Only a quarter of an hour was allowed to the prisoners in the open air. No physical work was permitted. The ex-Tsar felt this privation very much. Alexandra suffered terribly. Her son remained an invalid, unable to walk. The family seemed to be overwhelmed by grief. But their faith in God and their love for each other illuminated the gloom of this awful prison. Above the ribald songs of their tormentors might be heard the chanting of the Song of Cherubim, the Russian hymn of praise. Now we come to the final phase that preceded the murder. It is full of significance. Every step taken by the occult powers of the Ekaterinburg _chrezvychaika_, which, it must be remembered, did nothing without orders from the central institutions in Moscow--Sverdlov being in direct communication with Goloshchekin--falls into its natural appointed place as part of the cruel fate reserved for the Romanov family. The monsters who had been placed in charge of the prisoners--as if on purpose to torment them through the agency of Russians--did not fulfil their mission to the end. Even they became humanised by the spectacle of the sufferings and the patience and humility of their former sovereigns--not all of them, of course, but certainly a majority, including their commandant, Avdeiev. One of these men afterwards related how the change came over him. He had begun with hatred in his heart. The Tsar was the head of the capitalistic system, the greatest capitalist of them all. To destroy him was to destroy capitalism itself--the Social-Democratic programme had made it all so plain to him. He watched the crowned enemy of mankind, the “drinker of the people’s blood,” as he walked about the garden, and listened to him exchanging simple, homely words with the other warders. His notions began to waver. This was not a bad man; he was so human, so kindly, just a man like other men, and even better. Then the idea occurred to him that it was wrong to desire his death. What harm could he do? Why not let him escape! Yes, it would be much better if he went away, and the children, too, they had done no harm, and the Tsaritsa also. She was proud. Not simple and homely, like the Tsar; but let her also go. If she had done harm, she had also suffered. This man repented of the evil he and his fellows were doing. He would sing no more lewd songs, and tried to dissuade the others. Rapidly the whole of the guard--workmen from the Lokalov and Syssert companies’ plants--were becoming disaffected.