n the trail.

They had gone out for a walk, as the only means of inducing her mother
to sleep was to let her walk in the clear air until so weary as to
bring her to the point of exhaustion. This time they went farther than
Amalia really intended, and had left the paths immediately about the
cabin, and climbed higher up the mountain. Here there was no trail and
the way was rough indeed, but Madam Manovska was in one of her most
wayward moods and insisted on going higher and farther.

Her strength was remarkable, but it seemed to be strength of will
rather than of body, for all at once she sank down, unable to go
forward or to return. Amalia led her to the shade of a great gnarled
tree, a species of fir, and made her lie down on a bed of stiff,
coarse moss, and there she pillowed her mother's head on her lap.
Whether it was something in the situation in which she found herself
or not, her mother began to tell her of a time about which she had
hitherto kept silent. It was of the long march through heat and cold,
over the wildest ways of the earth to Siberia, at her husband's side.

She told how she had persisted in going with him, even at the cost of
dressing in the garb of the exiles from the prisons and pretending to
be one of the condemned. Only one of the officers knew her secret, who
for reasons of humanity--or for some other feeling--kept silence. She
carried her child in her arms, a boy, five months old, and was allowed
to walk at her husband's side instead of following on with the other
women. She told how they carried a few things on their backs, and how
one and another of the men would take the little one at intervals to
help her, and how long the marches were when the summer was on the
wane and they wished to make as much distance as possible before they
were delayed by storms and snow.

Then she told how the storms came at last, and how her baby fell ill,
and cried and cried--all the time--and how they walked in deep snow,
until one and another fell by the way and never walked farther. She
told how some of the weaker ones were finally left behind, because
they could get on faster without them, but that the place where they
were left was a terrible one under a cruel man, and that her child
would surely have died there before the winter was over, and that when
she persisted in keeping on with her husband, they beat her, but at
last consented on condition that she would leave her baby boy. Then
how she appeale