of the men who passed and overtook each other, turning sharply when they reached the wall, never looking at one another, and evidently concentrated each on his own thoughts.  The young Tsar had observed a similar sight one day when he was watching a tiger in a menagerie pacing rapidly with noiseless tread from one end of his cage to the other, waving its tail, silently turning when it reached the bars, and looking at nobody.  Of these men one, apparently a young peasant, with curly hair, would have been handsome were it not for the unnatural pallor of his face, and the concentrated, wicked, scarcely human, look in his eyes.  Another was a Jew, hairy and gloomy.  The third was a lean old man, bald, with a beard that had been shaven and had since grown like bristles.  The fourth was extraordinarily heavily built, with well-developed muscles, a low receding forehead and a flat nose.  The fifth was hardly more than a boy, long, thin, obviously consumptive.  The sixth was small and dark, with nervous, convulsive movements.  He walked as if he were skipping, and muttered continuously to himself.  They were all walking rapidly backwards and forwards past the hole through which the young Tsar was looking.  He watched their faces and their gait with keen interest.  Having examined them closely, he presently became aware of a number of other men at the back of the room, standing round, or lying on the shelf that served as a bed.  Standing close to the door he also saw the pail which caused such an unbearable stench.  On the shelf about ten men, entirely covered with their cloaks, were sleeping.  A red-haired man with a huge beard was sitting sideways on the shelf, with his shirt off.  He was examining it, lifting it up to the light, and evidently catching the vermin on it.  Another man, aged and white as snow, stood with his profile turned towards the door.  He was praying, crossing himself, and bowing low, apparently so absorbed in his devotions as to be oblivious of all around him.

“I see—­this is a prison,” thought the young Tsar.  “They certainly deserve pity.  It is a dreadful life.  But it cannot be helped.  It is their own fault.”

But this thought had hardly come into his head before he, who was his guide, replied to it.

“They are all here under lock and key by your order.  They have all been sentenced in your name.  But far from meriting their present condition which is due to your human judgment, the greater part of them are far better than you or those who were their judges and who keep them here.  This one”—­he pointed to the handsome, curly-headed fellow—­“is a murderer.  I do not consider him more guilty than those who kill in war or in duelling, and are rewarded for their deeds.  He had neither education nor moral guidance, and his life had been cast among thieves and drunkards.  This lessens his guilt, but he has done wrong, nevertheless, in being a murderer.  He killed a merchant, to rob him.  The other man,