do when you get your freedom? Will you
remain here and work your ground, or will you
seek bread somewhere else?"

He turned his eyes first up, then down, then
on both sides, as if seeking to evade an answer,
gave the peculiar peasant's shrug, and slowly
muttered:

"I shall sleep, baron."

"And after you have slept, Evan?"

"I shall eat, baron."

"And after you have eaten, Evan?"

"I shall sleep again, baron."

"And when the black bread is gone, and when
the pig and poultry are all eaten, and when the
potatoes, carrots, and cabbages, are all eaten,
and when there is no firewood nor pasture, what
will you do then, Evan?"

"Then I will tell you, baron. Now, may God
give you health, and thank you for the tea-money
you are going to give me. Give you
good day!"

I believe this is the case of nearly all the
serfs. The condition of many of these people
at this time may be judged from the following
account of himself, I got with difficulty from
a peasant who worked in a cotton-mill:

"I earn four roubles (twelve and sixpence) a
month. My time is all spent in the mill, from
five o'clock in the morning until eight o'clock at
night. My wife and two daughters work on the
fields belonging to the baron, five days every
week in summer. They get no wages. In
winter they do any kind of work required of
them by the steward. My son, who is seventeen
years old, works also in the mill, and gets
two roubles a month. We have three deciatines
of land. It is our own, so is the house. We
can only raise a few potatoes, cabbages, and
carrots. The women do this work. We keep a
pig, and we have some ducks. We eat them. We
get black flour from the econome (the steward's
tommy-shop); this is deducted from our wages.
We pay no obrok from these wages nor taxes.
Our work is counted for this; the steward
manages all that. Somehow I am always in
debt to the steward's office. I have worked ten
years in the mill, and am a good spinner. I
don't know what we shall do when we get our
freedom. We shall not work any more, I
suppose. I may go begging; it is an easy life. I
am now unfit for out-door work, but my son is
able; let him cultivate the land. We are three
thousand souls on this estate; a thousand nearly
are away, and pay forty roubles obrok each a
year. They pay their own passports and taxes
besides."

This is a sorry but true picture. Eleven
pounds a year had this man and his family to
live on! For this sum the father and son gave
all their time in the mill, and the mother and two
daughters five days a week in other work. In
a free mill worked on the free principle, the
father and son alone were worth, and were sure
to receive, about sixty pounds, and the two
daughters thirty; but then they could be
forced to pay out of that what their master
those to exact for obrok and taxes. Many
of the serfs are better off, and some are
worse. The serfs, belonging at one time to the
crown, are now free, and those possessed by the
rich old families have paid five roubles obrok, and
done what they pleased with their ground or
themselves. Some of them are immensely rich,
and could purchase their freedom at fabulous
sums, but great nobles sometimes choose to
retain them, either as a reserve fund in case of
need, or from a foolish vanity in the possession
of a serf worth half a million roubles.
Such instances, however, are by no means
common.

Intelligence reached us one day that
something serious had happened among the serfs at
a place called the White Village, twenty miles
off. I started off to the place in company
with my Scotch friend Saunderson, who was
then my visitor. The White Village was a
village of considerable size, and the houses
seemed to have once been of a more
comfortable class than any I had seen in those
parts. Now it was a most desolate picture of
extreme penury and woe: soldiers were in
possession ot every door; Cossacks patrolled the
streets and the adjacent roads, so that but for
my friend's clever assistance we should not have
been allowed to enter. The steward's house,
with all his property and stores, had been burnt
down and he himself had been murdered. His
family (a wife, a son, and two daughters) could
nowhere be found. Some ten peasants were
dead, and many were wounded. A gang of serfs
in irons, or bound with ropes, followed by
screaming women, some with babies in their
arms, were leaving the place under an escort
of Cossacks, who were jeering the poor wretches
and probing them with lances, on their way
to the government town prison: whence they
would pass ultimately to the Siberian mines, no
doubt.

This is the story of the outbreak:

General Obrassoff died and left his widow
two estates: this of the White Village, which
had come into his possession only a short time
before his death,was one: the other was that upon
which my friend Saunderson served as
superintendent. The lady was a person of a tender
heart, who had been well educated, and mixed
in the best society. At her husband's death she
left the capital and its pleasures, in order to
devote herself to the education of her daughter,
taking with her a first-rate governess and a little
English girl as companion and English tutor.
The little English girl, by name Lucy Murray,
was fatherless, her mother was unable to
educate her, and she was glad to give her
companionship to the Russian young lady in
exchange for good treatment and an education
in German, French, and music.

Arrived at the White Village, which she had
never seen before, the "generalshe" ("Mrs.
General") decided upon living there for a time.
While the old family house was being prepared
for her reception she stayed in a friend's house
in the nearest town. The former proprietor
of the White Village had been rich, and easy