eaceful and rich land vengeance,
hate, bloodshed and crimes that go unpunished by the law. No one could
tell the hour of his fate. The people lived from day to day and left
their homes not knowing whether they should return to them or whether
they should be dragged from the streets and thrown into the dungeons of
that travesty of courts, the Revolutionary Committee, more terrible
and more bloody than those of the Mediaeval Inquisition. We who were
strangers in this distraught land were not saved from its persecutions
and I personally lived through them.

One morning, when I had gone out to see a friend, I suddenly received
the news that twenty Red soldiers had surrounded my house to arrest me
and that I must escape. I quickly put on one of my friend's old hunting
suits, took some money and hurried away on foot along the back ways of
the town till I struck the open road, where I engaged a peasant, who in
four hours had driven me twenty miles from the town and set me down
in the midst of a deeply forested region. On the way I bought a rifle,
three hundred cartridges, an ax, a knife, a sheepskin overcoat, tea,
salt, dry bread and a kettle. I penetrated into the heart of the wood to
an abandoned half-burned hut. From this day I became a genuine trapper
but I never dreamed that I should follow this role as long as I did.
The next morning I went hunting and had the good fortune to kill two
heathcock. I found deer tracks in plenty and felt sure that I should not
want for food. However, my sojourn in this place was not for long. Five
days later when I returned from hunting I noticed smoke curling up out
of the chimney of my hut. I stealthily crept along closer to the cabin
and discovered two saddled horses with soldiers' rifles slung to the
saddles. Two disarmed men were not dangerous for me with a weapon, so I
quickly rushed across the open and entered the hut. From the bench
two soldiers started up in fright. They were Bolsheviki. On their big
Astrakhan caps I made out the red stars of Bolshevism and on their
blouses the dirty red bands. We greeted each other and sat down. The
soldiers had already prepared tea and so we drank this ever welcome
hot beverage and chatted, suspiciously eyeing one another the while.
To disarm this suspicion on their part, I told them that I was a hunter
from a distant place and was living there because I found it good
country for sables. They announced to me that they were soldiers of
a detachment