peasants were confined to their own villages, and it was with the utmost difficulty that they could move about from place to place. The emancipation in great measure put an end to this restriction, enabling thousands of peasants to wander forth either in search of work or to gratify the extraordinary love of change and adventure inborn in every Little Russian's heart. From Osnova Nicolaievsk, Karlovka, Lubomir, and other villages, an extraordinary movement outwards of peasants seeking work began in 1862 and 1863. Many of these had been already inoculated with the teachings of Balaban, Ratushni, and Zimbal. Supplied with New Testaments, they moved about all over the South, sowing the seed that was afterwards to bring forth so abundantly. They stepped beyond the bounds of the province of Kherson into Kief and Podolia, cementing together the isolated groups of believers already existing there. It was at this time that the valuable services of Ivan Lisotski were enlisted in the cause. Masses of people crowded the meeting-houses; they sang, and prayed, and read the Gospels, and hundreds of families gave in their adhesion to Protestantism. The police were nonplussed; it was all so new, and they were without instructions. The priests were aghast; it was a tide the force of which they were powerless to stem, the depth of which they could not fathom. The higher officials in St. Petersburg and in the governor's chanceries hesitated, loth to begin a persecution which would only invest the Stundist leaders with the aureole of martyrs, and make them sacred in the eyes of their followers. It is interesting to read the contemporary reports of the local clergy. One of these worthies wrote to Archbishop Dimitri, of Kherson, that certain of his flock had ceased attendance at church, murmured at paying the church dues, met together to read strange books, and were leading immoral lives. In 1865 the priest of Osnova demanded powers to deal with
