Myshkin afterward escaped from Kara, when a more rigorous régime had been introduced by Count Loris Melikov, and permission to work in the open air had been withdrawn. One prisoner, Semyonovski, driven to desperation, committed suicide, and several condemned to long terms made up their minds to break prison. Myshkin and a comrade were the first to go; a second and a third pair followed; a fourth couple were caught in the act, and the authorities, spurred on to extreme activity by the presence at Kara of the head of the prison department, recaptured six of the fugitives. Myshkin succeeded in reaching Vladivostok, and was on the point of embarking on board a foreign ship when he was recognised and retaken. Myshkin and thirteen others who were deemed dangerous were sent back to St. Petersburg in 1883, where they were lodged at first in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul and then in the “stone bags” of the fortress of Schlüsselburg. The dread of insanity from a new term of solitary confinement drove Myshkin to repeat the same tactics as at Kharkov. He struck one of the officers, and found more prompt retaliation this time, for he was tried by court-martial and shot. Another striking incident occurred at the Kharkov prison. Two prisoners on their way there were nearly rescued by an attack on the prison van. One of the guards was shot, and the release would have been effected had not the horses taken fright and stampeded, which led to their recapture. The attack was made by a number of mounted men, armed, and one of these, Alexei Medvediev, also called Fomin, was afterward caught in Kharkov station. He was committed to the gaol, but managed to escape with a party of ordinary criminals by burrowing under a wall. They did not get farther than a wood near-by when they were recaptured. Medvediev’s friends arranged a plan to set him free again. Two of them, disguised as gensdarmes, brought a forged order to the prison gate calling for the prisoner, who was to be escorted, they said, to the gendarmerie office for examination. The false gensdarmes were detected and taken into custody, sent for trial and condemned to death. The sentence was afterward commuted to penal servitude for life, and they were sent to Kara. Medvediev was treated after the same fashion, but he was detained in various prisons of Western Siberia, closely guarded, and was at last returned to the Alexis Ravelin in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul for five or six years. He is described by a comrade—Leo Deutsch—as “a man of consummate bravery who literally despised danger, and was always ready to embark on the most terrible adventure. He had been a postilion and had received only a scanty education at an elementary school, but by his own exertions he had gained a respectable amount of knowledge.... At Kara he became an adept in various handicrafts; he was an excellent tailor, shoemaker, engraver and sculptor, and afterward, when he was