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244 outcome. Such, however, is the type of character that is forged in the furnace of oppression and tempered in the cold bath of solitary confinement.

The statements that I have made with regard to the events that led to the shooting of Governor Ilyashóvich are based upon conversations with the political convicts who were actors in them, and upon three independently prepared accounts in manuscript of the escape, the pogróm, and the hunger-strike. The story of the attempted assassination, and of Madam Kutitónskaya's life in prison is from one of her letters, written after her arrival in Irkútsk. The brief transcript of her intentions, thoughts, and reflections, while lying under sentence of death in Chíta, was obtained from an exiled lady who had many long talks with her in the Irkútsk prison, and whose acquaintance I subsequently made. The whole story, in its main outlines, is known to political exiles throughout Siberia, and I heard it in half a dozen different places. All the efforts that I dared make to get at the Government's side of the case were unsuccessful. The officials to whom I applied for information — with a few exceptions — either manifested such a disinclination to talk that I could not pursue the subject, or else made preposterous attempts to deceive me. A young surgeon in the Irkútsk prison whom I questioned about Madam Kutitónskaya was so frightened that he got rid of me as soon as possible and never dared return my call. The isprávnik of Nérchinski Zavód, who went to Kará with some of the recaptured fugitives after the escape, described the political convicts to me as lofki moshénniki [clever rogues] who were not deserving of either sympathy or respect. Most of them, he said, were "priests' sons, or seminarists who had been expelled from school." Lieutenant-colonel Nóvikof, who was for three years or more commander of the Cossack battalion at the mines of Kará, assured me that the political convicts were mere malchíshki [miserable insignificant boys], without any definite aims or convictions; that out of one hundred