"But four days more, Peter, and then the railroad. There lies Mansk below us, and it is not far from Mansk to Vilna, not even by such a detour as we must make." Peter paused again in his eating and looking out from their woodland hiding-place toward the scraggly village, asked doubtingly, "You are sure they will not fail us? For I swear, Ivan, I'll walk no further than Vilna." Ivan twisted his scarred lips into a semblance of a smile. "The brotherhood never fail," he said. "And now that we have finished our supper, we may rest for the night, eh, Lev?" The speaker, who showed evidences of association with the upper classes, turned to the young Jewish lad sprawled beside him on the mouldy ground. The boy was laboriously spelling out words in a greasy, dog-eared tract which he tried to conceal when he saw Ivan's eyes upon him. "Hello," exclaimed the nihilist fanatic, "what have we here?" He took the grimy pamphlet from the likewise grimy hands of the youth. "Ho-ho," he laughed boisterously, for once forgetting that sometimes even trees have ears. "Ho-ho! a merry jest, indeed! Lev reading up on transmigration! Did you think to become learned, you pitiable young dog? Have you not had meted out to you the full amount of education allowed you miserable Jews? What can you understand of such things as these? Ho-ho! yes, a joke indeed!" The boy gulped. His narrow nostrils widened, and the corners of his sensitive mouth twitched. "I know I don't know much, Ivan. I found it on the way and kept it, for it helps sometimes, wh-when I wish I hadn't come." "Ho-ho," laughed Ivan again. "When he wishes he hadn't come! As if he could have helped coming! Where, indeed, could the brotherhood have found a more innocent-looking hiding-place for their papers? But there, Lev, you shall have your thesis, since you feel the need of amusement, you precious infant. And, Peter, perhaps you will rest more peacefully when I tell you that Loris Pleschivna, that government spy-cat--" here Ivan paused to observe the interest which he knew that this name would create, while Lev, frightened, glanced backward--"was shot two weeks ago," finished the narrator, impressively. Peter's yellow face showed great relief, but the boy whitened. "Well, Lev, are you not glad! Or perhaps, mighty philosopher, you think that his soul will come and steal the papers while you keep watch to-night, eh?" And Ivan grinned--a hideous, tooth-displaying grin. But Lev only shivered and looked around at the darkness. The night, one of those dear nights whose very paleness intensifies the shadows and pictures the ghosts of the past to the guilty mind, had fallen. The two older men rolled themselves in blankets and went to sleep without delay.