At Tie Pass there was a halt. Here Kouropatkin made a desperate attempt to stand, and did succeed in checking the enemy until the shattered Russian forces could reunite in the semblance of a disciplined army, while the wounded, and such stores and guns as had been saved from the disastrous defeat, were sent northward. Then the army fell sullenly back, a few versts each day, repulsing the attacks of the exhausted Japanese. These attacks diminished in number and force, until Kouropatkin could breathe more freely and even consider establishing a new line of permanent defence. Before, however, he could reorganise his troops or lay out a single line of fortifications a despatch flashed over the wires from St. Petersburg removing him from the supreme command of the army and appointing General Linevitch, his former subordinate, in his place. Like a brave and generous soldier he not only laid down his command without a word of protest, but at once petitioned for and obtained permission to serve under Linevitch. Truly, the "Little Father" had reason to be proud of his children! But the Czar of all the Russias, in his white palace on the Neva, had cares beyond even those which gathered, bat-winged, around the prospects of his army in the Far East. Throughout his vast realm, from the Caucasus to the Baltic, from Sebastopol to the Arctic Seas, in the remote provinces and at the very gates of his palace, signs multiplied that a long-dreaded event was coming to pass: the Russian peasant was awakening! Aroused by proclamations of Nihilists, by sermons and appeals from religious leaders, by stinging words from such patriots as Tolstoi and Gorky, the peasant stirred in his long sleep, he smiled in his stupid, good-humoured, harmless way; he grew graver as the import of the fiery words that were borne on every breeze penetrated his dull brain. Cruelty--oppression--injustice--could it be true? Nay, the Little Father would put it all right. They would tell him about it; they would go to him with these wrongs as a little child kneels at his bedside and prays sleepily and trustfully, to his Father in Heaven; and he, the Ruler of all the Russias, the White Czar, the father of his people, would listen and would hear their prayer and grant relief, if relief were needed. A great throng of such peasants, headed by a priest, flocked to the city, asking, poor, bewildered souls, to see the Czar, and to be allowed to pray to him. They were rebuffed and roughly ordered back by men with glistening bayonets. Then, still childlike and foolish, they actually tried to force their way to their father's house, believing that although his minions might use them rudely, he, whom they loved with all their big, ignorant, devoted hearts, would suffer them to come unto him, and forbid them not. Another surge forward, over the paved street, to the fatal bridge. "Halt! Disperse!" They would not. Their priest leader held his cross aloft and waved them on.