r of the situation, and I guess Mishka did
so, too, for more than once I saw his deep-set eyes twinkle just for a
moment, as he discreetly translated my remarks, and, at the same time,
cordially endorsed our tyrants' freely expressed opinions concerning
myself.

"You have done well, 'Herr Gould,' yes, very well," he condescended to
say, when we were at last through with the troublesome business. "We are
safe enough so far, though for my part I shall be glad to turn my back
on this hole, where the trouble may begin at any moment."

"What trouble?" I asked.

"God knows," he answered evasively, with a characteristic movement of
his broad shoulders. "Can you not see for yourself that there is trouble
brewing?"

I had seen as much. The whole moral atmosphere seemed surcharged with
electricity; and although as yet there was no actual disturbance, beyond
the individual acts of ruffianism that are everyday incidents in all
Russian towns, the populace, the sailors, and the soldiery eyed each
other with sullen menace, like so many dogs, implacably hostile, but not
yet worked up to fighting pitch. A few weeks later the storm burst, and
Riga reeked with fire and carnage, as did many another city, town, and
village, from Petersburg to Odessa.

I discerned the same ominous state of things--the calm before the
storm--at Dunaburg and Wilna, but it was not until we had left the
railroad and were well on our two days' cross-country ride to Zostrov
that I became acquainted with two important ingredients in that
"seething pot" of Russian affairs,--to use Mishka's apt simile. Those
two ingredients were the peasantry and the Jews.

Hitherto I had imagined, as do most foreigners, whose knowledge of
Russia is purely superficial, and does not extend beyond the principal
cities, that what is termed the revolutionary movement was a conflict
between the governing class,--the bureaucracy which dominates every one
from the Tzar himself, an autocrat in name only, downwards,--and the
democracy. The latter once was actively represented only by the various
Nihilist organizations, but now includes the majority of the urban
population, together with many of the nobles who, like Anne's kindred,
have suffered, and still suffer so sorely under the iron rule of
cruelty, rapacity, and oppression that has made Russia a byword among
civilized nations since the days of Ivan the Terrible. But now I
realized that the movement is rendered infinitely complex b