They were for the most part just as good-natured and ready to help one another as is commonly the case with workers of the lower classes. Among the ordinary prisoners, too, were to be found many individuals who could in no sense be ranked as criminals. Russian village communes have the power of rejecting from their midst members whom they consider undesirable; and these outcasts can then be sent to settle in Siberia, without any judicial sentence, but simply by the desire of a majority in their commune. Moreover, this verdict of the commune is often delivered without any real majority being convinced as to the unfitness of the offending member; the clerk to the commune and two or three of the richer peasants and usurers (_Kulaki_) can easily manage to get rid of a poor wretch who does not happen to please them. It would be impossible to calculate how many crying injustices are thus perpetrated on the destitute and helpless among the peasantry. The victims of such barbarous and arbitrary proceedings who were among our party, had many sad stories to tell, which only corroborated what I myself had seen going on in country districts. With one or two exceptions, the exiles belonging to this category were quite average specimens of the Russian peasant. There were also included among these ordinary prisoners members of various religious sects, exiled on that account, and they were very far removed from the criminal type. These sectarians are admitted, by all who know Siberia best, to form the steadiest and the most industrious element of the population. The sectarians in our party of ordinary prisoners always avoided any participation in the fights, quarrels, and rowdyism of the others, and tried not to fall out either with the leaders of the convict band, on the one hand, nor with the authorities on the other. It was their custom to accept humbly all insults and injuries inflicted on them as trials sent them by God.