Even in such simple work as this there ran a vein of danger, in the fact that the downtrodden, when they awake to a sense of their condition, and of the causes of it, are liable to fits of fierce resentment; and at times fiery spirits will out and kindle conflagrations the stifling of which entails far-reaching consequences and suffering. And at such times the innocent are as like to suffer as the guilty--more like, perhaps, since the latter, with their foreknowledge of coming events, can also provide ways of escape. Palma was redeeming to the full the promise he had made to Hope when he asked her to marry him. In her simple schemes of amelioration he was with her to the extent of her will. Against anything beyond he set his face like a flint, as indeed she did herself. The people were nominally free, but they were not educated up to freedom. It was her aim, as it had been her father's, to lift them out of the sloughs, so that in due time they should be able to put their unknown powers to noblest uses. But as to any violent and precipitant exhibition of these as yet immatured powers, they never ceased to warn their poor folk with all the strength that was in them; and their poor folk met their warnings with vehement denial of any remotest thought of any such intentions, and talked among themselves afterwards in ways that would have given Serge Palma nightmares in powder magazines if he had dreamt of them. He regarded some of her agents with considerable doubt, though she had chosen them with the utmost care and discrimination, and had tried them well before she leaned to any extent upon them. "Now that fellow Petrof, Hope? Do you feel quite safe with him?" he asked her one day, when Dmitri of that name had come creeping up to beg Hope Ivanovna's assistance for Katerina, wife of Nicholas Korba. Katerina was expecting to be laid up, and her husband had managed to get into the hands of the police. "I've known him a very long time now, Serge, and I have never found him take a kopeck for himself of what I have given him for other people." "I wish he'd make more noise when he walks," said Palma, smiling himself at the meagreness of his grounds for disliking Dmitri. "He goes along like a snake, and it's all I can do to keep from putting my foot on him." "He is very quiet. But, you see, they learnt to be that in the old times, and some of them can't get out of it." "Well, we can only trust in Providence that they put the money you give them to the uses you intend." "Where I give money they are mostly in such want that they would grudge it being used for anything else. But you are quite right, Serge. There is a risk, and I don't see how we can eliminate it more than we are doing by exercising every possible care and watchfulness. You assumed a great responsibility when you took over me and my work."