orld. He only longed for one thing, the solitude of
field and forest, for liberty and loneliness, where he felt no one near
him.

Still farther and farther he roamed between the grey scarred
tree-trunks. Through the carpet of pine-needles over which his foot
passed, there were springing here and there pointed little leaves and
the first grass-blades. The squirrels had already ventured out of their
warm nests into the sunshine and sprang briskly and blithely from
branch to branch, as though they would make fun of the old vagabond. The
sky sent down soft spring showers, or brief thunder-storms, or expanded
itself in blue serenity as though it would warm the earth on its bosom.
Ivan wandered through dark ravines, where noisy rivulets streamed down
on all sides, and in the perpetual shadow the snow still lay white and
untouched.

The farther he went, the louder and merrier foamed and bubbled the tides
of spring. O Liberty!

When the fugitive was tired, he could find a shelter anywhere. He would
fling himself down where he liked, cross his hands under his head, and
look up at the sky till his eyes closed of themselves. The wounds on his
legs caused by the iron fetters began to heal; no one who met him would
have guessed who he was. But the primeval forest seemed quite deserted;
no tree bore the mark of an axe, and none had been felled. Here a black
scorched pine-tree had been blasted by the lightning; there a
half-decayed one, whose top was entangled in its neighbour's branches,
had collapsed from sheer old age. This solitude had been profaned by no
one's foot; here was real freedom.

Only now and then he encountered wild animals. Once a bear came within
gun-shot, but the old man spared his life. "You have nothing to give me
now," he thought. "Your skin is no use in summer. Come again in winter."
And he shouted at the animal in such a terrible voice, that it trotted
off with its tail drawn in.

Sometimes he heard the howling of the wolves in the distance; in the
deep silence it sounded weird and terrifying. It filled the old man with
a strange feeling, not fear, but in his innermost being something seemed
to howl and moan in sympathy with the beasts of prey. Was he not indeed
like a wolf among men? Cowering by the fires he made, he would gaze for
hours into the red glowing embers. The flames roared and strained
towards the dark sky as though they would make themselves free; the
fresh brushwood crackled and emitted clou