One day as we were on the march a criminal told me that he had known Tchernishevsky.[61] This naturally excited my interest, and I asked him how and where he had met that great martyr to our cause. He told me that he had once before been exiled, and sent to Viluisk, in Yakutsk. Tchernishevsky was there at the same time; they were let out of prison together, and interned in the same town. The man could tell me nothing except some details of the way in which Tchernishevsky had passed his time in exile; but that was enough to make my heart warm towards him. It seemed to me that a criminal who had known personally one of the noblest men in Russia must have something in him a little different from the rest. When he had told me all he could of Tchernishevsky, I asked him how he himself came to be going back into exile. Footnote 61: This celebrated scholar and political writer, though not an active member of the revolutionary party, was arrested in 1866 and condemned to penal servitude. During his imprisonment in the Fortress of Peter and Paul he wrote his famous novel, _What Should We Do?_ which had such a great influence on the youth of his time.—_Trans._ “I got sick of that cursed hole, Viluisk,” he said, “and got away with some other tramps. We’d been a few days on the road when one stormy night we came to a village. It was pouring in torrents, and we could find nobody who would let us in, till at last an old man opened the door of his hut. We begged him in God’s name to give us shelter. “‘Well,’ he said, ‘will you promise to leave us old folks in peace?’ “‘What do you take us for, grandfather?’ said we. ‘Have pity on us!’ “So he let us in, and the old woman gave us something to eat, and they allowed us to lie on the stove by turns. Well, they went to sleep, and we just _did for them_, and went off with everything that could be of any use to us. We didn’t get far: the peasants came after us and caught us; and then there was the usual game—trial and sentence to penal servitude. But on the way here I made a ‘swop,’ and now I’m going into exile as ‘of unknown antecedents.’” * * * * * On their side, however, the people of Siberia are often guilty of great brutality towards the convict-tramps, sometimes shooting them down like beasts of the chase simply in order to steal their clothes, boots, and the products of their begging. I have been told, for instance, by people whose evidence is to be trusted, that the following is a typical instance.