sake. The big thief clasped his chained hands
before him in a statuesque way; the rest looked
all attention, and arranged themselves into their
places.

When the officer came to the little supposed
tailor, that individual stepped forward with some
supplicatory words. The professor also again
stepped forward to my aid.

"He says that he is ill and weak, and cannot
bear the fatigue of walking in chains. He
declares he shall die on the road, and prays
the officer to allow him to remain behind in
prison."

The officer replied in a kindly manner that he
had not the power to prevent his deportation,
that it was the doctor who had that power, and
that the doctor had declared that he was sufficiently
recovered to go with the rest. The
little pale man shrugged his shoulders, looked
down on the ground, squeezed his bundle as if
it was a parting friend's hand, and fell into his
place with his face eastward. The big thief
enjoyed the failure of the sick man's petition.

"Here comes the priest to give them the
parting benediction," exclaimed the professor.

The soldiers presented arms in that lifeless
way that the ordinary Russian soldier presents
arms, as the priest approached. He was a broad-shouldered,
common-looking man, wearing a
plain black robe, and with long brown hair
flowing over his shoulders. The Greek Church
considers the crucifix idolatrous, and he carried
neither cross nor breviary. With no set face
but his ordinary grave demeanour, the priest
mechanically repeated a prayer, and blessed the
parting men. It was the funeral service of many
of them. They bent their heads and jostled forward
to kiss his hand; even a cluster who were
bound by the wrists to a long bar of iron running
between them. The iron chains clashed, clashed,
in doleful unison.

The waggons began to move forward. The
officer drew his sword, and arranged the soldiers.
Surely now the Poles must be coming.

At that moment a band of about twenty or
thirty men, two and two, advanced slowly from
under the arch, and fell into the rear of the
procession. I had already learned in some measure
to distinguish a Pole from a Russian by
his less oblique eyes, by his keener and more
vivacious glance, by his more oval face, by his
more pointed features. These prisoners of war,
destined for the mines and fortresses of Siberia,
wore no chains. The richer men were dressed
almost like Englishmen, in short coats and paletots,
the poorer in caftans and great-coats, like
the lower orders of Russians. The poorer men
were many of them old and feeble, and their
faces bore no expression but that of resigned
suffering. They had not the bearing of criminals,
but they seemed to endure their fate
with something of a fatalist's resignation. What
had these men done? They were too old to have
borne arms. They had, perhaps, lent horses or
given money to their countrymen; and, for this,
they were to be banished for life, away from
kith and kin, home and comfort, and to share
the lot of thieves, murderers, enemies, and all
the scum of Russia's great cities.

"Some of these men," said the professor,
with no touch of compassion in his voice, "will
go only to Tobolsk or Omsk; others to Berezov;
a few will join the arrny in the Caucasus, or be
incorporated with the Cossack regiments on
the Kirghese frontiers; a portion will be sent
to work at the distilleries at Ekaterinski-Zavod;
others to the fatal verdigris-mines at Nertchinsk;
the more refractory Polish students
and workmen will be enrolled among the
'compagnies-disciplinaires' at Orenbourg; and the
worst will go to be beaten, and perhaps die, at
the fortress of Akatouia. This last place is reserved
for the greatest political criminals and
those forçats who have turned robbers and
broken the ban."

"Poor souls!" I said, as the broken-down
men filed slowly past me, with no shame nor
guilt weighing down their heads.

But when the last half-dozen came, I could
scarcely waste pity on such men. They strode
along with such a dignity and calm defiant pride,
not studied, nor self-conscious, nor theatrical—
not like the stage Wallace, William Tell, or Fidelio,
but proceeding from a quiet, deep, intense,
indestructible, changeless hate, arising
from a hostile religion, from a difference of race,
creed, manners, and civilisation. Their leader
was a young stalwart man of about eight-and-twenty,
well dressed, with a fur cap on his head,
and a neat courier's bag by his side. He walked
as Hofer might have walked to death, heedless
of the crowd, heedless of the punishment, of his
destination, of the journey. Head erect, eyes
unflinching, he walked as if he was leading on a
regiment of heroes to die for Poland.

The professor winced a little, but all he said
was, "They are a stubborn people those Poles,
but we shall absorb them."

As they moved forward, we leaped into our
carriage, and slowly followed them as they
clinked forward in a long doleful procession
guarded by the bayonets. The carts drove on,
the soldiers marched, the crowd slowly dispersed
— all but a few sympathisers who followed,
but without talking. I shall never see
again a crowd of prisoners without fancying
myself in one of Dante's hells, with Charon
driving the crowding ghosts back into the waste
of darkness.

I stood up in the carriage as the sound of the
chains died away down the Nijni-Novgorod road,
rapt in meditation. I felt almost as if I had
been left behind by a band of friends whom I
had deserted. A tap of the professor's hand
on my shoulder aroused me.

"Come," he said, "forget those rascals; let
us go to the nearest traktir (restaurant), and
you shall taste the cabbage-soup we Russians
are so proud of. You are sorry for the Poles,
but I dare say your sorrow has not taken away
your appetite."

I could not be angry with the prejudiced but
excellent professor, so we went to the traktir,
and over our soup talked again of Siberia.