and was returning to Russia. He willingly accepted the company of a pretty countrywoman, as Olga represented herself to him to be, who was desirous of going to Kazan, where her husband was lying seriously ill, and consented to pay her share of the travelling expenses. But here another trouble arose. This Soluzeff, being on very good terms with the gendarmes and the police, a whole army of them accompanied him to the post-station. Now, Olga had begun her revolutionary career at sixteen, she was arrested for the first time at seventeen, and during the seven years of that career had been in eleven prisons, and had passed some few months in that of Tumeu itself. It was little short of a miracle that no one recognized the celebrated Liubatovitch in the humble travelling companion of their common friend.
At last, however, the vehicle set out amid the shouts and cheers of the company. Olga breathed more freely. Her tribulations were not, however, at an end.
I need not relate the various incidents of her long journey. Her companion worried her. He was a man whom long indulgence in luxury had rendered effeminate, and at every station said he was utterly worn out, and stopped to rest himself and take some tea with biscuits, preserves, and sweets, an abundance of which he carried with him. Olga, who was in agonies, as her deception might be found out at any moment, and telegrams describing her be sent to all the post stations of the line, had to display much cunning and firmness to keep this poltroon moving on without arousing suspicions respecting herself. When, how ever, near the frontier of European Russia, she was within an ace of betraying herself. Soluzeif declared that he was incapable of going any farther, that he was thoroughly knocked up by this feverish hurry-skurry, and must stop a few days to recover himself. Olga had some thought of disclosing everything, hoping to obtain from his generosity what she could not obtain from his sluggish selfishness. There is no telling what might have happened if a certain instinct, which never left Olga even when she was most excited, had not preserved her from this very dangerous step.
A greater danger awaited her at Kazan. No sooner had she arrived than she hastened away to take her ticket by the first steamboat going up the Volga toward Nijni-Novgorod. Soluzeff, who said he was going south, would take the opposite direction. Great, therefore, was her surprise and bewilderment when she saw her travelling companion upon the same steamer. She did everything she could to avoid him, but in vain. Soluzeff recognized her, and, advancing towards her, exclaimed in a loud voice:
"What! you here? Why, you told me your husband was lying ill in the Kazan hospital."
Some of the passengers turned round and looked, and among them the gendarme who was upon the boat. The danger was serious. But Olga, without
