heat, or that they would be taken away so late and in such a crowd.  The inspector?  But the inspector only carried out the order that on such a day so many men and women prisoners should be sent away.  No more guilty was the officer of the convoy, whose duty consisted in receiving so many people at such a place and delivering them at another place.  He led the party in the usual way, according to instructions, and could not possibly foresee that such strong men, like the two whom Nekhludoff had seen, would succumb and die.  No one was guilty, and yet the men were killed by these very people who were innocent of their death.

“All this happened,” thought Nekhludoff, “because all those people—­the governor, inspector and the other officers—­saw before them, not human beings and their duties toward them, but the service and its requirements.  Therein lies the difficulty.”

In his meditation Nekhludoff did not notice how the weather had changed.  The sun had hidden behind a low strip of cloud, and from the southern sky a light-gray mass, from which a slanting rain was already pouring in the distance over the fields and forests, was coming on.  Now and then a flash of lightning rent the clouds, and the rattle of the train mingled with the rattle of thunder.  The clouds came nearer and nearer, the slanting drops of rain, driven by the wind, pattered on the platform of the car and stained Nekhludoff’s overcoat.  He moved to the other side, and drawing in the fresh, humid air and the odor of the wheat coming from the parched ground, he looked on the passing gardens, forests; the rye fields just turning yellow, the emerald streaks of oats, and the furrows of the dark-green, flowering potato.  Everything looked as if covered with varnish:  the green and yellow colors became brighter; the black became blacker.

“More, more,” said Nekhludoff, rejoicing at the reviving fields and gardens under the abundant rain.

The heavy rain did not last long.  The clouds partly dissipated, and the last fine shower fell straight on the wet ground.  The sun came forth again, the earth brightened, and a low but brilliant violet tinged rainbow, broken at one end, appeared in the eastern horizon.

“What was I thinking of?” Nekhludoff asked himself, when all these changes of nature came to an end and the train descended into a vale.  “Yes, I was thinking that all those people—­the inspector, the guard and all those servants, for the most part gentle, kind people—­have become wicked.”

He recalled the indifference of Maslenikoff when he told the latter of what was going on in the prison, of the severity of the inspector, the cruelty of the sergeant who refused the use of the wagons to the weak convicts and paid no attention to the suffering of the woman in child-birth.  All those people were evidently proof against the feeling of sympathy, “as is this paved ground against rain,” he thought, looking at the incline paved with multi-colored stone,