re sent to the mines for a bit;
that is what certainly happens when they are political prisoners."

"Why can't they get right away?"

"Where are they to go to?" the officer said with a laugh. "To the south
there are sandy deserts where they would certainly die of thirst; to the
north trackless forests, cold that would freeze a bullock solid in a
night, great rivers miles wide to cross, and terrible morasses, to say
nothing of the wolves who would make short work of you. The native
tribes to the west, and the people of the desert, are all fierce and
savage, and would kill anyone who came among them merely for his
clothes; and, besides, they get a reward from government for every
escaped prisoner they bring in alive or dead. No, we don't want bolts or
bars to keep prisoners in here. The whole land is a prison-house, and
the prisoners know well enough that it is better to live under a roof
and to be well fed there than to starve in the forest, with the
prospect of a flogging at the end of their holiday. Still there are
thousands take to the woods in the summer. The government does not care.
Why should it? It is spared the expense of feeding them, and if they
starve to death or kill each other off in their quarrels (for the
greater part of them would think no more of taking life than of killing
a fowl) there is an end of all further trouble about them, for you
understand, it is only the men who have life sentences, the murderers,
and so on, that attempt to run away; the short-sentence men are not such
fools.

"No," he went on kindly, seeing that Godfrey looked depressed at what he
had heard; "whatever you do don't think of running away. If you behave
well, and gain the good opinion of the authorities, you won't find
yourself uncomfortable. You will be made a clerk or a store-keeper, and
will have a good deal of liberty after a time. If you try to run away,
you will probably be sent to the mines; and though it is not so bad
there as they say, it is bad enough."

But even this prospect was not very cheering to Godfrey. Hitherto it had
seemed to him that there could be no real difficulty, although there
might be many hardships and privations, in making his escape from so
vast a prison. He had told himself that it must be possible to evade
pursuit in so vast a region; but now it seemed that nature had set so
strong a wall round the country that the Russians did not even trouble
themselves to pursue, confident that in time t