In the catacombs of the cloister were caves hewn out of solid rock, just large enough to contain a man kneeling or recumbent; a small hole in the heavy iron door let in air. Total darkness reigned. These caves were inhabited by the whilom great, powerful aristocrats, masters over hundreds of thousands, now no longer masters of their own souls. It is not tyranny, not the power of the sacred hierarchy which holds them bound here, but their own blind zeal. Despising, hating the world, they are self-condemned to the awful imprisonment. The catacombs of the cloisters of St. George and of Solowetshk ever harbor numbers thus self-condemned to a living death. It pleased Araktseieff. Lying upon his straw he passed days and weeks. His door was kept locked by day, only to be opened at sound of the vesper bell, when he went to seek for food, for food is not brought to penitents. Only at dusk may they steal into the cloister garden to seek for mangel-wurzel, samphire, potatoes, and such like produce of the earth, their sole sustenance. One day Araktseieff came across a still more remarkable penitent than himself. He, too, had once been a distinguished bojar; but none knew what his real name was. Here he was only known as "Little Father Nahum." Nahum did not even allow himself the luxury of a ragged cassock. His sole covering is a rush mat woven by himself, his white hair and gray beard flow wildly down over his dirt-begrimed limbs. Nahum does not allow himself lodging in a cave. In summer he sleeps in pools, in winter he creeps into a dung-heap. To kneel day after day in his cave is not humiliation enough for him; he prostrates himself across the threshold of the church door, that those who enter may walk over him, kick him, spit on him. To gather fresh roots out of the earth and eat them Little Father Nahum looks upon as sinful gluttony. He seeks his evening meal from the dust-heap; what is thrown there is his sustenance. Araktseieff had been doing penance three weeks in the catacombs when, one evening, as he was returning with a bundle of leeks in his hand, he came upon Nahum feasting off his self-laid dinner-table, the dust-heap. "Ah," said Little Father Nahum, accosting the new-comer, "I have found so much to eat here to-night I can share with a friend." "What has Providence provided for you?" "Mouldy cheese." "All right. Give me some." "Here it is. Take it all," returned Nahum. "He who hankers after a penitent's food should have it all given up to him." And he handed him the mouldy cheese, with the paper in which it had been wrapped and thrown upon the dust-heap. Truly, loathsome food! But Araktseieff's attention was not so much arrested by the contents as by the paper in which the cheese was enclosed. It was a letter, and in it Araktseieff at once recognized the handwriting of the Czar. His blood surged within him. The Czar's writing a cover for stale cheese! And then the contents! It was a letter addressed to Photios.