looked at the visitor and his
companion. The water dripped from the stones; the tatters of the
convicts were thoroughly wet. One of them, a tall man, of suffering
mien, laboured hard with gasping breath, but the strokes of his pickaxe
were not heavy and firm enough to loosen the rock.

"Why are you here?" Mr. Lemke asked.

The convict looked confused, with an air almost of consternation, and
silently continued his work.

"It is forbidden to the prisoners," said the inspector, "to speak of the
cause of their banishment!"

Entombed alive; forbidden to say why!

"But who is the convict?" Mr. Lemke asked the guide, with low voice.

"It is Number 114!" the guide replied, laconically.

"This I see," answered the visitor; "but what are the man's antecedents?
To what family does he belong?"

"He is a count," replied the guide; "a well-known conspirator. More, I
regret to say, I cannot tell you about Number 114!"

The visitor felt as if he were stifled in the grave-like atmosphere--as
if his chest were pressed in by a demoniacal nightmare. He hastily asked
his guide to return with him to the upper world. Meeting there the
commander of the military establishment, he was obligingly asked by that
officer--

"Well, what impression did our penal establishment make upon you?"

Mr. Lemke stiffly bowing in silence, the officer seemed to take this as
a kind of satisfied assent, and went on--

"Very industrious people, the men below; are they not?"

"But with what feelings," Mr. Lemke answered, "must these unfortunates
look forward to the day of rest after the week's toil!"

"Rest!" said the officer; "convicts must always labour. There is no rest
for them. They are condemned to perpetual forced labour; and he who once
enters the mine never leaves it!"

"But this is barbarous!"

The officer shrugged his shoulders, and said, "The exiled work daily for
twelve hours; on Sundays too. They must never pause. But, no; I am
mistaken. Twice a year, though, rest is permitted to them--at
Easter-time, and on the birthday of His Majesty the Emperor."

IX.

Can we wonder, when we see the ultra-Bulgarian atrocities practised in
Russia, that "Terror for Terror!" should at last have become the parole
of the men of the Revolutionary Committee?

I will not go over the harrowing details of the events of the last seven
or eight months; they are still fresh in every one's remembrance. The
only measures that could stay this destructive