When Sviatopolk heard that Gleb too was dead he was glad at heart. But he little thought that vengeance was coming close.

Jaroslav, another brother, who was Prince of Novgorod, heard of these two murders. He and the people of Novgorod were very angry. They collected an army and marched against Kief.

Then there were bloody battles between the two brothers. At last Jaroslav forced Sviatopolk to fly.

Sviatopolk was ill, and he was carried away in haste from the battle-field. But he was mad with fright, and thought at each step that Jaroslav was coming up with him. If by chance his men stopped for an instant, he cried out, "Ah! ah! they are pursuing me. Look, there they are! Fly! fly!" At length he reached the deserts, and there he died. That was the end of Sviatopolk the murderer.

These are sad, dark stories. But sadder, darker days are coming presently,-days when the Russians did not know where to turn for help, and the land was full of misery and evil deeds.

Those days did not come till Jaroslav died. He reigned at Kief happily and prosperously. He was the greatest sovereign that Russia had yet had. He was not so great in war as the other princes had been; but he was greater than they, for whereas they spent their time in killing their enemies, he helped his friends.

There were a few wars. There were wild tribes like the Patzinaks who fought him. Besides that, there were wars with Poland. Do you remember in the first chapter how some of the Slavs settled down to the south of the Baltic? and how I said that these Slavs quarrelled with the Russians, and prevented them from going through to Europe? Those Slavs were the Poles, and lived in Poland. There were others near them, called the Lithuanians. These joined the Poles, and fought against Russia.

There was a Greek war also. In that the Russian fleet was destroyed by a storm.

But now for Jaroslav's real work.

He was the first to write down the laws of Russia. And he called them the Russian Right.

They are strange, odd laws-Norse laws, as Rurik and his sons were Norse. These are some of them : Murderers and thieves were not always to be punished, but were to pay a sum of money instead. A murderer was not pursued and taken by public officers as now. The relations of the murdered man tracked him out, and either killed him, or took money to pay for his crime. When a Russian had cause of complaint against another, he summoned him to go before the prince, or one of the judges appointed by the prince. With the judge there was a jury of twelve men, and these and

the judge listened to the whole story, and gave judgment.

But if both sides disliked the judgment, then they settled matters by a fight. The relations of the two men formed a ring round them, and then they fought. Generally they fought with swords, and the one whose sword cut sharpest was the victor. When the fight was over, the victor could pass what sentence he liked upon the other.

Sometimes when a man was accused of a crime he had to prove his innocence in one of two ways. He carried red-hot iron on the back of his hand for three steps, or plunged his hand into boiling water. Then the hand was wrapped up, and the bandage sealed by the judge. After three days the bandage was taken off again. Then if the wound had healed, and no mark remained, the man was declared innocent.

There was no capital punishment, no cruel deaths, no torture to make men confess, no beating, and no public prisons, in Jaroslav's time.

But at the same time the Christian priests began to bring in different laws. They would not allow money to be paid for a murder. For they said it was an offence against God, and the murderer must suffer death, according to the Jewish law. Besides this, they brought in Greek laws, which were far more cruel than Russian laws: flogging and hard labour,

and torture and imprisonment, and the cutting off sometimes of the hands and feet of a prisoner.

There was one bad law which they tried to alter. They tried to prevent the judgment by red-hot iron and boiling water; for that, you can see, was a foolish judgment. They did not get these laws written down in the Russian Right. But sometimes these were followed, and sometimes the Russian Right, until the times of Ivan the Great and Ivan the Terrible.

Jaroslav built the first school in Russia. It was to hold three hundred children. He also built many new cities.

But the city that he made most beautiful was Kief, the mother of Russian cities. Round it he built ramparts; and the houses inside were built taller, and of two stories, often with a paling round them. Inside, he divided the city into eight parts, so that the Slavs and Norsemen and foreign merchants might live with their own countrymen in the different parts of the town.

Many merchants came to Russia in the time of Jaroslav. His name was well known in Europe. For one of his daughters had married Harold the Brave, King of Norway, and another was the wife of the King of France. One of his sons married the daughter of our King Harold. Besides this, he gave shelter to St. Olaf and his son, as you will read in

the story of Norway. So many merchants came from these countries, till the Dnieper was covered with their ships.

The most glorious church that Jaroslav built was the church of St. Sophia in Kief. He had built four hundred churches, but this was the grandest of all. Many Greek artists came to build these churches.

This St. Sophia shone like the sun inside; for her vaults and pillars and walls were covered with gold. On one wall was a mosaic in rich colours of the Last Supper. That you may perhaps see for yourselves some day. The singers and the priests were taught by the Greeks.

But even the most glorious reign must come to an end. And about ten years before William the Conqueror came over to England Jaroslav the Great died.