mercy," very willingly, and read and said what was appointed,

with the same quiet certainty of its being necessary to do so

with which other men sell faggots, flour, or potatoes. The prison

inspector and the warders, though they had never understood or

gone into the meaning of these dogmas and of all that went on in

church, believed that they must believe, because the higher

authorities and the Tsar himself believed in it. Besides, though

faintly (and themselves unable to explain why), they felt that