te them to revolution. She told them that the
Czar was an evil ruler, and that he and his nobles had always fattened
themselves at the peasants' expense; that the Russian people would
always be poor and miserable so long as the Czar remained in power;
that they had a right to the land that was taken from them, and were no
better than slaves who dared not call their souls their own--and
furthermore that their only salvation lay in rising throughout Russia,
overthrowing the Czar and establishing a government where all men
should be free and equal, and where every man would have a right to
earn his daily bread.

When the peasants in one village failed to respond Catherine and her
comrades moved on to another town, and little by little they brought
the doctrines of revolution to the mass of ignorant people, who were
looking for some means to better themselves and realize a little of the
happiness of life.

The life of a traveling preacher of this sort was filled with hardship.
Catherine, who had been used to every luxury, was forced to eat the
coarsest food and often to go hungry. She had to sleep in houses that
were filled with dirt and vermin. Her audiences were stupid in the
extreme, and were often as afraid of the revolutionists as they were of
the Cossacks and the Czar's officials. Moreover there was always the
danger of arrest and imprisonment, followed by exile to Siberia, or
death on the gallows.

One day in the town of Zlatopol, where Catherine was carrying on her
revolutionary work, a police officer stopped her and demanded her
passport. This passport was forged and when she showed it he suspected
her. Then, when he commenced to treat her with the indignities to which
the peasants were accustomed she resented it, disclosing the fact that
she was from the upper classes. Her pack was torn open and the
revolutionary pamphlets were found. The case against her was complete.

She was hurried to prison and thrown into a foul dungeon, where the
filth and suffering forced on her were indescribable. And here she was
kept for long, weary months until her case should come to trial.

It was in this prison that she first learned the secret code that
prisoners in Russia used to communicate with one another. One day, as
she lay on the bundle of rags that formed her couch, she heard a faint
tapping on an iron pipe that ran through her cell. She responded, and
on the pipe tapped out the alphabet, one tap standing for "a", two