The roadway was strewn with the bodies of those Cossacks which General Kinski, the governor of the town, had telegraphed for, and whom Krasiloff had ordered to give no quarter to the revolutionists. In Western Russia the name of Krasiloff was synonymous with all that was cruel and brutal. It was he who ordered the flogging of the five young women at Minsk, those poor unfortunate creatures who were knouted by Cossacks who laid their backs bare to the bone. As every one in Russia knows, two of them, both members of good families, died within a few hours, and yet no reprimand did he receive from Petersburg. By the Czar and at the Ministry of the Interior he was known to be a hard man, and for that reason certain towns where the revolutionary spirit was strongest had been given into his hands. At Kiev he had executed without trial dozens of men and woman arrested for revolutionary acts. A common grave was dug in the prison yard, and the victims, four at a time, were led forward to the edge of the pit and shot, each batch being compelled to witness the execution of the four prisoners preceding them. With a refinement of cruelty that was only equalled by the Inquisition, he had wrung confessions from women, and afterwards had them shot and buried. At Petersburg they knew these things, but he had actually been commended and decorated for his loyalty to the Czar! And now that he had been hurriedly moved to Ostrog the people knew that his order to the Cossacks was to massacre the people, and more especially the Jewish portion of the population, without mercy. "Krasiloff is here!" said the man whose face was smeared with blood as he stood by me. "He intends that we shall all die, but we will fight for it. The revolution has only just commenced. Soon the peasants will rise, and we will sweep the country clean of the vermin the Czar has placed upon us. To-day Kinski, the governor, has been fired at twice, but unsuccessfully. He wants a bomb, and he shall have it," he added meaningly. "Olga--the girl yonder with the yellow hair--has one for him!"--and he laughed grimly. I recognised my own deadly peril. I stood revolver in hand, though I had not fired a shot, for I was no revolutionist. I was only awaiting the inevitable breaking down of the barricade--and the awful catastrophe that must befall the town when those Cossacks, drunk with the lust for blood, swept into the streets. Around me men and women were shouting themselves hoarse, while the red emblem of Terror still waved lazily from the top of the barricade. The men manning the improvised defence kept up a withering fire upon the troops, who in the open road were afforded no cover. Time after time the place shook as those terrible bombs exploded with awful result, for the yellow-haired girl seemed to keep up a continuous supply of them. They were only seven or eight inches long, but hurled into a company of soldiers their effect was deadly.