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334 those executions carried out. Do you think that 's a pleasant thing? I have n't much hair left [stroking the top of his head], but all that I have has stood on end at the sights I have been forced to witness at those accursed mines. To see what one must see there one ought to have nerves of iron wire."

The reader must not suppose that these extraordinary statements were made to me quietly and confidentially in a corner. We were walking back and forth in the crowded lobby of a theater with three or four other officers, and Colonel Nóvikof talked excitedly and loudly enough to be heard not only by them, but by any one who cared to listen. It may seem strange that a Cossack officer of Colonel Nóvikof's prominence should make, voluntarily, to a stranger and foreigner, such damaging admissions with regard to the working of the Russian penal system; but this was not the only time that I was surprised and puzzled by such frankness. At a later hour that same evening another officer came to me between the acts, introduced himself, and began to question me about our experience at the mines of Kará. In less than five minutes he made the same inquiry that Colonel Nóvikof had made, viz: whether we had seen the solitary-confinement cells in the Middle Kará prison. I replied as before in the negative, whereupon he gave me the same information with regard to their dimensions that I had already received, and added that these horrible cells