Vladimir Bourtzeff and Daddy R. were old friends, and when the guard unlocked the door of Bourtzeff’s cell, they threw themselves into each other’s arms and kissed on both cheeks. Bourtzeff, who uncovered the ring of spies and provokators headed by the infamous Azeff, had many times suffered imprisonment and exile at the hands of the Tsar. Now, with the turn of Revolution, he was proclaimed a reactionary. His paper was suppressed by Kerensky, and General Verkhovsky, the young Minister of War, sued him for libel. With the overturn of the government, he made a bitter attack upon the Bolsheviki, accusing Lenin of being a German agent and a traitor to Russia. From the cells occupied by the Kerensky ministers we went to those in which the prisoners of the old régime had spent the revolutionary year, ignorant of the seething life beyond their prison walls. As we entered the cell of Soukhomlinoff, Minister of War under the Tsar, the two Russian members of the party led the way. Soukhomlinoff arose and stepped forward to meet us. As if with a single impulse, the two revolutionists put their hands behind their backs and bowed low before him. They were ancient enemies--they could not shake hands. Soukhomlinoff started, recovered himself, and bowed low in return. He turned to me, inviting me to a seat on his cot, and apologized that he had nothing better to offer. He wore a comfortable lounging robe, and there was a certain air of ancient elegance about him, despite his position and his prison cell. His hair--what there was of it--was quite white, and there were pouches under his faded old blue eyes, and deep lines in his face. The table beside him was as shipshape as a sailor’s kit-box. He picked up a portfolio and opened it. His old hand shook as he untied the string and revealed a pile of foolscap closely written in a small, fine hand. “It is here,” he said--“my case. It is all here. I have written this to prove that I am innocent.” He fingered the paper tenderly. It was the work of many dreary hours. We let him talk about it for a few minutes, then asked how he fared there in prison under the Bolshevist régime. “I have no complaint,” he said. “Perhaps it is better than before, because they give us the newspapers. That means much to a man in prison. To-day I am very happy because my wife has just been to see me. She is very good to me, and comes as often as they will permit her. Those are great days--the days of her visits.” It was for this wife, young and considered a very beautiful woman according to the Russian standard, that Soukhomlinoff is supposed to have sold his country in those days when the Russian troops fell like dead leaves in an October wind because they had nothing but naked hands with which to meet the mighty cannon of the advancing Germans.