He was a great burly fellow with leg-irons on. His skin, where it was visible, was brown as parchment. His face was covered with a matted growth. He looked as strong as a carthorse. "And let me tell you," he added, "There are some worse places than Kara. Yakutsk, for instance. Gr-r--r-r!" "And what is Yakutsk like? Been there?" asked Pavlof. "Yes, barin. I've been there and nearly stopped there. They call Kara hell, but Yakutsk is a hundred times worse." "That must be pretty bad," said Pavlof, to draw him on. "Bad! Well, you see, they're human at Kara, if they are a bit difficult and hard on you. But at Yakutsk they're just simple barbarians--eat raw and sleep cold. Beasts--just beasts, and not fit to live among. I'm rough and strong, and I can stand a good deal, but I can't stand the Yakuts." "And why did they send you to Yakutsk?" "Well, it was this way, barin. It was my first time and I was going to the provinces, and there was a barin in our company, just as it might be yourself, and he was bound for Kara. And--well, he was very keen to get back home again, and he got me to change names with him, so that he went to the provinces and I went to Kara. It turned out that he was a red-hot bad lot. He got back home all right enough, but then he was fool enough to get caught again, and then it all came out, and they found they had two of his name on their hands, so they sent us both to Yakutsk to make sure. We got away all right, though it's not easy, for the devils watch you like cats, and--well, it was bad on the road and he died. No, if ever I'm sent back to Yakutsk, I'll die there sooner than try getting out." "And why did they send you here, Mr. Zubof?" asked Pavlof, of the lean man with the dog. "I was a schoolmaster," he said bitterly, "and I taught people how to live and grow, and so they plucked me up by the roots and cast me on to the dunghill, and here I am. I never wronged any man, as far as I know. But they have killed my wife and child, and now I have nothing left but Fifi here. And we're going to live in the woods and care for nobody.... I used to believe in God, but I can't fit Him in with these doings." "These are man's doings," said Pavlof quietly. "Devil's, barin," said the man who was like a carthorse, very emphatically. "The men are underneath and the devils are all on top. As soon as a man gets an office he becomes a devil." "We're all just rats in a trap," said the schoolmaster, looking slowly round the great stockade, "and sometimes I wish the trap would snap and chew us all up with its big, black teeth." "It's swallowed many a thousand," said the man who was like a carthorse, "but it always spits them out again--to Kara, and Nerchinsk, and Yakutsk. And it'll go on swallowing as long as there are any left to swallow. Think not, barin?" at a sign of dissent from Pavlof. "No, I think not. Sometime the end will come."