ang the loudest, and they were arrested when
they came out--women and children, old men and maidens."

Miss Julie P. Mangles made a little movement, as if she had something to
say, as if to catch, as it were, the eye of an imaginary chairman,
but for once this great speaker was relegated to silence by universal
acclaim. For no one seemed to want to hear her. She glanced rather
impatiently at her brother, who was always surprising her by knowing
more than she had given him credit for, and by interesting her, despite
herself.

"The dreamer was arrested," he continued, pushing away his plate, "on
some trivial excuse. He was not dangerous, but he might be. There was no
warrant and no trial. The Czar had been graciously pleased to give
his own personal attention to this matter which dispensed with all
formalities and futilities . . . of justice. Siberia! Wife with great
difficulty obtained permission to follow. They were young--last of
the family. Better that they should be the last--thought the paternal
government of Russia. But she had influential relatives--so she went.
She found him working in the mines. She had taken the precaution of
bringing doctor's certificates. Work in the mines would inevitably kill
him. Could he not obtain in-door work? He petitioned to be made the
body-servant of the governor of his district--man who had risen from
the ranks--and was refused. So he went to the mines again--and died. The
wife had in her turn been arrested for attempting to aid a prisoner to
escape. Then the worst happened--she had a son, in prison, and all the
care and forethought of the paternal government went for nothing. The
pestilential race was not extinct, after all. The ancestors of that
prison brat had been kings of Poland. But the paternal government was
not beaten yet. They took the child from his mother, and she fretted and
died. He had nobody now to care for him, or even to know who he was, but
his foster-father--that great and parental government."

Joseph paused, and looked round the table with a humorous twinkle in his
eyes.

"Nice story," he said, "isn't it? So the brat was mixed up with other
brats so effectually that no one knew which was which. He grew up in
Siberia, and was drafted into a Cossack regiment. And at last the race
was extinct; for no one knew. No one, except the recording angel, who is
a bit of a genealogist, I guess. Sins of the fathers, you know. Somebody
must keep account of 'em."

The d