VICTIMS OF GOVERNMENT.

Passing back along the broad corridor (it was dinner time, and the cell doors were open), among the men dressed in their light yellow cloaks, short, wide trousers, and prison shoes, who were looking eagerly at him, Nekhludoff felt a strange mixture of sympathy for them, and horror and perplexity at the conduct of those who put and kept them here, and, besides, he felt, he knew not why, ashamed of himself calmly examining it all.

In one of the corridors, some one ran, clattering with his shoes, in at the door of a cell. Several men came out from here, and stood in Nekhludoff's way, bowing to him.

"Please, your honour (we don't know what to call you), get our affair settled somehow."

"I am not an official. I know nothing about it."

"Well, anyhow, you come from outside; tell somebody--one of the authorities, if need be," said an indignant voice. "Show some pity on us, as a human being. Here we are suffering the second month for nothing."

"What do you mean? Why?" said Nekhludoff.

"Why? We ourselves don't know why, but are sitting here the second month."

"Yes, it's quite true, and it is owing to an accident," said the inspector. "These people were taken up because they had no passports, and ought to have been sent back to their native government; but the prison there is burnt, and the local authorities have written, asking us not to send them on. So we have sent all the other passportless people to their different governments, but are keeping these."

"What! For no other reason than that?" Nekhludoff exclaimed, stopping at the door.

A crowd of about forty men, all dressed in prison clothes, surrounded him and the assistant, and several began talking at once. The assistant stopped them.

"Let some one of you speak."

A tall, good-looking peasant, a stone-mason, of about fifty, stepped out from the rest. He told Nekhludoff that all of them had been ordered back to their homes and were now being kept in prison because they had no passports, yet they had passports which were only a fortnight overdue. The same thing had happened every year; they had many times omitted to renew their passports till they were overdue, and nobody had ever said anything; but this year they had been taken up and were being kept in prison the second month, as if they were criminals.

"We are all masons, and belong to the same artel. We are told that the prison in our government is burnt, but this is not our fault. Do help us."

Nekhludoff listened, but hardly understood what the good-l............