Everything comes to an end at last, and so did this double life. Five officers had planned to escape. They had arranged with the sentry that each should pay him twenty kopecks. The first four paid and got through, but the last one, being a Jew, objected to paying and scrambled by for nothing. The sentry promptly rang the alarm-bell. The colonel was the first to arrive and he found the sentry in tears. He demanded to know what was the matter. “Why, just think,” said the sentry, “five Austrian officers promised to give me twenty kopecks if I would let them escape (boo-hoo-hoo), and I did let them escape (boo-hoo-hoo), and then the last one did not pay me anything at all (boo-hoo-hoo).” The colonel, quite properly I think, boxed his ears, and degraded him on the spot. The Russians were very angry with the escaped officers and wished to make an example of them. They could not find out their names because all the books had already been signed up, and they were not equal to the task of going through each room and finding out who belonged there and who was missing. But they set round the officers’ quarters double guards and enjoined on them the necessity of keeping a sharp watch. In spite of the care they took, all the fugitives managed to slip back into the camp that night unperceived. Then the Russians, determined to have no more nonsense from the officers, built all round their camp a wooden enclosure some ten or fifteen feet high, and strengthened it at short intervals with towers from which sentries could overlook the whole section. There was only one entrance, a massive gateway, and this was always watched by four or five men. My career as a teacher of officers was at an end, and from that time till I left Stretensk I lived with the doctors. All the Russians in the camp except the colonel knew that I was there _per nefas_, but it made no difference. I even gave lessons in the families of Russian officers. At first the attitude of the Russians puzzled me, and I put it down to that peculiar element in the Russian character which, according to the circumstances in which we meet it, we call good nature, or fatalism, or simply laziness. But in the end I found out that nearly all the officers were there for a special reason; they were Poles, or Jews, or Germans, or political suspects, and had been sent to Siberia partly as a punishment, partly to get them out of harm’s way. A few of them favoured the German cause, some came from districts occupied by the Germans, and would naturally not be inclined to do anything to prejudice their position with their German rulers. There was a Polish officer who rejoiced at every German victory, and wished disaster to the Russians more heartily than the prisoners themselves.