long enough to find out if your information is correct. If it is, I will set you free as soon as I can afford to do so; if it is not, then Siberia, and the worst that there is in that delightful country, too. What do you say?" 

 "How long will you keep me in prison?" 

 "A month—six months—a year—as long as I deem it necessary. I shall want you near me where I can talk to you frequently, whenever the fancy takes me." 

 "I'll see you damned first." 

 "Very well. I'm sorry for you. A few months in a comfortable prison, with the best of food, books to read, paper and pens at your disposal, permission to communicate with your friends as often as you please so long as I see your letters before they are sent away, ought to be preferable to ending your life in the mines of frozen Siberia; but the choice is yours." 

 "It is." 

 "Then why don't you accept my offer?" 

 "Because I don't believe you. You will get all that you want out of me, and then I will travel East any way." 

 "That is a chance that you will have to take." I arose and walked across the room to give him an opportunity to think it over. "You look to me like one who has seen better days," I said, when I returned. "You evidently came from a very good family; you are an educated man, and you are young. In all probability you joined the nihilists without really meaning to do so, and having later been selected for this work here, on account of your ability, you were afraid to refuse it. Suppose that I should keep you imprisoned a year, or even two, what is that to the fate that awaits you if you refuse to do as I ask, or to that which you would have met, if you had refused to obey the men who commanded you to come here? Answer me." 

 "A joke." 

 "Precisely. Now, here is another question. If I should let you go free after you betray those men to me, what would your life be worth the moment you got upon the street, even if I provided you with passports out of the country?" 

 "Nothing." 

 "They would find you, wouldn't they?" 

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