service in the prison church one Sunday, and while there contrived to get near the governor of the prison; and as the latter turned around, after kissing the cross in the hands of the priest, Muíshkin struck him in the face. For this offense he would, under ordinary circumstances, have been shot; but just at that time the attention of the Minister of the Interior was attracted to the Kharkóf central prison by the large number of deaths and cases of insanity among the politicals, and Professor Dobroslávin, a sanitary expert from St. Petersburg, was sent to the prison to make an investigation. He reported that it was not fit for human habitation, said that the cases of death and insanity among the political convicts were not surprising, and recommended that all the prisoners of that class be removed. In the light of this report it was presumed that Muíshkin was insane, or at least in an abnormal mental condition, at the time when he struck the governor of the prison, and he was not even tried for the offense. Shortly afterward he was sent, with all his fellow-prisoners, to the mines of Kará. While they were in the city of Irkútsk on their way to the mines, one of the party, a man named Leo Dmokhófski, died. All the convicts in the party were permitted to attend the funeral in the prison church, and at the conclusion of the brief services Muíshkin felt impelled to say a few words over the body of his comrade. He referred to the high moral character of the dead man and his lovable personality, quoted a verse from the Russian liberal poet Nekrásof, and said, "Out of the ashes of this heroic man, and of other men like him, will grow the tree of liberty for Russia." At this point he was stopped by the chief of police, and at once taken back to his cell. For making what was regarded as a revolutionary speech within the sacred precincts of a church, and in the presence of the "images of the Holy Saints of the Lord," he was condemned to fifteen years more of penal servitude. In talking to me about Muíshkin, some of his comrades described him as
