ool--every word spoken must be Russian. If children were
overheard talking in Polish, they were arrested by the police and their
parents summoned and fined. On every public building there was a painted
notice: 'It is forbidden to speak Polish.' All trials were conducted in
Russian, although none of the peasants understood Russian, and so had no
idea of what was being said. No official was permitted to answer a
question in Polish--I have known a tramcar conductor to be heavily fined
for doing so.

"We were taught history in which the name of our fatherland was never
mentioned, but where Russia was treated as the wisest, best, and most
powerful of nations, with the Czar second only to God himself. We could
not leave our native village without permission from the police. No Pole
could fill any public office. No Pole was permitted to publish a book or
a newspaper or even a handbill, until a Russian censor had passed upon
it. If you ever visit Poland, you will notice, here and there, groups of
tall wooden crosses. They mark graves. But if one of those crosses
decays or falls down, it may not be replaced without permission from the
government. One night, the cross over the grave of my father's mother
was struck by lightning; and for two years it lay there, until
permission to replace it had come from Petersburg. It was among such
surroundings that my childhood was passed."

Kasia did not seem to realise that, instead of telling about Poland, she
was telling about herself; and Dan was deeply moved. He had listened, in
his day, to many stories, but never to one like this. It was as though
the dead wrappings of history were stripped away, and its seething,
desperate, tragic heart laid bare.

"Go on," he said thickly, and folded his arms tightly across his breast.

"My father had hoped to be a student of science," she went on; "but he
was refused admission to the university because of some absurd
suspicion, and after that he could study only secretly. When he married,
he rented a little farm near Warsaw; and there he and mother toiled all
day long, and the children too, as soon as they were old enough. There
were four children--two boys and two girls. I was the youngest. Twice
every year, my mother, my sister and I walked in to Warsaw, and spent a
week there helping to clean the streets; this service was required of
all families in the villages about Warsaw, and could be escaped only by
paying a heavy tax. We had also to assis