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230 escape by concealing themselves during the day in the small shop in one corner of the courtyard where they were allowed to work, and then scaling the stockade from its roof at night. The most serious difficulty in the way was the evening "verification." After supper every night the prisoners in all the cells were counted, and the men concealed in the workshop would be missed before it grew dark enough to render the scaling of the stockade reasonably safe. This difficulty the prisoners hoped to overcome by making dummies to take the places of the missing men in the kámeras. It was not customary to waken prisoners who happened to be asleep at the time of the evening verification. The officer on duty merely included them in the count without disturbing them, and as he did not enter the dimly lighted cell, but made his count from the door, he was not likely to notice the difference between the figure of a dummy and the figure of a real man lying asleep on the platform with his face to the wall. If the proposed stratagem should succeed, the men who escaped were to make their way down the valley of the Amúr River to the Pacific Ocean, and there endeavor to get on board of some American whaling or trading vessel. In the mean time their comrades in the prison were to supply their places with dummies at every verification, in order to conceal their escape as long as possible, and give them time enough to reach the coast before the inevitable hue and cry should be raised. Late one afternoon in April, when all necessary preparations had been made, two political convicts named Muíshkin and Khrúshchef concealed themselves in a large box in the prison workshop, and just before the time for the evening verification their places were taken by two skilfully constructed dummies in convict dress which were laid on the sleeping-platform in the cell that they had occupied. The substitution was not noticed by the officer who made the evening count, and at a late hour of the night Muíshkin and Khrúshchef crept out of the box in the workshop, climbed up on the roof, scaled