Three old muzhiks with long, white beards and clear, blue eyes told the story of how they and five others had gone as a deputation to the then governor of the province, hoping that he would open the way to the Czar for them. As a result of their faith they were stripped to the waist and flogged. Another was of a much larger deputation--more than sixty; thirty of these were sent to prison for a short time, and thirty-six received one hundred blows each. When they found that we were sympathetic listeners, they begged us to come and see the roofs of some of their houses which were being daily torn away to feed the horses. As the roofs were largely composed of straw-thatch, there was a certain amount of nourishment in them--a last resource in the fight against the universal hunger. “Do you have big land-owners in America?” one man asked eagerly. “Are people prevented from earning enough to live on year after year?” All of the questions asked us were vital. They were frank enough about owning to revolt. “What’s to be done?” they said. “The mere renting of land is eighteen rubles (nine dollars) a dessiatine for a season. Where’s the money to come from to pay for this? The land is ours. We do the work, and we should have it.” That very week a Cossack officer and a police officer had summoned all the people of the village together and warned them that if any of the land belonging to the landlords was touched, that “the village would be fired from the four corners, and they would not be responsible for what happened to the people in the village.” The land referred to belonged to two vast estates whose owners had not even seen them for years--_several hundred thousand acres lying absolutely idle_! The welcome we received at Pesky, our next stopping-place, was, if possible, more demonstrative than at Tsaritzin. The group of “intellectuals” here numbered four, two women and two men. They had gathered there in early November and in six months we were their first visitors. One of the students was acting as village school-master. The other was devoting himself entirely to the famine relief-work.