d fulfil their mission and loosen the wits and the
tongues of these good _moujiks_, we may arrive at the cause. Nor have we
long to wait. Already in the far corner of the dingy and smoke-obscured
room, we hear voices in altercation; a hot, angry dispute forces itself
upon our ears, and the people cease their revels to listen.

"Say what you will," shouted one fur-bedecked individual; "it is an
outrage! We are already burdened with enough taxes. Three days of the
week we must work for the master of our lands, and but three days are
left us for our own support; and now they want to tax us again for a war
in which we have no interest."

"But the Czar must have the money," retorted another. "The people of
Poland are in a state of rebellion, and the army has already been
ordered out to subdue that province."

"Let them tax the nobles, then," angrily cried a third. "Why do they
constantly bleed the poor peasant? Do they want to suck the last drop of
our life's blood? I tell you, we ought not submit."

"How will you help yourselves?" sneeringly asked the host, who, with
napkin tucked under his chin, stood near the speakers, and lost not a
word of the conversation.

How, indeed? Silence fell over the disputants. The question had been
asked, alas! how often, but the answer had not yet been forthcoming.

"Let us arise and organize," at length cried the first speaker, one
Podoloff by name, who was known as a man of great daring and more than
average intelligence, and who had upon more than one occasion been
unconsciously very near having himself transported to Siberia. "Let us
organize!" he repeated. "Think ye we alone are tired of this wretched
existence? Think ye that the peasants of Radtsk and Mohilev and Kief are
less human than ourselves, and that they are less weary of the slavery
under which they drag out a miserable existence? Let us assert our
rights! With the proper organization, and a few good leaders, we could
humble this proud nobility and bring it to our feet. There was a time
when the Russian peasant was a free man, with the privilege to go
whither he pleased, but a word from an arrogant ruler changed it all,
and we are now bound and fettered like veritable slaves."

A murmur of surprise swept through the room. Such an incendiary harangue
was new to the serfs of that region. Never before had such revolutionary
doctrines been openly advanced. Subdued complaints, undefined
expressions of discontent, were freque