mber of students have been arrested and imprisoned for distributing
books among the people. That statement may be true according to the
letter, but it is evidently intended to mislead. These youths have been
arrested, as you must know, not for distributing ordinary books, as the
memorandum suggests, but for distributing books of a certain kind. I
have read some of them, and I cannot feel at all surprised that the
Government should object to their being put into the hands of the
ignorant masses. Take, for example, the one entitled Khitraya Mekhanika,
and others of the same type. The practical teaching they contain is that
the peasants should be ready to rise and cut the throats of the landed
proprietors and officials. Now, a wholesale massacre of the kind may
or may not be desirable in the interests of Society, and justifiable
according to some new code of higher morality. That is a question
into which I do not enter. All I maintain is that the writer of this
memorandum, in speaking of 'books,' meant to mislead me."

Dimitri Ivan'itch looked puzzled and ashamed. "Forgive me," he said; "I
am to blame--not for having attempted to deceive you, but for not having
taken precautions. I have not read the manuscript, and I could not if
I wished, for it is written in English, and I know no language but my
mother tongue. My friends ought not to have done this. Give me back the
paper, and I shall take care that nothing of the sort occurs in future."

This promise was faithfully kept, and I had no further reason
to complain. Dimitri Ivan'itch gave me a considerable amount of
information, and lent me a valuable collection of revolutionary
pamphlets. Unfortunately the course of tuition was suddenly interrupted
by unforeseen circumstances, which I may mention as characteristic
of life in St. Petersburg at the time. My servant, an excellent young
Russian, more honest than intelligent, came to me one morning with a
mysterious air, and warned me to be on my guard, because there were "bad
people" going about. On being pressed a little, he explained to me what
he meant. Two strangers had come to him and, after offering him a few
roubles, had asked him a number of questions about my habits--at what
hour I went out and came home, what persons called on me, and much more
of the same sort. "They even tried, sir, to get into your sitting-room;
but of course I did not allow them. I believe they want to rob you!"

It was not difficult to guess wh