the Free Command was purgatory, but
the Yoort was Hell!" Then he paused a moment, and added, "_I_ was in the
Yoort." He went on--

"There were three of us in the cage which boated us along the rivers.
Chained and manacled we were, so that our limbs grew numb and dead under
the weight of the iron. All Kazan University men, I as good as an
Englishman. The others, Leof and Big Peter, had been students in my
class. They looked up to me, for it was from me that they had learned to
read Herbert Spencer. They had taught themselves to plot against the
White Czar. Yet I had been expatriated because it could not be supposed
that I could teach them Spencer without Anarchy."

Constantine paused and smiled at the stupidity of his former rulers.

"Well," he continued, "the two who had plotted to blow up his Majesty
were sent to the Free Command. They could come and go largely at their
own pleasure--in fact, could do most things except visit their old
teacher, who for showing them how to read Spencer was isolated in the
Yakut Yoort.' Not that the Yakuts meant to be unkind. They were a weak
and cowardly set--cruel only to those who could not possibly harm them.
They had the responsibility of my keeping. They were paid for looking
after me, therefore it was to their interest to keep me alive. But the
less this cost them, the greater gainers were they. They knew also that
if, by accident, they starved the donkey for the lack of the last straw,
a paternal Government would not make the least trouble.

"At first I was not allowed to go out of their dirty tents or still
filthier winter turf-caves, than which the Augean stables were a cleaner
place of abode. Within the tent the savages stripped themselves naked.
The reek of all abominations mingled with the smoke of seal-oil and
burning blubber, and the temperature even on the coldest day climbed
steadily away up above a hundred. Sometimes I thought it must be the
smell that sent it up. The natives had apparently learned their vices
from the Russians and their habits of personal cleanliness from monkeys.
For long I was never allowed to leave the Yoort for any purpose, even
for a moment, without a couple of savages coming after me with long
fish-spears.

"But for all that, much is possible, even in Siberia, to a man who has
a little money. By-and-by my hosts began to understand that when the
inspector visited us to see me in the flesh, there was money enclosed in
the letters (previously c