26 BY ORDER OF THE CZAR.
Gentile, noble and peasant, men and women, gentle and simple.
During the periods of what Stepniak calls " the White Terror," which generally follows on great attempts or de- tected plots, when searches are made by the hundred, there is hardly a family belonging to the educated classes who, on retiring to rest, do not tremble at the thought that before morning they may be roused from their sleep by the emissaries, of the Czar. The Count Stravensky, during one of these general raids, felt thoroughly entitled to sleep in peace. But as it turned out, he had offended the Procurator of the district, who had some personal scores to settle with the local nobility. The count was not one of the most amiable of human beings, it is true ; but he was faithful to the dynasty, and had inherited from his progenitors a love of home and country. He was a widower, and his only son had died fighting for the Czar in Central Asia. One day, with drums beating and ban- ners flying, the Procurator marched into the woodland country beyond Czarovna, and infested the house and grounds of the count. No one was permitted to leave and none to enter, until the officer and his men had ransacked the place for a secret printing press or for incriminating papers. They found neither; but a few versts away they discovered, in the library of the count's nearest neighbor, a newspaper calling upon the Czar to give the country a Constitution. The editor and proprietor of the journal had already been imprisoned for this offence. The count's neighbor could not say how the paper came into his room ; he vowed he had not only not read it, but had never seen it until it was taken from his desk ; and it afterwards was clearly shown that he spoke the truth a discharged ser- vant confessed that he had placed it where it was found, and afterwards given information to the police. Never- theless, the count's neighbor, who had been carried off to
