“What are you thinking of? Why are you so sad?” on one such evening a young “administrative” asked me. She was a girl of about twenty, with whom I had become acquainted during the journey. We were soon engaged in intimate and friendly talk. She could understand my mood, and sympathised heartily. She was an unusually interesting creature of peculiar and, some might say, eccentric character, but of keen intelligence. She told me how she had come to adopt the principles of Socialism, and what kind of life she had quitted to join the revolutionary movement. Like so many others at that time, she had been possessed by the longing to do something for the people—the peasants. Where and how to begin she did not know, and she could find no one to advise her. She tried to discover some way for herself, and read everything she could get hold of that bore on the subject. At last, against her parents’ wishes, she left her home in South Russia for Petersburg, where she hoped to find someone who could help her. In the course of her quest, and before she had arrived at any definite solution of the problems that perplexed her, she was arrested, and was now being sent to Siberia for three years’ banishment. Like hundreds of others, this noble-hearted girl had expended her strength and sacrificed her happiness to no purpose, without benefit to others, without attaining her own peace of mind; a victim to the cramping and illiberal political conditions that reign in our native land. She died by her own hand in Siberia some time after this. From Perm we were taken by rail to Ekaterinburg, where we arrived after a wearisome day’s journey. Here we spent the night; and next day our party, consisting entirely of “politicals” with their escort, was to drive to Tiumen, the first town within the borders of Siberia. The construction of the Siberian railway was only just being begun, and the journey—now very simple—was then attended by all manner of difficulties.