that cannot but be regarded as dangerous. Dangerous particularly in view of the evil influences at work among the young of our generation; in view of the very sad fact that college students will disguise themselves as peasants——”

“What do you mean, sir?” Pievakin burst out, reddening violently. “How dare you liken me to those fellows? I was serving the Czar while you were still a whippersnapper. I’m a councillor of state, sir. How dare you make these insinuations?”

“I expected as much,” Novikoff answered, nervously polishing his buttons. “Defying one’s superior is of a piece with the views you’re trying to instill into the minds of your scholars.”

“What is of a piece with what? Speak out, sir,” Pievakin shrieked.

“Bridle your temper, sir. I can’t allow that.”

“Then tell me what it’s all about,” the teacher of history and geography said in a queer, half-beseeching, half-threatening voice.

“Well, this morning you were expatiating upon the blessings of a constitutional government. Yes, sir. There are no spies to eavesdrop on one in this building, but it seems you never speak so loud nor with so much gusto as when you get to the subject of constitutions and parliaments and things of that kind.”

“It isn’t true. I merely said a word or two on the various forms of government. It’s practically all in Smirnoff’s Geography.”

“‘Practically’! It’s against the law. I am very sorry, but it becomes my duty to report it to the curator.”

Here Pievakin, losing control of himself, shouted “Spy!” and “Scoundrel!” and darted out of the room.

This happened at a time when the “peasantist” movement, the peaceful, unresisting stage in the history of what is commonly known as Nihilism, was at its height. The educated young generation was in an ecstasy of altruism. It was the period of “going to the people,” when hundreds of well-bred men and women, children of the nobility, would don peasant garb and go to share the life of the tillers of the soil, teaching them to read, talking to them of universal love, liberty and equality. The government punished this “going to the people” with Asiatic severity. Russia has no capital punishment for the slaying of common mortals, the average penalty for murder being about ten years of penal servitude in Siberia; and this penalty the courts were often ordered to impose on absolutely peaceable missionaries, on university students who practically did the same kind of work as that pursued by the “university settlements” in English-speaking countries. There were about one thousand of these propagandists in the political prisons of the empire, and their number was growing. They were kept in solitary confinement in cold, damp cells. Scores of them went insane or died of consumption, scurvy or suicide before their cases came up for trial.

Pievakin’s house was searched by gendarmes, but no “underground” literature was discovered there. He was not arrested, but spies shadowed his movements and about a month after the domiciliary visit he was officially notified by the curator’s office that he was to be transferred to the four-year “progymnasium” of a small town a considerable distance off. This implied that his work was to be restricted to boys of fourteen and less in a town out of the way of “dangerous tendencies.” He grew thin and haggard and a certain look of fright never left his eye. The other instructors at the gymnasium, all except one, and many of his private acquaintance plainly shunned him. He had become one of those people with whom one could not come in contact without attracting the undesirable attention of the police. One of those who were not afraid to be seen in his company was the “truncated cone.” “My crooked back is the only one that does not bend,” the deformed man would joke. The tacit philosophy of his attitude toward the world seemed to be something like this: “You people won’t consider me one of you. I am only a hunchback, something like an elf, and you will take many an unwelcome truth from me which you would resent in one like yourselves. So let us proceed on this understanding.”

When Boulatoff heard that his favourite teacher was to be exiled to a small town “to render him harmless,” he was shocked. Alexandre Alexandrovich Pievakin was the last man in the world he would have suspected to be guilty of seditious agitation. His only idol at school was thus shattered. Pievakin had not the courage to visit the countess’ house now, and Pavel, on his part, held aloof from him. The old man was hateful to him, not only as a rebel, but also as an impostor and a hypocrite. He felt duped. His blood rankled with disgust and resentment. At the same time the situation did not seem quite clear to him. Something puzzled him, although he could not have put his finger on it.

CHAPTER III.

PIEVAKIN PLEADS GUILTY.

A LESSON in Latin was in progress. The teacher was a blond Czech. Pavel looked at him intently, trying to follow the exercises, but he only became the more aware of the foreigner’s struggles with Russian and made the discovery that his clumsy carriage, as he walked up and down the room, was suggestive of a peasant woman trying to catch a chicken. His thoughts passed to Pievakin and almost at the same instant a question flashed into his brain: If Pievakin was unreliable politically, why, then, was he getting off so easily? How was it that instead of being cut off from the living world, instead of being thrown into a dungeon to waste and perish, as was done with all fellows of that sort, he was merely transferred to another school?

The bell sounded. The Czech put his big flat record-book under his arm and left the room. Most of the pupils went out soon after. The two long corridors were bubbling with boys in blue, a-glitter with nickel-plated buttons and silver galloon, some laughing over their experience with the lesson just disposed of, others eagerly reviewing the one soon to be recited. Pievakin passed along. The pupils bowed to him with curious sympathetic looks, and he returned their salutes with an air of mixed timidity and gratitude. Presently the teacher of mathematics emerged from one of the glass doors, his deformity bulging through the blue broadcloth of his uniform.

“Alexandre Alexandrovich!” he shouted demonstratively, and catching up with him he threw his arm around his waist.

Pavel, who had been watching the scene, was about to return to his class-room so as to avoid bowing to Pievakin, when, by a sudden impulse, he saluted the two teachers, and advancing to meet them, with that peculiar air of politeness which reminded his classmates of his equipage and the colonnade in front of his mother’s mansion, he accosted the instructor of history and geography, turning pale as he did so:

“May I speak to you, Alexandre Alexandrovich?” When the mathematician had withdrawn, he inquired in a tone of pain and concern: “What has happened, Alexandre Alexandrovich?”

“Oh, I’m in trouble, prince,” the old man faltered. He had never addressed the youth by his title before, and there was a note of abject supplication in his voice, as if the boy could help him. His face had a pinched, cowed look.

“But, Alexandre Alexandrovich, it’s a terrible thing they are accusing you of. You’ve been so dear to me, Alexandre Alexandrovich. I want to know all. I cannot rest, Alexandre Alexandrovich.”

“The story is easily told. A misfortune has befallen me. While touching upon the constitutional form of