exis Stumpoff, murderer, for instance, he is put down by
the name he gives, and the word vagabond is added. The next year they
may break out again; but in time the hardships they suffer in the woods
become distasteful and they settle down to their prison life, and then,
after perhaps six, perhaps ten years of good conduct they are released
and allowed to settle where they will. So you see, Godfrey Bullen, how
hopeless is the chance of escape."

"Not at all," Godfrey said. "These men are most of them peasants--men
without education and without enterprise, incapable of forming any plan,
and wholly without resources in themselves. I feel as certain of
escaping as I am of being here at present. I don't say that I shall
succeed the first time, but, as you say yourself, there is no difficulty
in getting away, and if I fail in one direction I will try in another."

CHAPTER VI.

AN ESCAPE.

The evenings were spent principally in conversations about Siberia,
Godfrey being eager to learn everything that he could about its
geography and peoples.

Alexis told him all he knew as to the mountains and rivers, the various
native tribes, the districts where the villages were comparatively
numerous, and the mighty forests that, stretching away to the Arctic
Sea, could hardly be said to be explored. Books and paper were forbidden
to the political prisoners, and so strict were the regulations that the
warders would not under any considerations bring them in. But Godfrey
wrote all the particulars that he judged might in any way be useful with
a burnt piece of stick upon the table as Alexis gave them, and then
learned them by heart, washing them off after he had done so.

But few of the details Alexis could give him would be of any use in the
attempt he first intended to make. The southern frontier was so
temptingly close that it seemed absurd to turn from that and to attempt
a tremendous journey north, involving the certainty of having to
struggle through an Arctic winter, and to face the difficulties of the
passage west, either by land or sea. Beyond the fact that from Irkutsk
he would have to make for the southern point of Lake Baikal, some sixty
miles away, and then strike about south-east for another two hundred
through a country inhabited almost entirely by Buriats, the doctor could
tell him little.

"Kiakhta," he said, "or rather, as far as the Russians are concerned,
Troitzkosavsk, which is a sort of suburb of Kiakhta