ging
with rods these fellows think very little of it. They will often walk
back in the autumn to the same prison they went from, take their
flogging, and go to work as if nothing had happened. They are never
flogged with the _plete_ for that sort of thing; that is kept for murder
or heading a mutiny in which some of the officials have been killed. No;
the brigands are chiefly composed of long-sentence men who have got away
early, and who perhaps have killed a Cossack or a policeman who tried to
arrest them, or some peasant who will not supply them with food. After
that they dare not return, and so join some band of brigands in order to
be able to keep to the woods through the winter. I think that very few
of the men who have once served their time and been released ever come
back again."

During the winter the food, although still ample, was less than the
allowance they had received while working. The allowance of bread was
reduced by a pound a day, and upon Wednesdays and Fridays, which were
fast days, no meat was issued except to those engaged in chopping up
firewood or bringing in timber from the forest. Leather gloves were
served out to all men working in the open air, but in spite of this
their hands were frequently frost-bitten. The evenings would have been
long indeed to Godfrey had it not been for his Tartar instructor; the
two would sit on the bench in the angle of the room and would talk
together in Tartar eked out by Russian. The young fellow's face was much
more intelligent than those of the majority of his countrymen, and there
was a merry and good-tempered expression in his eyes. They chatted about
his home and his life there. His mother had been an Ostjak, and he had
spent some years among her tribe on the banks both of the Obi and
Yenesei, but had never been far north on either river. He took his
captivity easily. His father and mother both died when he had been a
child, and when he was not with the Ostjaks he had lived with his
father's brother, who had, he said, "droves of cattle and horses."

"If they would put me to work on a river," he said, "I should not mind.
Here one has plenty to eat, and the work is not hard, and there is a
warm room to sleep in, but I should like to be employed in cutting
timber and taking it in rafts down the river to the sea. I love the
river, and I can shoot. All the Ostjaks can shoot, though shooting has
brought me bad luck. If I had not had my bow in my hand when that
R