At this time, _i.e._ in the summer of 1881, there were in this House of Detention a number of prisoners accused of different political offences. One of these so-called offences, on account of which numberless persons had been sent to prison in Petersburg, Moscow, and many smaller towns, or even in Siberia, was what Kotliarèvsky called “the old clothes case.” He gave me the following account of this highly important affair of state. In some domiciliary visit the police had found a note containing the names of persons who were assisting the political prisoners by providing them with clothes and other necessaries. Thereupon a number of these persons were arrested; and he told me that an imposing case was being trumped up against this “secret society,” under the name of the “Red Cross League of the _Naròdnaia Vòlya_.” (Of course, Kotliarèvsky did not mind giving a sly hit at the gendarmerie, with whom the police officials have many little tiffs, each often putting a spoke in the other’s wheel.) A pretty conspiracy indeed—for providing prisoners with old clothes! I shall hereafter always allude to this case as the “old clothes affair,” and hope to show by it some of the little peculiarities of “administrative methods” in Russia. These “administrative methods” are sometimes extremely unpleasant for those treated by them. The gendarmerie can imprison people, and exile them to Siberia or the outlying provinces without trial, all by “administrative methods.” Besides those implicated in the “old clothes affair,” there were at this time in the gaol many prisoners involved in other cases, among them several well-known literary men—Protopòpov, Krivènko, Stanyukòvitch, and Erthel. The first-named was my neighbour, and we were soon knocking to one another, though not without some misunderstanding at the outset. Directly I told him my name he left off replying to my taps, I could not imagine why. Several days passed. I could hear him going up and down in his cell, could catch his voice when he spoke to the warder, but he left all my signals unanswered; so concluding that he was afraid of being caught (though the officials of this prison did not seem to make much fuss over the knocking), I left off in despair. After a little, however, he began again. “Why do you hide your name from me?” he asked. I replied that I had told him my name at the very beginning, and repeated it; upon which he hastened to apologise: “I took you for a spy; for I could not make out what you said, and thought you seemed to be knocking confusedly on purpose, so that I might not decipher the name.”