ell conducted they are let out after a
time, whereas there is no hope for a political prisoner. At any rate,
even if I knew that if I was retaken I should be hung at once, I should
try it."

"But the distance to the frontier is enormous, and even when you get
there you would be arrested at the first place you come to if you have
no papers; besides, how could you get through the winter?"

"I should get through the winter somehow," Godfrey said stoutly. "There
are hundreds and thousands of people in scattered villages who live
through the winter. Why shouldn't I? I would make friends with the
natives in the north, and live in their huts, and hunt with them. But I
am not thinking of that. The distance is, as you say, enormous, and the
cold terrible. My idea is to escape by the south."

"It is a desert, Godfrey."

"Oh they call it a desert to frighten people from trying to escape that
way. But I know there is a caravan route by which the teas come from
China; besides, there are tribesmen who wander about there and pick up a
living somehow. I don't say that I am going to succeed; I only say I am
going to try. I may lose my life or I may be sent back again. Very well,
then, I will try again some other way. We are not far from the Chinese
frontier here, are we?"

"No; the frontier is at Kiakhta, not more than three or four hundred
miles away."

"What are the people like?"

"They are called Buriats, and are a sort of Mongol tribe, living
generally in tents and wandering with their flocks and herds through the
country like the patriarchs of old."

"If they have large flocks and herds," Godfrey said, "the reward the
Russians offer for escaped convicts can't tempt them much. Most likely
they are hospitable; almost all these wandering tribes are. If one had
luck one might get befriended and stick for a time to one of these
tribes in their wanderings south, and then get hold of some other
people, and so get passed on. There can't be anything impossible in it,
Alexis. We know that travellers have made their way through Africa
alone. Mungo Park did, and lots of other people have done so, and some
of the negro tribes are, according to all accounts, a deal more savage
than the Asiatic tribes. Once among them it doesn't much matter which
way one goes, whether it is east to China or west to Persia."

Alexis sat and looked with some wonder at his companion. "By the saints,
Godfrey Bullen, I begin to understand now how it is that