Meanwhile our numbers had been gradually diminishing. A good many of my companions had in course of time been allowed to leave, and were living in the penal settlement; and the number of those who had begged for pardon, and who in consequence had been liberated as “colonists,” was not small. Among others my friend Jacob Stefanòvitch should have been released in the spring of 1890, when his term in prison ended; but he preferred to remain with us until the question of our removal to Akatoui was settled, and found various pretexts for getting his release deferred. During the last year we had had no new arrivals from Russia; because since the end of the eighties the Government had brought no revolutionists to trial, so that no sentences of penal servitude had been passed. Instead, a system had been introduced of sending political offenders for many years of banishment to Siberia, or to the island of Saghalien, by “administrative methods.” By the summer of 1890 most of us who still remained in our prison were already formally entitled to leave for the penal settlement, and were only unjustly detained because the number of political settlers there was limited to fifteen. I myself should have obtained release in the course of that year, but I had never expected that this would really be. From my first arrival in Kara I had resigned myself to the thought of spending my entire term of punishment in the prison; in my dreams of the future I never thought about the penal settlement, but only looked forward to the distant date when, at the expiration of my sentence, I should be allowed to live somewhere as a Siberian exile.[105] That life was depicted for me in anything but rosy colours by the letters of comrades; nevertheless I awaited with impatience the far-off day of release. Like the hero of Dostoiëvsky’s _Memoirs from the Dead-house_, I often counted up how many years, months, weeks, hours, I had still to spend in prison. How wearily the time passed! The fewer grew the remaining years, the slower went the days, and freedom seemed further off than ever. Footnote 105: English readers might suppose that, on the expiration of their sentences, political convicts would be set free unconditionally. But this is not the case. According to the Russian Penal Code, Art. 25, “The results of the sentence to hard labour are: the abolition of all family and property rights; and, at the expiration of the sentence, settlement in Siberia _for life_.” In practice, however, “politicals” (especially those having influential friends) are occasionally, after the lapse of years, allowed to return to European Russia. There they must live under police supervision; and though they may choose their place of abode, it must be a town; but not the capital nor any of the more important or manufacturing towns.—_Trans._