I was first taken through a long, narrow court terminating in a doorway. Here the warder rang a bell; another warder appeared, and conducted us through another narrow court, and up an iron spiral staircase till we reached the third floor. We came to a halt on a dimly lighted landing scarcely a yard and a half wide, with five doors round it. One of these was opened, and I found myself in my cell. A rapid glance showed me that it was not exactly luxurious; it was an irregular triangle in shape, so tiny that one could scarcely take three steps across it, and very little light came through the narrow window. However, it contained a bed and other usual furniture. “And here I shall have to live for six long months,” I thought sadly. “Good day! Who are you?” said a voice close at hand. It turned out that two prisoners were my neighbours, condemned like me to penal servitude in Siberia. They were concerned in the “trial of the fourteen,” or “Vera Figner Case,” as we usually called it, and had been sentenced at the same time as myself. We introduced ourselves to one another, and talked through the peepholes in our doors, which did not seem at all to disturb the warder, who was on the landing. He soon after took us out for an airing in the little court I had passed through, which was enclosed within high walls; and as he left us alone here, we could talk as much as we liked to the tune of our clanking fetters while we walked up and down. I now for the first time saw other political convicts like myself, “deprived of all civil rights” and condemned to penal servitude. It was a strange sight. I noted their youthful but worn faces; both of them wore spectacles, and on their heads were round caps with no brims. With their yellow sheepskins and rattling chains my comrades gave one the impression that they could not be real convicts, but were just dressed up for the part—so great was the contrast between their refined faces and behaviour and this uncouth disguise. They were about my own age—twenty-nine or thirty. The elder, Athanasius Spandoni-Bosmàndshi, was sentenced to fifteen years’ penal servitude; the younger, Vladimir Tchuikòv, to twenty. Neither of them looked as if he had ever been strong, and both seemed to have suffered much in health during their long imprisonment in the Fortress of Peter and Paul. With their pale, thin faces they looked as if they had just come through a severe illness. But this obvious lack of health had been an advantage to them, as on account of it they had escaped incarceration at Schlüsselburg,C to which place their comrades sentenced in the same case had all been sent. [Illustration: TCHUIKOV] [Illustration: SPANDONI] [Illustration: VERA FIGNER] [Illustration: STEFANOVITCH] [Illustration: MIRSKY] To face page 112