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Rh the forwarding prisons and the provincial towns, but of every petty officer in the convoy command that escorts him from étape to étape; and the only way in which he can acquire even a limited power of self-protection is by associating himself with his fellow-convicts in an artél, or union. This artél, as an organized body, exercises all of its functions in secret, and strives to attain its ends, first, by enforcing solidarity and joint action on the part of all its members, and, secondly, by deceiving, outwitting, or bribing the officers and soldiers with whom it has to deal. It concerts plans of escape; it contrives means of obtaining forbidden articles, such as playing-cards and tobacco; it hires telégas, or sleighs, from the peasants along the road, and sells, or grants, to its members the privilege of riding in them for short distances when exhausted; it bribes executioners to flog lightly; it pays soldiers for smuggling intoxicating liquor into the forwarding prisons and étapes; and, finally, it sanctions and enforces all contracts and agreements entered into by its convict members. It is, in short, the body politic of the criminal world; and it fills, in the life of the exile, the same place that the mir, or commune, fills in the life of the free peasant. Within the limits of its prison environment the power of the artél over its members is absolute. It has its own unwritten laws, its own standards of honor and duty, and its own penal code. Its laws recognize only two crimes,—disobedience and disloyalty,—and its penal code provides for only one punishment—death. The exile may lie, he may rob, he may murder if he will, provided his action does not affect injuriously the interests of the artél to which he belongs; but if he disobeys that organization, or betrays its secrets to the prison authorities,—even under the compulsion of the lash,—he may count himself as dead already. Siberia is not large enough to furnish a safe hiding-place for the exile who has been unfaithful to his artél. More than once, in the large convict prisons, I saw criminals who had been condemned to death as traitors by this merciless