Nekhludoff grew especially fond of Kryltzoff, a consumptive young man condemned to hard labour, who was going with the same gang as Katusha.  Nekhludoff had made his acquaintance already in Ekaterinburg, and talked with him several times on the road after that.  Once, in summer, Nekhludoff spent nearly the whole of a day with him at a halting station, and Kryltzoff, having once started talking, told him his story and how he had become a revolutionist.  Up to the time of his imprisonment his story was soon told.  He lost his father, a rich landed proprietor in the south of Russia, when still a child.  He was the only son, and his mother brought him up.  He learned easily in the university, as well as the gymnasium, and was first in the mathematical faculty in his year.  He was offered a choice of remaining in the university or going abroad.  He hesitated.  He loved a girl and was thinking of marriage, and taking part in the rural administration.  He did not like giving up either offer, and could not make up his mind.  At this time his fellow-students at the university asked him for money for a common cause.  He did not know that this common cause was revolutionary, which he was not interested in at that time, but gave the money from a sense of comradeship and vanity, so that it should not be said that he was afraid.  Those who received the money were caught, a note was found which proved that the money had been given by Kryltzoff, he was arrested, and first kept at the police station, then imprisoned.

“The prison where I was put,” Kryltzoff went on to relate (he was sitting on the high shelf bedstead, his elbows on his knees, with sunken chest, the beautiful, intelligent eyes with which he looked at Nekhludoff glistening feverishly)—­“they were not specially strict in that prison.  We managed to converse, not only by tapping the wall, but could walk about the corridors, share our provisions and our tobacco, and in the evenings we even sang in chorus.  I had a fine voice—­yes, if it had not been for mother it would have been all right, even pleasant and interesting.  Here I made the acquaintance of the famous Petroff—­he afterwards killed himself with a piece of glass at the fortress—­and also of others.  But I was not yet a revolutionary.  I also became acquainted with my neighbours in the cells next to mine.  They were both caught with Polish proclamations and arrested in the same cause, and were tried for an attempt to escape from the convoy when they were being taken to the railway station.  One was a Pole, Lozinsky; the other a Jew, Rozovsky.  Yes.  Well, this Rozovsky was quite a boy.  He said he was seventeen, but he looked fifteen—­thin, small, active, with black, sparkling eyes, and, like most Jews, very musical.  His voice was still breaking, and yet he sang beautifully.  Yes.  I saw them both taken to be tried.  They were taken in the morning.  They returned in the evening, and said they were condemned to death.  No one had expected it.  Their case was so unimportant;