where he found a number of clerks, most of whom were his exiled compatriots and received him warmly.  While he was talking with them a door opened, and Gortchakoff stood on the threshold:  he fixed his eyes on the prisoner for some moments, and withdrew without a word.  An hour of intense anxiety followed, and then an officer appeared, who announced that he was consigned to the distilleries of Ekaterininski-Zavod, some two hundred miles farther north.

Ekaterininski-Zavod is a miserable village of a couple of hundred small houses on the river Irtish, in the midst of a wide plain.  Its inhabitants are all in some way connected with the government distillery:  they are the descendants of criminals formerly transported.  Piotrowski, after a short interview with the inspector of the works, was entered on the list of convicts and sent to the guard-house.  “He is to work with his feet in irons,” added the inspector.  This unusual severity was in consequence of a memorandum in Prince Gortchakoff’s own writing appended to the prisoner’s papers:  “Piotrowski must be watched with especial care.”  The injunction was unprecedented, and impressed the director with the prisoner’s importance.  Before being taken to his work he was surrounded by his fellow-countrymen, young men of talent and promise, who were there, like himself, for political reasons.  Their emotion was extreme:  they talked rapidly and eagerly, exhorting him to patience and silence, and to do nothing to incur corporal punishment, which was the mode of keeping the workmen in order, so that in time he might be promoted, like themselves, from hard labor to office-work.  At the guard-house he found a crowd of soldiers, among whom were many Poles, incorporated into the standing army of Siberia for having taken up arms for their country.  This is one of the mildest punishments for that offence.  They seized every pretext for speaking to him, to ask what was going on in Poland, and whether there were any hopes for her.  Overcome by fatigue and misery, he sat down upon a bench, where he remained sunk in the gloomiest thoughts until accosted by a man of repulsive aspect, branded on the face—­the Russian practice with criminals of the worst sort—­who said abruptly, “Get up and go to work.”  It was the overseer, himself a former convict.  “O my God!” exclaims Piotrowski, “Thou alone didst hear the bitter cry of my soul when this outcast first spoke to me as my master.”

[Illustration:  Charity to the exile.]

Before going to work his irons were struck off, thanks to the instant entreaties of his compatriots:  he was then given a broom and shovel and set to clear rubbish and filth off the roof of a large unfinished building.  On one side was a convict of the lowest order, with whom he worked—­on the other, the soldier who mounted guard over them.  To avoid the indignity of chastisement or reproof—­indeed, to escape notice altogether—­he bent his whole force to his task, without raising his head, or even his eyes, but the iron entered into his soul and he wept.