinnacles and gilded domes was Soviet Russia. In this remote frontier region it was a forbidden land, for Soviet Russia (the Baron was her informant) was still rancorous at the thought that, on th
