Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 60.djvu/453

Rh abandoned drunkard and loafer. He was led to enter by the will of his mother and sister, not by his own. It appears almost certain that the second party did not know of the interment of the first party. Vitalia enforced strict secrecy.

On the 5th of February Vitalia and six others were arrested on a formal charge of not having passports, in connection with their refusal to comply with the census and registration. When imprisoned they all refused to eat or drink. They refused all gifts of food, saying that their religion required them to earn their subsistence entirely by the labor of their own hands. They persisted in this course for four days, and it appears that they would have committed suicide in this way, but

they were released and put under house arrest with police supervision.

Some rumor of the interments got out and the excitement in the sect grew more intense, being mixed with doubt and some uncertainty as to the right of what had been done. On the night of February 12 the third party was buried. It consisted of four women who entreated Theodore to dig the grave for them. He did so and lifted his sister down into it, she being too weak from the recent prison starvation to descend into it. This was a large grave. The women lay close together at the bottom. Theodore threw the earth first on their feet, then on