living, was awakened by the report of a pistol, and rushing into the room of Semyónofski found that the latter had shot himself through the head. He was still living, but he did not recover consciousness, and died in about an hour. On the table lay a letter addressed to his father, with a note to Charúshin asking him to forward it, if possible, to its destination. The letter was as follows:
My Dear Father: I write you just after my return from watching the old year out and the new year in with all my comrades. We met, this New Year, under melancholy and disheartening circumstances. You have probably received a letter from the wife of one of my comrades, whom I requested to inform you that we had been forbidden thenceforth to write letters to any one—even our parents. Senseless and inhuman as that prohibition was, there awaited us something much worse—something that I knew nothing about when that letter was written. Ten days or so after we received notice of the order forbidding us to write letters, we were informed that we were all to be returned to prison and confined in chains and legfetters. There are nine men of us, namely: Shishkó, Charúshin, Kviatkóvski, Uspénski, Soyúzof, Bogdánof, Teréntief, Tévtul, and I; and we have all been living about two years in comparative freedom outside the prison. We expected something of this kind from the very day that we heard of the order of Lóris-Mélikof prohibiting our correspondence; because there was in that order a paragraph which led us to fear that we should not be left in peace. To-morrow we are to go back to prison. But for the faith that Colonel Kononóvich has in us we should have been arrested and imprisoned as soon as the order was received; but he trusted us and gave us a few days in which to settle up our affairs. We have availed ourselves of this respite to meet together, for the last time in freedom, to watch the old year out and the new year in. I shall avail myself of it for yet another purpose. I do not know whether the carrying out of that purpose will, or will not, be a betrayal of the confidence that Colonel Kononóvich has reposed in us; but even if I knew that it would be such a betrayal I should still carry out my purpose.
It may be that some one who reads the words "they are going back to prison" will compare us to sheep, submissively presenting their throats to the knife of the butcher; but such a comparison
