On the morning of the fourth day after we had arrived the impatience of the passengers increased to fever pitch. A colonel who was with us, and who knew how to use the telegraph, communicated with Piensa, the next big station. For although the telegraph clerks were on strike they remained in the office conversing with their friends on the wire all over Russia. The strikers were most affable. They said they had not the slightest objection to the express proceeding on its journey, that they would neither boycott nor beat anybody who took us, and that if we could find a friend to drive the engine, well and good. We did. We found a friend, an amateur engine-driver, and an amateur engine, and on the 28th of October we started for Piensa. We broke down on the way. The engine-driver was supported by public contributions. The moment the engine stopped work all the passengers volunteered advice as to how it should be mended, one man producing a piece of string for the purpose. However, another stray engine was found, and we arrived at last at Piensa. There I saw mentioned in the telegrams the words “rights of speech and assembly,” and I knew that the strike was a revolution. At Piensa the rage of the military—who had had their return journey from the Far East delayed—against the strikers was indescribable. They were lurching about the station in a state of inebriate frenzy, using language about strikes and strikers which is not fit to repeat. One of them asked me if I was a striker. We stopped at Piensa for the night. We started again the next morning for Moscow, but the train came to a dead stop at two o’clock the next morning at Riansk, and when I woke up the first-class attendant came, with many deep sighs, and said that we should go no further until the unpleasantnesses were at an end. But an hour later news came that we could go to Riazan in another train, which we did. Riazan station, when we arrived, was guarded by soldiers. A train was ready to start for Moscow, but the scuffle for places in it was terrific. I found a place in a third-class carriage. Opposite me was an old man with a grey beard. He attracted my attention by the extraordinary courtesy with which he prevented a woman, with many bundles, from being turned out of the train by another moujik. I asked him where he came from. “Eighty versts from the other side of Irkutsk,” he said. “I was sent there, and I am returning home now after thirteen years at the Government’s expense. I was a convict.” “What were you sent there for?” I asked. “Murder!” he answered very gently. The other passengers asked him to tell his story. “It’s a long story,” he said. “Tell!” shouted the other passengers. His story briefly was this: He had got drunk, set fire to a barn, and when the owner interfered he had killed him. He had served two years’ hard labour and eleven years’ banishment. He was a gentle, humble creature, with a very mild expression, like an apostle in disguise. He had no money, and lived on