nity, when Major Pótulof was talking with Mr. Frost in the sitting-room and the sentry was out of sight, I could throw the letters unobserved into this fire. As I walked out into the hall to see that the coast was clear there, I noiselessly unlatched the iron door of the oven and threw it ajar. Then returning and assuring myself that the sentry was not in a position to look through the window, I tossed the letters quickly into the oven upon a mass of glowing coals. Five minutes later there was not a trace of them left. I then erased or put into cipher many of the names of persons in my note-books and prepared myself, as well as I could, for a search.
There were two things in my personal experience at the mines of Kará that I now particularly regret, and one of them is the burning of these letters. I did not see the political convicts again, I had no opportunity to explain to them the circumstances under which I acted, and explanations, even if I could make them, are now, in many cases, too late. Miss Nathalie Armfeldt died of prison consumption at the mines a little more than a year after I bade her good-by; her old mother soon followed her to the grave, and the letters that I destroyed may have been the last that they had an opportunity to write. I was not put upon my word of honor, I was not searched, and I might have carried those letters safely to their destination, as I afterward carried many others.
The next unfortunate thing in my Kará experience was my failure to see Dr. Orest E. Véimar, one of the most distinguished political convicts in the free command, who, at the time of our visit, was dying of prison consumption. He was a surgeon, about thirty-five years of age, and resided, before his exile, in a large house of his own on the Névski Prospékt near the Admiralty Place in St. Petersburg. He was a man of wealth and high social standing, occupied an official position in the medical department of the Ministry of the Interior, and was, at one time, a personal friend of her Majesty, the present Empress. He was
