“Antichrist!” he replied.
Ah! That was interesting. Several days before when passing through Alexanderburg we had found a village priest in the midst of a quaint Easter-time ceremony, going from house to house blessing the bread which was to be eaten immediately after the close of the Lenten fast. He had with him several acolytes and assistants and the picture they presented was full of color and quaint interest. We asked the priest if he objected to being photographed, and he not only readily consented, but expressed his pleasure at the suggestion. When we had taken several photographs of him and his followers we put a shining silver ruble on the plate he carried. Such unwonted liberality evidently had excited his suspicions to the extent that he had reported the matter to the police.
“You paid one ruble and a half (seventy-five cents) for two dinners at Mordwa,” went on the police-master impressively.
“What else?” we asked.
“At Tsaritzin you visited the free dining-rooms and photographed the village baths.”
We now realized that we had been followed every step of the way, or else a report had been received from each place we had passed through. The only village which the chief failed to mention was Pesky, from which we had just come. This was the one place where we had been indiscreet. The report of a spy upon the informal meeting which we had quite without forethought been instrumental in gathering the night before might easily have been construed to our serious disadvantage. Certainly we would be convicted for “propaganda”; possibly of a yet more serious offence, which would mean expulsion from the country, or worse.
We chatted with the two men in uniform with all the nonchalance we could muster, we plied them with tea and boiled eggs. At last the police-master, in a sudden burst of frankness, exclaimed: “It’s all a mistake! The man’s a fool!”
The man took from his pocket a paper and spread it on the table before us. “I have no right to do it,” he said, “but I want to convince you that I am not responsible. The starshina wrote to the zemstvo nachalnik, who has ordered your arrest. We have had men posted on all the roads all night waiting for you.”
A starshina is a man of the people, elected by the people every three years, to preside over the meetings of several villages in a given district, which are called to consider matters of local interest. The zemstvo nachalnik is a superior officer who presides over a larger district—a section of a government.
“Read this for yourselves,” said the police-master.