How to weave a play from such unpromising material must have puzzled Gorky. Evidently he did not try, preferring the easier way of letting his people tell their own stories and reducing technical construction to a mere dropping of the curtain from time to time. In fact, there is far more dramatic intrigue in Tolstoy's Powers of Darkness, of which this piece is really a pendant. Gorky does not fear the naked truth as do many literary artists who have social position and reputations to maintain. The collision of character which is essential to the production of drama is brought about somehow or other, the chief means employed being Luka the pilgrim. This old man, who is as loquacious as Polonius and almost as platitudinous, changes the ideas of every one he meets. He finds the thief hard and impenitent; he points out to him that in Siberia, over yonder, is a wide, free land, where every man may hew a way for himself. The good-looking scamp tells him that thief he was born, thief he must remain; that his father saw the inside of prisons; that if he goes to Siberia it will be as a convict, and not of his own volition. Yet the words of the stranger have sunk a shaft into his consciousness, and despite his mockery of the old man's belief he pauses and reflects--why not? Why not become a decent man, marry, beget children, and chuck the old life of crime and police espionage? He loves Natascha. He hates her sister, and in the best scene of the play he lays his case clumsily but manfully before the girl. The crossroads of his life are arrived at--her decision will settle which turn he is to take.