Suddenly the basket of apples was seen to slip off the railing and the fruit splashed into the murky water. Twenty chairs were pushed back, twenty young men pressed toward the street. A closed carriage with armed escort was approaching the spot. Boom! Boom! Two quick explosions dropped the horses that drew the carriage and the horses of the escort snorted and plunged wildly down the street. The young men now all fell to the work with wonderful skill and precision. One group drew a cordon of protection around the carriage, while another group approached the carriage and collected the bags of money. The affair was carried out with more coolness than speed, and in consequence the raiders found a company of soldiers from a near-by barracks down upon them before they started to escape. So well did the protecting party do their work that not one of the attacking party was caught or injured. The leader of the Maximalist group lost his life in trying to prevent the crowd in the street from rushing to its own destruction. Knowing that a street crowd instinctively rushes toward the scene of excitement, and knowing that a rifle and revolver fire would be directed toward the carriage where the Maximalists were capturing the money, Sergia, the leader, patrolled the street, forcing the crowd to keep at a safe distance. He brandished a Browning revolver and roared thunderous curses upon the people; he fought them back, and continued in this work until captured. Three days later he was executed. Another of the protecting party, a young engineer, was captured in the same effort, and his revolver taken from his hand. He knew he would be hanged, and that in all probability the government would first try to wring a confession from him that would implicate others. In his pocket was another revolver which his captors had not discovered. He could not get it out of his pocket, but he succeeded in so turning it that when he pulled the trigger the bullet passed through his bowels. He died half an hour later, in horrible agony. The money was delivered over to the girl who had been standing in waiting. She carried the packages to a carriage just around the corner and was driven swiftly off. Not one copeck of the (approximately) four hundred thousand rubles was ever recovered by the government. From this standpoint the affair was successful, but it was successful at an awful cost. Including those whose lives were lost on the spot and the executions which followed, eight of the group died for this well planned haul of two hundred thousand dollars. Incidentally, three innocent passers-by were also arrested and executed. Justice must be satisfied in Russia. Up to this point my connection with the affair was slight and of small consequence, but that night I allowed myself to be entangled to an extent that escape came near to being impossible.