"Yes," said Una. "Well, that man had done all he could to try and make the people who look after the country be kinder to the poor people, and it would have been all right if he could have gone to the King himself—no, I don't mean the King, I mean the——"
"I know," exclaimed Dan. "You mean the Czar. It's the 'Czar' of Russia, and the 'King' of England, and the 'Emperor' of Germany, and——"
"Don't, Dan! Let Una go on," said Tom impatiently. "Why didn't the man go to the Czar himself, Una?"
"Because there are a lot of men—noblemen, and people like that—who do the Czar's business for him, only they don't do it well at all; many of them are bad, wicked men, really, and they only think about what they can do for themselves, and don't mind a bit about the poor people being in trouble and being treated badly—and when they found that this man was trying to do things for the poor people they were angry, and they made up a lot of stories about him and had him put in prison."
"Oh, Una, how wicked of them!" cried Norah.
"And then," said Una, sitting up very straight, with sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks: "papa got him out of prison again. That was papa's secret! When people were put in prison, in Russia, when they hadn't really done anything wrong, papa used to help them to get free again, and he used to write letters to the Czar and tell him how his poor people were being treated, and he used to write books too—big books—to send all over the world, so that everyone should know what sad, sad lives many of the people in Russia led, and should try and help them if they could."
"And the yellow country at the top of Russia, Una? You haven't told about that," said Dan.
"The yellow country? What do you mean?" said Tom.
"He means Siberia; it's yellow on the map I showed to him," said Una. "Yes, very often people are sent to live in that cold country—not because they have done anything wrong, but because there are lots of salt mines there and they can't get people to go and live there and work in the mines. And so they send men to live there who don't want to go at all, and they have to leave their wives and children and go and live in that cold country, and work in the mines without getting any money for doing it."
"But, Una, couldn't the wives and children go and live in that country too?" asked Norah.