The order of his days knew no variation.  Rising at sunrise, the convicts worked until eight o’clock, when they breakfasted, then until their dinner at noon, and again from one o’clock until dark.  His tasks were fetching wood and water, splitting and piling logs, and scavenger-work of all sorts:  it was all out of doors and in every extreme of the Siberian climate.  His companions were all ruffians of a desperate caste:  burglary, highway robbery, rape, murder in every degree, were common cases.  One instance will suffice, and it is not the worst:  it was that of a young man, clerk of a wine-merchant in St. Petersburg.  He had a mistress whom he loved, but suspected of infidelity; he took her and another girl into the country for a holiday, and as they walked together in the fields fired a pistol at his sweetheart’s head:  it only wounded her; the friend rushed away shrieking for help; the victim fell on her knees and cried, “Forgive me!” but he plunged a knife up to the hilt in her breast, and she fell dead at his feet.  He gave himself up to justice, received the knout and was transported for life.

[Illustration:  A Russian Othello.]

The daily contact with ignorant, brutish men, made worse than brutes by a life of hideous crime, was the worst feature in his wretched existence.  He had determined never to submit to blows, should the forfeit be his own life or another’s, and the incessant apprehension kept his mind in a state of frightful tension:  it also nerved him to physical exertions beyond his strength, and to a moral restraint of which he had not deemed himself capable in the way of endurance and self-command.  But in the end he was the gainer.  After the first year he was taken into the office of the establishment, and received a salary of ten francs a month.  He was also allowed to leave the barracks where he had been herded with the convicts, and to lodge with two fellow-countrymen in a little house which they built for themselves, and which they shared with the soldiers who guarded them.  It was a privilege granted to the most exemplary of the convicts to lodge with one or other of the private inhabitants of the village; but besides their own expenses they had to pay those of the soldier detailed to watch them.  In the course of the winter they were comforted by the visit of a Polish priest.  A certain number are permitted, to travel through Siberia yearly, stopping wherever there are Polish prisoners to administer the sacraments and consolations of their Church to them:  there is no hardship which these heroic men will not encounter in performing their thrice holy mission.  Piotrowski, who, like all Poles, was an ingrained Roman Catholic, after passing through phases of doubt and disbelief had returned to a fervent orthodoxy:  this spiritual succor was most precious to himself and his brother-exiles.