Friendly relations were established between our two divisions, and throughout our journey we never came into collision. One only of the convicts had a grudge against us, and took every opportunity of evincing his dislike. He was an old hand, had repeatedly escaped from prison, and was now being transported as a criminal of “unknown antecedents.” He was evidently from the working-classes, but was distinguished by keen reasoning powers, and had read an astonishing amount. Reading seemed to be his master passion, but the works of reactionary authors exclusively had fallen into his hands—Katkov, Meshtchèrsky, etc.—and his views were according. He had formed really remarkable opinions on politics in general, and Socialism in particular. He was genuinely convinced that the revolutionists had killed Alexander II. solely because he had emancipated the serfs! He accused us before all the other convicts of being either discontented aristocrats or their paid agents. After this, several of us entered into discussion with him, and tried to convert him. By degrees our arguments began to take effect; he begged us to lend him books, and sought our society whenever possible. I had many talks with him, and tried to get him to tell me about his past and his wandering life; but I never succeeded in learning who and what he really was. He remained to the end the “Ivan of unknown antecedents,” as he was called in his record-book. Yet he would readily tell us tales of his vagabondage. I asked him on one occasion how he managed to get through to European Russia when he escaped from Siberia. “Oh, where’s the difficulty?” he replied. “The chief thing is to have the Urals behind your back; then you get a train or a steamboat, and stop wherever you like. I would go in that way to Kharkov, or Kiëv, or Odessa, or Rostov, hire a room, and live quite comfortably. I was always respectably dressed; my passport was all right (that we see to ourselves), and so nobody bothered about me. The one thing I cared about was to subscribe to a library and get books. I’ve read all sorts of good things—Gaboriau, Paul de Kock, Ponson du Terrail, and lots more beside. At midday I would dine at a restaurant, and go to the theatre in the evening sometimes.” “That sounds very nice. But where did you get the money for all that?” I inquired, with interest. Of earning a living in the ordinary sense there was evidently no question here. One would suppose the gentleman to have been living on private means. [Illustration: ESCAPED CONVICT-TRAMP (BRODYAGA) To face page 164 ] “Money? Oh, I took whatever there was to take!” “Well, tell me just what that means,” I asked him. And he thereupon explained his theory of life. “Above everything, it’s my motto that ‘Self’s the man.’ I don’t hold with joint-stock business in our way of life. Thieves make bad partners, you know. You run the chance of being murdered or split on at every turn; so I always work on my own hook.”