here."

He looked almost as fresh and alert after that tremendous night we'd
had, as if he'd just come out of his bedroom at Zostrov, when we joined
him in a big dilapidated dining-room, where he'd planked some food and a
couple of bottles of wine on the great oaken table, though I was as big
a scarecrow as Vassilitzi, who was as used up as if he hadn't been to
bed for a week.

He had dropped his flippant manner, and was as cross and irritable as an
over-tired woman.

"Think of these _canaille_ that we feed and clothe, and risk our lives
for!" he exclaimed half hysterically. "We left twenty of them here, when
Anna and I started for Zizscky yesterday,--twenty armed men. And yet at
the first rumor of danger they sneak away to the woods, and leave their
charge, that they had sworn to defend, so that we trusted them. And it
is these swine, and others like them,--dastards all!--who clamor for
what they call freedom, and think if they get their vote and their Duma,
all will go well. Why should we throw our lives away for such as these?
We are all fools together, you and I and Anna. And you," he turned
towards me, "you are the biggest fool of us all, for you have not even
the excuse that is ours! You have no stake in this accursed country and
its people. _Nom du diable_, why do you act as if you had? You are--"

"Calm yourself, Stepan," Loris interposed. "Go and sleep; we all need
that. And as for your cowardly servants, forget all about them. They are
worth no more. Go, as I bid you!"

His level voice, his authoritative manner, had their affect, and
Vassilitzi lurched away. He wasn't really drunk; but when a man is
famished and dead-tired, two or three glasses of wine will have an
immense effect on him; though one glass will serve to pull him together,
as it did me, to a certain extent anyhow. I was able to ask Loris about
that horrible apparition I had seen.

"Yes, she is the Countess Anna Pendennis, or all that remains of her,"
he answered sternly and sadly. "You have only seen her at a distance,
but that was sufficient to show you what Siberia may mean to a
delicately nurtured woman. If she had only died--as was given out! But
she did not die. She worked as a slave,--in the prison in winter, in the
fields in summer. She had frost-bite; it destroyed her sight, her face;
it made her a horror to look upon. Yet still she did not die, perhaps
because her mind was gone, and strength lingers in mad creatures!

"Yossof tol