Priests are massacred, our churches closed, our very language proscribed.

Death is a thousand times preferable to the living torture we undergo, and when we at last rise, it is vengeance and death that we seek rather than with any thought of finally freeing Poland from her oppressors.

And now," he said, "you will excuse me if I suggest that we follow the example of my comrades, and turn off to sleep.

We have marched fifty miles since yesterday evening, and shall be off before daybreak to-morrow." For half an hour after the Polish leader had rolled himself in his cloak and gone off to sleep, the boys chatted together as to the course they should adopt, and finally resolved to throw in their fortunes with those of the Polish patriots.

They saw that it would be impossible for them to make their way on to the frontier alone, and considered that their chance of life was no less if captured in action by the Russians than if found in a village with a number of wounded insurgents.