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196 ? I have apologised — I most humbly apologise."

And he took up the letter I had given him, holding it gingerly with trembling fingers. And well he might, for the document was headed:

"MINISTER OF THE IMPERIAL HOUSEHOLD,

"PALACE OF PETERHOF.

"The bearer of this is one Gordon Francis Gregg, British subject, whom it is Our will and command that he shall be Our guest during his journey through Our dominion. And we hereby command all Gover- nors of Provinces and minor officials to afford him all the facilities he requires and privileges and im- munities as Our guest."

The above decree was in a neat copper-plate handwriting in Russian, while beneath was the sprawling signature of the ruler of one hundred and thirty millions of people, that signature that was all-powerful from the Gulf of Bothnia to the Pacific — "Nicholas."

The document was the one furnished to me a year before when, at the invitation of the Russian Government, I had gone on a mission of inquiry into the state of the prisons in order to see, on behalf of the British public, whether things were as black as some writers had painted them. It had been my intention to visit the far-off penal settlements in Northern Siberia, but having gone through some twenty prisons in European Russia, my health had failed and I had been compelled to return to