ist community, many of whose members were old friends of
mine, in serious trouble. The police had just been making a terrible
raid among them. Many had been arrested. The others, under strict
surveillance, were daily expecting to be arrested in their turn.

[Illustration: "SERGE WAS ARRESTED."]

[Illustration: "TEACHING THEM TO READ AND WRITE."]

This circumstance, apart from the regret it caused me, had a
considerable influence upon my relations with the local revolutionary
organisation. The centre of this organisation was a group of young men
and women, who, besides the revolutionary agitation that they were
carrying on, were in correspondence with other groups of the same sort,
for the purpose of exchanging books, helping comrades to escape from
prison and fly the country, and so forth. X---- is a big town, chiefly
given up to manufactures; and at the time of which I speak there was
gathered around this central group a sort of duplex association,
composed, on the one hand, of well-educated young folks, and, on the
other, of working men. As a precautionary measure, the association as a
whole was split up into a number of small circles, or clubs, that met
separately, and knew nothing of one another. It was especially in these
smaller clubs that the members of the central group carried on their
propaganda, the aim of which was then, as it is to-day, to alter the
present method of government, to rid the country of the despotism that
bears so heavily upon it, and stops its development, and thus to make
possible at once an improvement in the condition of the labouring
classes, and a reconstruction of Russian society upon a more rational
and a more humane basis. With the working people, however, the
revolutionists were often forced to begin by teaching them to read and
write. Outside of all these clubs, there were in the town a good many
people who, while taking no direct part in the movement, sympathised
with it, and did what they could to aid and abet it by gifts of money,
and by providing refuge for such of the active members as were hiding
from the police. With these very useful friends the revolutionists kept
up more or less continuous relations.

The programme of the group at X---- needed for its accomplishment a
large force of devoted and trustworthy workers; and the arrests that had
been made just before my arrival had considerably thinned their ranks.
This circumstance, as I have said, changed the nature of my o