Two weeks after Sandoff’s conviction, the papers briefly announced that the ministry had appointed Serge Zamosc to fill the vacant office of Inspector of the Third Section, and a short time later it was rumored in club and social circles of the city that his Imperial Majesty the Czar had been graciously pleased, for family reasons, to permit one half of Victor Sandoff’s estate to revert to Count Boris Sandoff. So all the actors in the Shamarin affair received their reward. Zamosc attained the height of his ambition and the sum of ten thousand rubles, Count Sandoff replenished his bank account and entered on a fresh course of dissipation, and the rest—went to Siberia. CHAPTER III. THE GOLD MINES OF KARA. In the background a murky, leaden colored sky. Outlined against it, ranges of low hills scantily clad with stunted larches and pines and whitened by a light fall of snow. At their base a stream, narrow and rapid, brawling between scattered rocks and huge shapeless mounds of gravel and sand. In the foreground a straggling village of whitewashed cabins and long barracks of unpainted logs, with a few more pretentious houses with tin roofs, and a black, weather beaten log prison, in the open space before which stand a group of Cossacks in sheepskin boots and dark green uniforms, leaning moodily upon their Berdan rifles. Such was the scene on a dreary January morning in that portion of the Siberian gold mine settlements known as Middle Kara. Within the gloomy prison the convicts have answered to the morning roll call, and are now taking their breakfast of weak tea and rye bread. A moment later the heavy doors are thrown open and the mournful procession files out, a haggard, toil worn group of men, wearing long gray overcoats with yellow diamonds on their backs. The Cossacks shoulder their rifles, surround the convicts front and rear, and at the sharp word of command from the officer in charge, the column is moving briskly up the dreary valley to begin another day’s relentless toil. A sad and hopeless place is this valley of the Kara River, lined at intervals, for a distance of nearly twenty miles, by the prisons and settlements that constitute the Czar’s convict mines. The mines themselves consist of a series of open placers, stretching at irregular intervals along the Kara River—a river in name only. From these placers the convicts extract yearly, by the sweat of their brow, about 3,600 pounds of pure gold—all of which goes into the Czar’s private purse. The misery and suffering of the unfortunate beings who are condemned to spend their days here in hard labor, is not unknown to the civilized world. It need not be dwelt upon further.