"God knows!" said Palma, as he threw himself down on the dry spot where Pavlof had been sitting, and Pavlof dropped alongside. "I don't know, and they don't know, or at all events they haven't told me. I have thought and thought till my brain cracks with thinking, and the nearest I can get to it is that some of the folks we used to help have got mixed up with some of these other matters and so they drag us in. It is what I always feared, but if the work was to be done we had to take the risk. I tell you what, Pavlof," he said, thumping the ground with an angry fist, "I know now what it is that turns men's souls to gall and bitterness and makes devils of them. It is damnable work such as this. I never counselled force. I never did a thing but what I believed for the good of my fellows. But--my God!--if--ever--I--get--free, some one shall pay for all this." "And all for what?" said Pavlof quietly. "For teaching men and women to look up instead of down, and that they are no longer slaves." "Slaves they are and slaves they will remain until they break their bonds for themselves," said Palma hotly. "It will come, Pavlof. It must come. A nation cannot be ground down for ever by the handful on top." "It will come in time, but the time is long, and the grinding is very bitter," and the silence that fell on them for a space was filled with gloomy thoughts. "Where have they had you?" asked Pavlof presently. "Petropavlovsk. And you?" "Schlusselburg." There was no need for details. Those two words supplied them to the very last letter. They have meant torture, madness, death, to many a man--and many a woman too--whose only crime was too advanced thought for their fellows. "And Hope Ivanovna? How will she fare in your absence, Serge Petrovitch? Even if they have not taken her too?" It was the one thought and fear that had been churning through his brain ever since he had learned that she was not there.