ght
not to talk so, I ought not to speak to you of my happiness--you, who
have no friend waiting to see you."

"I like to hear you talk of your wife, Mikail. My friends are a long way
off indeed; but I hope that I shall see them before very long."

"You think that you may be pardoned?" Mikail asked.

"No, I mean to escape."

"Ah, lad," Mikail said kindly, "I don't suppose there is ever a prisoner
comes here who does not say to himself, I will escape. Every spring
there are thousands who take to the woods, and scarce one of these but
hopes never to see the inside of a prison again, and yet they come back,
every one of them."

"But there have been escapes, Mikail, therefore there is nothing
impossible in it."

"There are twenty thousand convicts cross the frontier every year, lad.
There is not one man makes his escape in five years."

"Well, I mean to be the man this five years, Mikail."

"I would not try if I were you. Were you in on a life sentence for
murder, or still worse, as a political prisoner, I would say try if you
like, for you would have nothing to lose; but you have a good prospect
now. I am sure you must have been a political, but now that you have
been a wanderer you are so no longer. You have won the governor's
good-will, and as soon as your time is up, perhaps before, you will be
allowed to live outside the prison. If you go away in the spring you
will, when you return as winter comes on, forfeit all this, and have to
begin again. When you come out there will be my little hut ready for
you, and such a welcome from my wife and me that you will forget how
small and rough it is, and there you will live with us till your five
years are up, and you can go anywhere you like in Siberia."

"I thank you sincerely, Mikail, and I should, I am sure, be as happy as
an exile could be with you and your faithful wife; but if I have to try
afresh every year for twenty years I will break out and strive to
escape. You know that I am English by my mother's side. I can tell you
now that I am altogether English, and I will gain England or die. At any
rate, if it is to be done I will do it. I have health and strength and
determination. I have learnt all that there is to be learnt as to the
difficulties of the journey. I have more to gain, more to strive for
than other prisoners. Even if they escape they cannot return home. They
must still be exiled from Russia; must earn their bread among strangers
as they are earnin