"Always women and children," said the first, "and it is a hard road they travel." And on the crowded boat, as it swung down stream to the length of its tether, one woman looked across at the blue hills and thought that somewhere away behind them lay the man she had come so far to find, and she hoped that it was well with him. When that load was landed there came a delay in the passage, and those who had already crossed stood up and crowded the bank to see why the boat was coming over empty. But as it drew in they saw that this journey was devoted entirely to the convenience of one passenger. He lay back in a three-horsed tarantas and seemed to eye the motley crowd on the bank with a more than usually keen and searching scrutiny. At sight of him a hasty word flew round among the Cossack guards, and they threw up their rifles to the salute. And Hope Palma, who had been watching with the rest, sat down suddenly on the bare earth behind them, and her face was pinched and clouded as she recognised her old tormentor, Colonel Zazarin. "Nu!" said a woman to one of the soldiers, as the carriage sped away in a cloud of dust. "The great man is in a hurry. Who is he, little father?" "It is the new Governor of Kara. The last one is dead of the fever." "Tell us, little father," said one of the three in the cleft, as they lay on their stomachs, chin in hand, and watched the traffic below, "why should one man have the power to do all this? After all, he is only a man like you or me. Strip him and set him alongside me and he is neither more nor less than a man. And yet----" "The trouble is that if you kill him there is always another to step into his place," growled the other. "And he, again, is only a man like the first." "You cannot alter facts by killing men," said the third quietly, very intent upon the scene below--"unless you kill enough," he added meditatively, "as they did in France. It is a system, and he is at the head. He is probably no worse than any other man----" "That is not enough. When all the rest are in his hand he ought to be more than that. He ought to be the strongest and the best." "Originally--far back--I suppose he was. But it is the system that is wrong----" "And we others suffer." "Yes, we others suffer, and will suffer till the system is altered. And that will never be done from the top, and can only be done from the bottom by the shedding of much blood. In France it ran in rivers." "Tell us how they did it in France, little father!"