ck to the man who was lying
on the ground. He did something for him and then resumed his flight.

"What does all this mean?" asked the Tsar.

"These are the guards on the frontier, enforcing the revenue laws. That
man was killed to protect the revenues of the State."

"Has he actually been killed?"

The guide again laid his hand upon the head of the young Tsar, and again
the Tsar lost consciousness. When he had recovered his senses he found
himself in a small room--the customs office. The dead body of a man,
with a thin grizzled beard, an aquiline nose, and big eyes with the
eyelids closed, was lying on the floor. His arms were thrown asunder,
his feet bare, and his thick, dirty toes were turned up at right angles
and stuck out straight. He had a wound in his side, and on his ragged
cloth jacket, as well as on his blue shirt, were stains of clotted
blood, which had turned black save for a few red spots here and there.
A woman stood close to the wall, so wrapped up in shawls that her face
could scarcely be seen. Motionless she gazed at the aquiline nose, the
upturned feet, and the protruding eyeballs; sobbing and sighing, and
drying her tears at long, regular intervals. A pretty girl of thirteen
was standing at her mother's side, with her eyes and mouth wide open.
A boy of eight clung to his mother's skirt, and looked intensely at his
dead father without blinking.

From a door near them an official, an officer, a doctor, and a clerk
with documents, entered. After them came a soldier, the one who had shot
the man. He stepped briskly along behind his superiors, but the instant
he saw the corpse he went suddenly pale, and quivered; and dropping his
head stood still. When the official asked him whether that was the man
who was escaping across the frontier, and at whom he had fired, he
was unable to answer. His lips trembled, and his face twitched. "The
s--s--s--" he began, but could not get out the words which he wanted to
say. "The same, your excellency." The officials looked at each other and
wrote something down.

"You see the beneficial results of that same system!"

In a room of sumptuous vulgarity two men sat drinking wine. One of them
was old and grey, the other a young Jew. The young Jew was holding a
roll of bank-notes in his hand, and was bargaining with the old man. He
was buying smuggled goods.

"You've got 'em cheap," he said, smiling.

"Yes--but the risk--"

"This is indeed terrible," said the young