In the Hollow of His Hand, by Hesba Stretton│ Project Gutenberg

   THE most extraordinary and inexplicable phase of Christianity is the persecution of Christians by Christians. Persecution is absolutely opposed to the nature and teaching of the Lord, who said to His disciples, when they desired to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritans who refused them hospitality, "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them."

   In my former story, "The Highway of Sorrow," I attempted to set forth the religious principles of the Stundist men, and their steadfast courage in maintaining them. I have received a letter from Russia saying that this narrative "is true to fact." "In the Hollow of His Hand" endeavours to show the bitter sufferings of women and children in the storm of persecution now raging in Russia. The latest suggestion made for the complete stamping out of Stundism is that all children should be taken from their Stundist parents and brought up in the Orthodox Church. When this was done, in the Middle Ages, to the Jews in Spain, many parents adopted the awful alternative of slaying their children.

   In writing both stories I have drawn largely from two sources. One is a pamphlet, called "The Stundists: the Story of a Great Religious Revolt," published in 1893 by James Clarke & Co. The other is a most valuable work, entitled "Siberia and the Exile System," by George Kennan, from whose volumes I have drawn many of the details of the protracted journey to Eastern Siberia. Both of these stories are sorrowful, but they are true. And I would earnestly ask my readers to ponder over the words of our Lord, "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake. 'Rejoice,' and be 'exceeding glad:' for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you."

   This blessing the Stundists realise.

HESBA STRETTON.

   1897.

CHAPTER I

"BEHOLD, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves."

The boy who was reading in a clear, low voice, though with a foreign accent, felt the pressure of his mother's feeble hands, and lifted up his eyes to her white and placid face. He was kneeling beside her bed, and she pushed back the thick curls of his brown hair, and looked with a very tender gaze into his frank, boyish face.

"That's true, my laddie," she said; "true for you, but not for me. He calls me home, but He sends your father and you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Ah! The Lord Jesus knew; and He knows now. Never think He's away, and not minding your troubles. You'll go back to your father, when I'm gone home—not to Knishi, never again to Knishi. Oh, if I'd only known, I'd have gone home to heaven from there!"

The feeble, gasping voice ceased for a minute or two. But the mother's eyes still rested fondly and anxiously on her boy.

"And, oh, my Michael," she said, "be wise! Don't anger the neighbours more than you can help. You're only a boy yet, and they'll leave you alone if you keep quiet. Be 'harmless as doves,' says our Lord."

"Me, Michael? Me?" she cried, a faint colour flushing her pallid face. "No, no! Weren't my ain forebears among the Covenanters? Both on father's and mother's sides! Didn't they suffer the loss o' all things—eh! and die for conscience' sake? Nay, Michael, I'd send you to death, if need be, for the truth. But it's hard to think of young little ones having to suffer cruelly because their parents must act according to their conscience. Oh, my Michael! And my little Velia!"

She sank back on her pillows with closed eyelids, through which the tears were slowing oozing. Michael did not go on with his reading. They were both thinking of the last twelve months, when Catherine Ivanoff had left her Russian home to try if her native air in Scotland would restore her health. Michael had accompanied her, being old enough to be a help and comfort to her during the long voyage from Odessa to Glasgow, and through her sojourn among her own kinsfolk. It had been on the whole a happy year, filled at first with delusive hopes. But all hope was gone now. She would never be able to bear the voyage and the inland journey homewards.

Her brother's house, where she lay dying, was a small Scotch farm, not unlike the homestead she had left in Russia. She lay still, thinking longingly of it now. The thick walls of dried mud, with their deep window-sills; the large house-place, with its oak table, and oak benches standing along the walls, which she had kept beautifully polished; the huge stove, which seemed to fill half the room; and the great barns and stables built round the fold-yard. Oh, if she had only been there now!—dying in the little bedroom which opened out of the roomy house-place, where she could watch her husband going to and fro, and have her little Velia in her sight. Her house in Knishi had been the best in the village, almost equal to the church-house; and she had cherished a secret pride in it. The garden on the eastern side was even better than the priest's garden, for her husband as well as herself took great pleasure in it. It was already near the end of February; and the snow would be melting, and the buds swelling on the fruit-trees, and the earliest flowers pushing their first shoots through the moist earth. Oh, how happy she and her husband had been in Knishi!

It was eight years since they had gone there, with their two young children, to rent a farm belonging to her husband's cousin, Paul Rodenko, who had been exiled to Siberia for holding fast to his Stundist faith. A sharp outbreak of persecution had taken place, during which three of the leading Stundists had been imprisoned—one of them dying in prison. And the mother of Paul Rodenko had fallen a martyr to the uncurbed violence of a mob. There had been some official inquiries into the cause of her death. And though no one was punished, the peasants, after their wild excess of savagery, were ashamed of the crime.

Since then the Stundists had been unmolested, left very much to themselves, and practically cut off from all village intercourse. Alexis Ivanoff was their presbyter; and though they had no stated hour or place of worship, it was well-known they maintained their own religious views.

Alexis Ivanoff's letters to his wife told her that this tranquil state of affairs showed signs of coming to an end. Although there was a good and kind-hearted priest, Father Cyril, appointed in the place of the old Batoushka, who had fomented the persecution eight years ago, there were symptoms of hard times coming for the Stundists. The Starosta, who was the chief layman in the village, was a fierce bigot and a churlish miser; and it lay in his power to injure those whom he disliked. Already Alexis had been compelled to pay sundry fines for himself and his poorer fellow Stundists; and the exactions were increasing. It was no use appealing to any court of law against these unjust and vexatious taxes; were they not Stundists? But he hoped the oppression would be confined to monetary forfeits.

"I would send Velia to you out of the way," he wrote, "if I thought Okhrim would do more than tax us unjustly. But he is fond of money, and will be content to fleece us; when the sheep are slain, there is no more to be gained. Velia is the treasure I value most—my only earthly joy, now you and Michael are away. Yet, if the Lord required it, you and I would give up our children, precious as they are. My Catherine, this life is only a journey, and a short one at the longest. What matters it if we come to the end soon, or travel on a little longer? If we walk in smooth paths or rough ones? Let us work while it is called to-day; 'the night cometh when no man can work.' And at nightfall we go home and rest with our beloved ones."

Michael had risen from his knees beside his mother, and gone to the little lattice window, through which he could see the distant mountains still capped with snow. Below the house lay a pleasant valley, which had been the resort of the Covenanters in times long gone by, when they must needs worship God in secret. In the room below, on one side of the wide, old open hearth, there was a little closet four feet square, cunningly contrived behind the wainscot, where many a time godly men had hidden whilst their persecutors searched the homely farmstead for them, or sat round the fire cursing their fruitless efforts. The whole place and neighbourhood were full of legends of the Covenanters, and Michael had heard of them, and listened to them with avidity, for the last twelve months.

He was longing to be home again with his father and Velia, especially now when there was a threatening of renewed oppression. He loved his fatherland, Russia, with a boy's hot patriotism. He had fretted inwardly at his long exile, though he fancied he had concealed his home-sickness successfully from his mother. It would soon be over now, and the tears fell fast down his cheeks. For it was only when his beloved mother passed through the gates of death, already opening slowly before her, that he could be free to hasten away home.

She had half-raised herself in bed, and her face was full of radiant gladness, such as he had never seen before.

"I'm dying! And it's beautiful!" she said. "Tell your father death is beautiful! And I'm not alone—no, not alone!"

CHAPTER II

THREE weeks later Michael set out on his return home in a vessel sailing from Glasgow to Odessa. Sandy Gordon, his uncle, accompanied him to Glasgow, loath to part with the boy who had become very dear to his Scotch kindred. They urged him to stay with them, but he could not bear the thought of it. His home-sickness had greatly increased since his mother's death, and he had an intense longing to be once more in his own country, to cross the limitless steppes, and taste again the spring breezes full of the scent of flowers. He pined for the familiar sound of his own language, and the songs in which his people delighted. And underneath this natural love of his own country lay a boy's desire to share with his father and sister any perils which might be hanging over them.

"No, Uncle Sandy," he said, with his arms round Sandy Gordon's neck, and his brown head resting on his uncle's grizzled hair, "no! I'm a Russian, and I ought to live in my own country, and help my own people."

"And if they send your father to Siberia, my laddie," said Sandy Gordon, "as they did his cousin Paul Rodenko, what will you and Velia do then?"

"We'll do what father says," answered Michael; "if he goes, I shall want to go too. But there is little Velia! Father must settle for us. She's a tender little thing is Velia."

"My lad," said Sandy earnestly, "remember there's always a home for you and Velia here with us. For Catherine's sake—and your own sake, Michael—you'll be welcome. And there's one of your own kin in Odessa, a well-to-do man, dealing in corn, John Gordon by name. In any trouble think of him, my boy; and he'll help you, for he has the means and the will."

Sandy Gordon gave Michael a letter addressed to his kinsman in Odessa, to be delivered between leaving the port and reaching the railway station of the line which was to carry him to about fifty miles from Knishi, the village where his home had been since his early childhood, and where his father was to meet him. It seemed to him an almost intolerable interruption to stay some hours in Odessa, but the elderly merchant was pleased with the boy, and with the news he brought from Scotland. He promised to be ready with any help he could give, if the troubles anticipated by Alexis Ivanoff should break out.

The short spring-tide of Russia was in its fullest beauty when Michael reached the railway station, where his father was to meet him with a telega, and the old mare whom he had so often fed. The past winter with its bitter winds was already forgotten, and the scorching heat of summer lurked still in the future. The boy's heart was torn with conflicting emotions. His mother's death still filled it with profound grief, but the joy of coming home again to his father and Velia was as strong as his sorrow. He had felt no fatigue from his long and tedious journey, and though his heart leaped at the sound of the Russian tongue spoken by all about him, he had sat almost speechless, and absorbed in memories, during the many hours since he had left Odessa.

His father was standing by the telega, outside the barrier, a tall, strong, middle-aged man, with a grave and handsome face, and a dignified carriage, very unlike the uncouth and rough aspect of most Russian farmers. He had the look of a leader among men. Michael recognised it for the first time, and he felt a new sensation of pride in him. When he left home a year before, he did not understand all his father was as a man. But in Scotland, having his mind filled with stories of the unconquerable courage of the Covenanters, who defied the power of king and soldiers when they sought to interfere with freedom of conscience, he discovered that his father was such a man as they had been. Now he saw it with his eyes.

He threw himself into his father's arms, and felt his kisses mingled with hot tears falling from his father's eyes. The thought of the lost wife and mother, who had been buried so far away from them, was in both of their minds. Silently they got into the telega, and drove away from the noisy crowd gathered about the station.

Everything about him seemed so new, yet so familiar to Michael, that he felt that it must be a dream, one of those many dreams of Russia that had haunted his sleep whilst he had been in Scotland. His father sitting silent beside him, the noisy creaking of the cart-wheels, which might be heard half a mile off, the jolting over the rough road, the slow jog-trot of the old mare—were these real? Or would he awake by and by, and find himself gazing out down the gentle valley under his window at his uncle's farmhouse?

Presently there was nothing to be seen around them but leagues upon leagues of apparently level land, with an unbroken horizon lying low, like the sky-line at sea. Wherever the ground could be cultivated, a brilliant yet delicate green carpeted the rich brown soil, showing the young corn, which would soon be waving under the summer sun. In the untilled portions of the plain, innumerable flowers were in blossom, and butterflies and bees fluttered in clouds above them. The cry of the curlew that loves lonely places followed them mile after mile. Not a barn or a dwelling was visible in all the vast expanse. The father and son drove on in almost unbroken silence, only speaking a word or two now and then. There was so much to say that they knew not where to begin. At length a soft, gentle breeze just touched Michael's cheek, which seemed to him as if his mother had kissed it.

"Father," he said, looking up into the sad yet serene face beside him, "my mother told me to tell you death is beautiful! And her face said it too; it was full of gladness. Yes, until we laid her in the coffin."

"Thank God!" said Alexis Ivanoff, lifting up his eyes to the cloudless sky above them. "I praise Thee, O Lord, that Thou halt taken her away from the troubles to come. She was too tender to bear them. We men, Michael, can bear hardness as soldiers of our Lord Christ, but when we think of our women and children—it is that which breaks our hearts."

The boy's whole frame thrilled with delight as his father uttered the words, "We men." Then he was no longer to be considered a child; this was a summons to enter the ranks of manhood. He was ready to obey the call, and eager to endure hardships. Yet, as if he were already a man, the moment of delight was quickly followed by a sharp sense of dread piercing him, as he recollected Velia, his little sister, who must share whatever sorrows and perils befell them. How was it he had never experienced this vague terror before? Was it because he was almost a man?

Michael did not answer immediately. He meant that God should give them the freedom of conscience, and liberty to worship as they believed best, for which the Scotch Covenanters had fought so long and so stubbornly. But he knew the tenets of the Stundists forbade all resistance by force, and taught simple submission to authority in everything, except coercion in religious matters. Moreover, he had seen too much of life in Scotland to be able to convince himself that the Scotch, as a people, were saved. Had he not seen drunkenness there as bad as in Russia? Were there not lying and dishonesty and quarrelling, and all the long list of sins which he ran through in his mind?

"Christ came to save us from our sins," answered his father, "not from sorrow. 'In the world ye shall have tribulation,' He said; and the history of His people has been the same through all generations, and in all countries. The Church has always been built on the graves of the martyrs. As we beat out the grain from the straw with our flails, stroke after stroke, so will the world smite us. But God will gather His corn into His granary; not one grain lost, only the chaff left. The flail is the world, my son, but God's hand holds it."

"It has never ceased," answered Alexis, "but now it is growing hotter. Okhrim has been made Starosta in Savely's room, and there is not a harder or more cruel man in all Knishi. Father Cyril can do little to control him. He is a saint and a Christian, our Batoushka, but Okhrim is his enemy. Khariton Kondraty was taken to Kovylsk, and thrown into prison there last week. I expect to be the next. But he leaves me alone, because I pay every fine he imposes; and the farm is not mine, I only pay rent for it. It belongs to Paul Rodenko, who was exiled years ago. Old Karpo will take care it is not confiscated, because it will go to his daughter, Paul's wife, if he dies first. Still, the hour must come for me at last."

Silence fell upon them again. Michael had a vivid idea of what persecution meant in Knishi. Instead of the fairy tales and ballads which other children heard from their elders, he had listened all through his childhood to stories of martyrs—martyrs in Scotland, and martyrs in his own country. Even the dear home in which they dwelt had been the scene of martyrdom; and the bench on which they sat beside the stove had been the deathbed of Paul Rodenko's mother. But hitherto he had thought of persecution as a thing of the past, or far-off in other villages; now it stood face to face with him.

Yet life was very pleasant for the time being. He drew in deep breaths of the sweet, fresh air of the spring, and looked up into the clear blue of the sky, and gazed across the vast, sea-like plain. His heart beat high with the mere joy of living. Courage and hope and an unquestioning faith in his father filled his mind. Whatever troubles might be coming, surely he could bear them as his forefathers among the heathery mountains of Scotland had borne theirs. When he came to think of it, only a small number of the Covenanters had actually perished; most of them won through, and secured freedom for themselves, and their children after them. It would be the same with the Stundists in Holy Russia.

They were five days travelling homewards; for Alexis seized this opportunity for visiting the scattered bands of Stundists, already becoming terrified and disorganised by the increasing severity of the persecution. Alexis was not only the deacon of the little church at Knishi; he was also the presbyter of a wide district containing a number of churches. He was in constant communication with the Stundist exiles and prisoners, and managed the funds by which they were helped and the most distressed members of the sect were maintained. He had therefore much business to transact, and much comfort and information to give. Compared with most of the other presbyters and deacons, he was both a rich and educated man; for he had travelled in other lands, and his wife had possessed a small income, safely invested in Scotland.

In every village they met with terror and sorrow. Spies abounded, and it had become impossible to hold regular meetings. Alexis dared not address the assembled congregations, as he had been wont to do. In two or three places tales so terrible were told him that he would not let Michael hear them. But everywhere he preached non-resistance, not only from policy, but from obedience to the direction of our Lord—"But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil." If they could not conquer by obeying the commands of Jesus Christ, they must perish.

In some villages, he found that the more timid among the Stundists were going back to the Orthodox Church, and these were more to be dreaded than the spies. But in all the little bands, there were some who were ready to go into exile, or even, if need be, to die for conscience' sake. These were all poor working men and women, like the carpenters and fishermen who were our Lord's earliest disciples. Alexis saw them in secret, and encouraged them. To suffer for Christ was to reign with Him. There were light afflictions but for a moment on one hand; a more exceeding and eternal weight of glory on the other!

CHAPTER III

THE last night was spent at Kovylsk. This place was the chief town of the province. Here the governor lived. Here also was the dwelling of the archbishop. The law courts, the consistory, and the jail were here. Civil law and ecclesiastical law held their high courts in Kovylsk. Alexis was very busy, but also very cautious in this town of the governor and archbishop.

They took up their quarters in the abode of Markovin, a secret disciple, more timid than Nicodemus, but a very useful friend to the Stundists. He was in abject terror all the time a Stundist was under his roof, but he never refused to shelter them. Alexis and Michael left their telega and horse at a little inn quite at the other side of the town, and did not go near him till dusk.

Markovin had means of succouring the men in prison, of receiving news from them, and of smuggling in letters to them. One of the warders who was favourably inclined towards Stundism came occasionally to his house, bringing information about them. He had been several years in the prison wards, and was trusted greatly by the authorities, as he seemed always a stupid but well-principled man. His name was Pafnutitch, and he had formerly been a soldier. He happened to look in whilst Alexis and Michael were in Markovin's room.

"Look here!" he said, after giving them all the news he could. "There's poor Kondraty would give his ears to have a sight of one of you. I daren't take you, Alexis, but if Michael didn't mind running a little bit of a risk, just put his head for a moment in the jaws of the lion, I'd pass him in—ay! and out again, unless we were very unlucky. Let him bring a bag o' tools with him, and I'll say he's my sister's son learning to be a carpenter. What do you say?"

"No! No! No!" exclaimed Markovin, in terrified accents. "Not from my house. Not from here!"

"Not now," said Alexis quietly. "It would be useless. We have no important news yet to send to Kondraty. But another time, Pafnutitch, I may send Michael to you."

It was the first call upon his courage and sympathy, and Michael rejoiced to feel that he had not for a moment hesitated to answer it; no cowardice or indifference had made him fail.

It was evening when Alexis and Michael drove slowly, with their tired horse, along the grass-grown village street of Knishi. Each cottage, built of wood or mud, stood at the back of fold-yards large or small, according to the number of sheep or cattle possessed by the owner. Only on the eastern side of the dwellings were any doors or windows to be seen, for the Oukrainian houses are built always to face the east. But though on one side of the road, the inmates looked out through their doors and windows to see who was passing, as they heard the creaking of the telega wheels, not one gave them a smile or a word of welcome. On the other side, some of the people, curious to know who was coming, peeped round the corner of the huts, but they, too, only stared and frowned.

Michael felt a lump in his throat, and tears burning under his eyelids. It was not in this way he had dreamed of coming home. He had been absent only a year, and he knew all their names, and recollected their faces. Some of the women had kissed him when he went away; and the children had followed them as far as the barrier, calling farewell after them as long as they were in sight. But now the boys, his playfellows, slouched away, as if they were ashamed or afraid to recognise him, or stood and stared at him with unconcealed animosity in their manner. This was not what he had looked forward to.

In his trunk lying at the bottom of the telega were a number of little keepsakes, which he had bought with great pleasure in Scotland. He had often thought of how he should go round the village, from house to house, giving them away, and telling strange tales of his voyage and his sojourn in a foreign country. He had all the strong desire of a traveller to narrate his adventures. He had not even forgotten his enemies, Father Vasili, the Batoushka, and his wife, but now Father Vasili was dead, and only the Matoushka was left. Was it possible that nobody would accept his keepsakes?

Presently they were past Knishi, and on the road to Ostron, half a mile farther on, where their home was. Michael could no longer bear the wearied jog-trot of the old mare. He sprang from the telega with a shout, and ran eagerly towards the farmstead. Yes! There it was! The very home which had haunted his dreams, by night and day, during all his long absence.

The front was in shadow, for it was evening, but the setting sun shone slantwise on the barns and stables, and made golden tracks down each side of the fold-yard. The buds on the lilac trees at the corner of the house stood out against the low light. In the doorway stood Paraska, her usually sad face kindled into a look of glad welcome; and on the turf seat by her, outside the door, was Velia, her long pretty hair pushed back from her eyes and forehead. With a loud cry of delight, she flew across the yard and threw herself into his open arms.

For a few moments Michael was silent, gazing with dreamy eyes at the open doorway. For it seemed to him that just within the shadow, behind Paraska, he saw dimly a vague form, like his mother, with such a smile upon her face as had lingered there to the last, when they closed her coffin. Was it possible she was there to take a share in the joy of the home-coming? He clasped Velia more closely to him, and kissed her tenderly. When he lifted up his head again, the vision had vanished.

Paraska, too, was gone. She threw her apron over her head, and ran away to the little room that had been made for her in a corner of the granary. She was the wife of Demyan, a Stundist, who had been sentenced to exile at the same time as Paul Rodenko, to whom the farm at Ostron belonged. He was now living at Irkutsk, in Eastern Siberia, thousands of miles away. When he went away, she had chosen to stay behind with her two babies, who were too young to bear the privations and perils of the long journey, made chiefly on foot. But when her children were four and five years of age, they had been taken from her by the Church authorities, to be brought up in the Orthodox faith, and she had never been able to find out where they were. Catherine Ivanoff had taken the broken-hearted mother, penniless and friendless, and almost maddened, into their house, and treated her as an old and cherished friend. But the forlorn woman was a prey to grief, and went through her daily life almost speechlessly.

Up the rude ladder and across the granary floor they ran to Paraska's little room, but so piteous were the sobs and cries they heard beyond the closed door, that they crept quietly away again.

Yet, in spite of all, that evening was a very happy one. Alexis sat by the great stove, for it was still cool at night, with Velia on his knee, and his right arm round his son. Michael had much to tell them, and they had a thousand questions to ask. They did not avoid talking of the mother, whom they spoke of not as one dead and lost to them, but only as having reached the end of a journey, and entered the heavenly home before them.

To Michael and Velia, if not to Alexis himself, heaven was as real as if it had been another land on the face of this earth. They seemed to know as much about it as they did of Siberia, or the Transcaucasus, whither so many of the Stundists had been banished, and where they might go themselves some day. Only there was this difference: they had no doubt of going to heaven, and they were not sure of going to Siberia.

CHAPTER IV

MICHAEL was resolved not to let the coldness of his old friends and comrades separate him from them. True, they looked upon him as a heretic, but he had been that before he went to Scotland—that was no new thing. Of course, there was his chief friend, Kondraty's son, Sergio, a heretic like himself, whose friendship was as close and dear as ever. But Michael had been on good terms with all the village boys, and he knew they would listen with delight to the story of his travels, nee, would go into a rapture of joy over the treasures he had brought home. There were at least a dozen pocket knives, which his Uncle Sandy had bought to be given away among the lads of Knishi. He was eager to renew the good understanding and comradeship which had been broken off a year ago.

Then there were the packets of needles for the women, and the dolls for the little girls. Such needles and dolls had never been seen in Knishi; surely they would open every door and every heart to him. There was Marina's little girl, Velia's chief playfellow. He had brought an English doll for her precisely like Velia's. Yarina had been great friends with his mother, and he had a memento to give to her, sent by Catherine herself.

The first morning after his home-coming, he filled his pockets with his presents, and giving one doll to Velia, bade her take the other one in her arms. He started off joyously to Knishi, but as he was turning down the road leading to Yarina's farm, Velia drew him back.

"Okhrim is Starosta now," she answered, "and he says I mustn't play with Sofia any more. He is her grandfather, you know. Unless I cross myself, and bow to the icons," she added, looking up to him with eyes full of tears.

The tears were rolling down her cheeks, but a moment afterwards Velia looked up again with a smile.

"But I shan't mind now," she continued, clasping Michael's hand with all her might; "I have my own big brother now."

"Only the other Stundist children," she said; "and they don't let us go to school now. Father Cyril would let us go, but Father Vasili got an order, just before he died, to say the Stundist children must not go to Orthodox schools if they did not go to church. Father Cyril cannot get it altered."

"I'll go and see Sergius," cried Michael, "and you must give Sofia's doll to little Clava."

"Little Clava will love it," said Velia, "but oh, I am so sorry for Sofia. We must never let her know it was brought all the way from Scotland for her, and given away to another girl."

The house belonging to Khariton Kondraty, the father of Michael's chief friend, Sergius, was much smaller and poorer than the farmhouse where Alexis lived. It lay a little way apart from the village, and near to the steppe, a part of it so thickly carpeted with flowers that not a blade of grass or an inch of soil could be seen. Long rows of beehives lay under a hedge, which sheltered them from the north wind. Khariton Kondraty had taken up the business of Loukyan, an old deacon who had died from ill-usage in prison at the last outbreak of persecution in Knishi. He maintained himself and his family chiefly by the sale of honey and wax, and since he had been imprisoned in Kovylsk, his son Sergius, a boy about the same age as Michael, and his daughter Marfa, a girl of twelve, had proved themselves quite capable of managing the bees, and tilling the small plot of ground belonging to their father.

The whole family welcomed Michael with delighted cries of welcome. Marfa alone could not his speak, but her eyes filled with tears. Sergius clasped his friend in his arms; and little Clava jumped about for joy, with her English doll in her arms. Tatiania, Kondraty's wife, kissed him as fondly as if he had been her own son. No welcome could have been warmer, and Michael's spirits rose again.

He wanted to get Sergius alone, to inquire about the school and the exclusion of the Stundist children from all the pursuits and games of the Orthodox children. It was too true. The Orthodox parents forbade their children to have any intercourse with the heretics. They were in fact excommunicated. This had caused bitter, though perhaps short-lived grief in many households in the village; for the friendships of children are often very close and tender. Yarina's little girl, Sofia, had been made quite ill by her separation from Velia and little Clava. But the Stundist children were getting no teaching except what their parents could give in their very few leisure moments.

He soon found out that the boys of the village were more than willing to listen to his traveller's tales, and accept his presents, if they could do so in secret. But this Alexis would not allow. Michael himself saw the risk and the folly of any clandestine intercourse; for Okhrim, the Starosta, was on the lookout keenly for some pretext for fresh fines and oppressions.

CHAPTER V

MICHAEL began his school, protected and encouraged by Father Cyril, the Batoushka, though the Starosta did his best to put a stop to it. Father Cyril had been appointed to the Orthodox Church in Knishi, on the death of Father Vasili, with the idea that his holiness of life and sweetness of nature would bring back the straying Stundists to the Orthodox faith. He was loyally attached to the Greek Church, and never having been in close contact with the Stundists before, he had come to this parish with high hopes of soon rooting out the pestilent heresy by conciliatory measures and telling arguments. He found the unlettered peasants very open to conciliation, but their arguments, taken simply and solely from the New Testament, he could not often combat, and could never overthrow. In the meanwhile he had conceived a great respect and a real friendship for Alexis Ivanoff.

Alexis had had more than a village education. He had lived some years in Moscow, and availed himself eagerly of every opportunity for acquiring knowledge. His wife, Catherine, had been no ordinary woman; she had always been a true helpmate and companion to him. He had learned English from her, and possessed many English books. He had translated the best English hymns into Russian verse, which were printed and widely circulated.

Father Cyril was greatly interested in this heretical household—the well-read, intelligent farmer, the manly yet boyish son, and his pretty, sweet-tempered little girl. The sad, broken-hearted Paraska, mourning for her children, also aroused his deepest sympathy. The farmstead was a model to the village. Whenever Father Cyril passed it, and saw the clean fold-yard, the comfortable house, with its shining windows, and the flowers blossoming round it, he sighed to think he could not point it out as a pattern to his idle and drunken parishioners without giving great offence to the Orthodox people. He could not even go as often as he would like to visit Alexis Ivanoff.

Michael's school for the Stundist children prospered; he proved to be a very good teacher. There was no doubt he was doing better than the village schoolmistress, who took no real interest in her work. The Stundist children, who were obliged to pass through Knishi to reach Ostron were often assailed with threats and bad language and occasionally with missiles from the Orthodox children. For the spirit of persecution is easily aroused, but very difficult to suppress.

The summer was nearly over, and the harvest was gathered in, an abundant harvest, which filled every barn to overflowing. Michael gave himself and his little school a holiday that they might spend a whole day in the forest, which lay to the east of Ostron. Paraska made a large supply of pasties, some of which were filled with boiled cabbage, and others with fruit; and she baked a quantity of bread and cakes; for there were quite a dozen children to go besides Michael and Velia, and Sergius and Marfa, who came as guests, being too old and too busy to attend the school. They kept this expedition a profound secret, lest the Orthodox children should follow to the forest and spoil their holiday.

There was no road, only a foot track to the forest; and between it and the steppe lay a deep ravine, crossed by a rude bridge of the trunk of a tree, which had fallen across the chasm generations ago. Some of the oldest trees in it had been left untouched for centuries, and as the timber belonged to the Government, it was left to grow very wild and untrimmed, though the village was often in dire need of fuel. There was a great tangle of brushwood; and it had the reputation of being haunted in some parts of its dark and moist thickets. Only the most daring spirits among the Knishi boys would venture into its glades. But the Stundist children were at home there. For during the last few years, many a secret meeting for worship had been held in a deserted hut some distance within it.

It was a lovely day in September. The sun was still hot, but there were sweet, warm gusts of wind, which tossed the leafy branches to and fro, and brought with it the sweet perfume of wild flowers and the pungent scent of herbs. There were many open spaces where the sun had dried the moist earth, and where the children could play safely. They played till the little ones were tired, and then they turned their steps towards the deserted hut, to eat their dinner.

It had been a charcoal-burner's hut, but for many years no peasant had consented to work there, so near was it to a fatally-haunted spot. It stood in a dense thicket, with no beaten track to it; for the Stundists were careful not to tread down a path which might betray their meeting-place. A few rough trunks of trees formed some benches for the congregation to sit upon, and a large log set on end served as a table for the preacher to stand at, and lay his Bible and hymnbook on. The children sat here and ate their dinner with a subdued gaiety even more enjoyable than the boisterous play outside. They sang a grace before the meal began.

"Let us hold a meeting," Sergius proposed, when dinner was over, "and Michael shall be our deacon."

A few hymn-books were concealed in a hole in the thatched roof. These were quickly brought out, and Michael took his place behind the preacher's log, whilst his congregation seated themselves with smiling faces on the benches.

"My little brothers and sisters," he began, "we can sing a hymn, but I don't think it would be right for me to pray. I am too young to do that out loud, and for you to listen to me. I might say something I ought not to say; and you would perhaps be thinking of me, not of God. But I'll talk to you, after we have sung 'Oh, happy band of pilgrims!'"

CHAPTER VI

THE children's voices rang out in clear, sweet, and harmonious tones; for the Oukrainians are a musical people, and fond of choral singing. Only now and then a shrill note, sounding like a cry of triumph, broke the harmony. It was little Clava, who had not yet learned how to modulate her voice; and Sergius would have checked her, only Michael gave him a sign to let the child sing on.

"And now," he said, when the favourite hymn was finished, "I am going to tell you about the children in Scotland, whose fathers and mothers were like the Stundists. They were called the Covenanters, and the king wanted to make them say they believed what they didn't believe, and worship God in the churches; and they couldn't, for conscience' sake—just like our fathers and mothers. All they wanted was to be left alone to worship God, and obey Him, in the way they believed to be right. Then the king said they were rebels, and, he sent his soldiers to compel them to do as he wished, or to put them to death. Then the Covenanters said they were ready to die, but they could never, never disobey God. So the men had to flee away, and hide in the steppes and the mountains. Now, their steppes are not like ours, all open, and plain to see across, but they are full of rocks and woods and hollows, where they could hide easily. They suffered dreadfully from hunger and cold and ragged clothing; and the soldiers hunted them down, and some of them they caught and shot like wild beasts; and others they sent to prison; and they hanged many of them. What for? Because they obeyed God rather than man.

"But the women, of course, stayed at home with the children; and sometimes the poor men would steal in to see them, and to get a little good food and warmth. Then the spies told the soldiers—they were traitors, those spies were—and the soldiers came; and all the men and women fled away into the woods, and left the children alone in the houses. Oh, you may be sure they could hardly bear to do it but everybody thought, 'The soldiers have children of their own, and they will not hurt our little ones.'

"Then the troopers came on great black battle-horses, with swords and guns; and they searched one house after another, and could find no one but little children—boys and girls no older than Velia. For big boys like Serge and me had gone off to the woods and caves with the grown-up people, because they knew the soldiers would have no mercy on them.

"Well, when nobody was found, the captain was very angry. In a great rage he had all the children gathered together, and asked them where their fathers and mothers were. Do you think the children told the captain?"

"No, my little Clava," continued Michael, "and you would never tell, if father or mother were hiding. Then the captain set them all in a row, with a row of soldiers opposite to them with their guns ready to shoot them, and bade them kneel down to be killed. So they knelt down, and the oldest little girl, like Velia, said to the others, 'It will not hurt much, and then we shall be in heaven!'

"The captain told them to say their prayers, but the little girl said they did not know how to pray aloud, though they could sing a hymn. And the children began to sing a hymn they all knew, and the soldiers turned away, and rode off on their battle-horses, telling the captain they were ready to fight with men but not with children, and before the hymn was finished they were all out of sight."

"That was about two hundred years ago," Michael went on, "in Scotland; and in the very house I lived in there was a little secret closet in the chimney corner, as if it was close to one of our stoves. One night the father was warming himself at the fire, when they heard the soldiers coming, and he slipped into the secret closet, and the mother ran and got into bed, and only a girl like Marfa was left clearing up the house. There was a good fire on the hearth, so the soldiers felt sure somebody was there, and they searched up and down, and then they asked the girl where her father was, but of course she would not tell. So they said they would flog her, and she ran out of doors as quickly as she could run. They followed her, thinking she was running to her father.

"But I will tell you why she ran out into the fold-yard. She said to herself, 'Father will hear if they flog me in the house, and he will come out and be killed.'

"And they did flog her, but she stuffed her apron in her mouth, lest she should scream out. And at last, the soldiers were ashamed. One of them said she was a brave lassie! She was my grandfather's grandmother, and they talk about her to this day, so brave she was.

"But it does not always end as well as that. There is poor Paraska; you know how both her children have been taken away from her. Well that may happen to us—not to big boys and girls like Serge and Marfa and me, they will treat us like grown-up people—but you little ones! Oh, if any of you are taken away from your own fathers and mothers, you must never forget them, and what they taught you. You must be true to God and them. If we die for it, we must be true. We cannot bow down to icons, or pray to anyone but God. Never! Never! Death is not dreadful if we love God. It only takes a few minutes to die. Then we are safe for ever with our Lord Jesus Christ. You will remember?"

"It helps me to think often that our Lord was once just like me," continued Michael; "a boy as old as me, working with His father, and living at home; just my age—"

Clava's little brown hand was lifted up to interrupt him; she had an important question to ask.

"Exactly as little as you, my Clava," answered Michael; "six years old only, and His mother took care of Him, just like your mother; and, oh, He made her so happy, for He was never naughty! Well, whenever we are tempted, we must try to think what He would have done in our place. Remember our Lord Jesus died a martyr, and we must be ready to follow Him. It is not grown-up people only who are martyrs!"

CHAPTER VII

AT that moment, whilst Michael was still speaking, the doorway of the hut was darkened by a man's figure standing between them and the green light of the forest. The children huddled into a corner, like frightened lambs; whilst Michael and Sergius stood out boldly in front of them. The hearts of both of the boys were filled with trouble and dismay. It was Father Cyril, the Batoushka, who had discovered their retreat.

"Are you afraid of me, my children?" he asked in a gentle voice, as he sat down on one of the logs, and stretched out his arms towards the startled group. "Come to me, Velia; and little Clava, I have a sweetmeat for you. Come and sit on my knee. Shake hands with me, Michael and Sergius. I heard you singing some little time ago, and after some trouble, I found out where you were hidden."

"Batoushka," said Michael, stammering and hesitating, "this old hut is a secret."

"Not from me now," answered Father Cyril, "but don't be alarmed, my boys, I respect your fathers, and I will not betray you or your people."

Michael stood aside, and pushed Velia and Clava towards the village priest. He took Clava on his knee, and put his arm round Velia; whilst the rest of the children drew near him, attracted by his kind and benign aspect. His pale, thoughtful face was that of a youngish man, though his uncut hair, parted in the middle, and hanging on his shoulders, and his long beard, gave him a venerable appearance. There was a half smile on his lips and in his eyes, in spite of the sadness with which he regarded this childish band of heretics, already eager for martyrdom. He knew better than they did the perils and sorrows drawing nearer every day. The resolute, manly bearing of Michael, the more timid yet firm manner of Sergius, the tender delicacy of Velia, and the clinging weakness of little Clava, appealed irresistibly to his pity. He felt as the Lord may have felt when they brought young children to Him for His blessing, if He foresaw that these little ones must pass through the fires of persecution. Father Cyril knew that these helpless children were doomed to swiftly coming sorrows; and his heart ached, and tears came into his eyes, as he laid his hand on Clava's head and gave her a silent benediction.

"My children," he said, "I see you seldom, but none the less I feel as if you belonged to me. You are in my parish, and the Church has appointed me to be your Batoushka. I would give all I have—yes, and lay down my life—to bring you, and all your people, back to the Church you have forsaken. Yes, Michael, I know that cannot be at present. The Church must be purified and reformed, but we too are Christians. I would have no man dare to sign himself with the sign of the cross, without truly recollecting the cross of Christ. No man should put an icon into his house, except as a reminder of the constant presence of God, before whose sight, he could not commit a wrong deed, and in whose hearing he could not utter an evil word. The symbols must only represent truths, or they are worse than useless. There will come a time—but the end is very far-off."

Father Cyril paused, with a break in his voice like the sob of a wearied runner. Velia pressed closer to him, and leaned her head against him as if he had been her father. The hearts of the children were touched, and they drew still nearer to him, clustering about his feet. Michael's eyes were fastened upon the Batoushka's agitated face.

Kneeling down in the midst of the children, under the roof of the deserted hut, where alone the proscribed Stundists dared to worship, the Batoushka offered a simple prayer, intelligible even to little Clava, that God would be with them in the troublous times that were coming, and save them from all evil, especially the sin of disobeying His voice when He spoke through their conscience.

When they rose from their knees, he kissed each one of them on the forehead; and they bent their heads as he pronounced a priestly benediction upon them. The Batoushka and the band of childish heretics were very near to each other at that moment.

Father Cyril walked slowly homewards through the thickly-grown forest. He felt sure that he could win the people back to Orthodoxy but for the persecution they were always encountering. He had no faith in coercive measures. Besides, he acknowledged sadly and reluctantly that a vast accumulation of superstitious rites and beliefs was suffocating the Church. He had never been so conscious of it as since he had lived in this remote country parish, where none of the spirit of town life breathed over the stagnant waters.

When at last he came in sight of the church-house, he saw his wife—the young Matoushka, as the villagers called her—standing at the door, looking out anxiously for his return. She held in her hand a large official-looking packet, which she raised above her head as he came in sight.

"From the consistory," she called out, "with the archbishop's seal. Oh, I am so curious!"

Father Cyril hastened in, and opened the document and read in unbroken silence, whilst his wife waited impatiently for news. He sank down on a seat, and covered his face with his hands.

"An order from the consistory," he answered, "that I must take all Stundist children between two and ten years of age from their parents, and place them in Orthodox families; their maintenance to be paid for by fines levied on their heretic fathers. Think of it, dear wife—think of our own little ones. Ah! Those monks who have neither wife nor children do not know how cruel they are!"

The Matoushka burst into a passion of tears, when Father Cyril told her with a broken voice and a face of profound pity.

"I'd rather see my children in their coffins," she sobbed, "than lose them in such a cruel way. Poor Tatiania! Her husband in prison, and little Clava to be taken from her. It will break her heart! And Velia Alexovna! How old is she, Cyril?"

"Not ten yet," he answered. "Oh, it is frightful, and absolutely useless! We shall never win them back if the authorities adopt measures like these. Would to God I could disregard the order!"

"No," he replied; "the Starosta has got an order from the police in Kovylsk to assist me in carrying out the order. Okhrim will rejoice over it; he hates the Stundists with all his heart, and so does the old Matoushka. Oh, they are at the bottom of all this!"

Father Cyril could not sleep that night, his brain was too much worried with vexatious and perplexing questions. How should he break the terrible tidings to the Stundist families? How could he bear the heartrending scenes he would be obliged to witness—himself the unwilling messenger of the cruel sentence? And what homes could he choose for the children, whom he must provide for as carefully and kindly as possible? They must be homes with which the sober, cleanly, and religious parents might be moderately content. He awoke his wife to ask her if she would be willing to take Velia and Clava into their own home, to live with their own children, and she answered drowsily, "Yes, yes, beloved!" Surely no objection could be made to this step. A priest's house was an Orthodox house.

Then there was Yarina, the richest woman in Knishi, with only one little girl. True she was Okhrim's daughter-in-law, but she was a widow for the second time, and quite independent of her husband's father. She was regular at church; though she was not as devout as the old Matoushka, Father Vasili's widow, who never missed a church service. He would not place a child with the old Matoushka—her temper was bad, and she was too miserly—a child would lead a terrible life with her.

Well, he must do the best he could for all of them. They would be under his own eye; and he would see each child every day in the village school, which of course they would now be expected to attend. Poor Michael! His little class would be scattered.

One clause of the order hurt Father Cyril's tender soul more than the others. The parents were not permitted to hold any kind of intercourse with their children unless they returned to the Orthodox faith. Ah! What daily agony there would be both for parents and children! It would have been almost better—more merciful—to have removed the little ones altogether out of sight. Yet, after all, would there not be some consolation to the mothers to see their children, even from afar?

CHAPTER VIII

THE children who had been spending the day in the forest went home at sunset, wearied but very happy. They parted with one another after they had crossed the rough bridge, and Michael and Velia went on hand in hand towards Ostron. Michael felt his heart strongly attracted by Father Cyril. If all priests were like him, he thought, there would be no persecution. And why should not people think differently about religion, as they did about everything else? The Stundists accepted the teaching of the New Testament literally. The Orthodox people added symbols and ceremonies and the traditions of the Church to it. He could not see that it made the New Testament any more binding. If the Lord gave a command, His followers must obey it.

As Michael and Velia turned into the fold-yard, they heard a loud harsh voice speaking on the other side of the house. They hurried round the corner, and saw Okhrim, the Starosta, who was reading with some difficulty from a large official document. He had not entered the house; and Alexis stood listening, whilst Paraska could be seen partly concealed by the door which she held ajar.

Michael and Velia drew near just as Okhrim, with a spiteful smile on his harsh face, read the plainly-worded order that the Starosta was to aid the parish priest in removing all children of Stundist parents, between the ages of two and ten years, and placing them in Orthodox families, where they would be brought up in the Orthodox faith. A wild frenzied shriek from Paraska rang through the quiet evening air; and Velia, who understood the slowly-uttered order, uttered a cry of terror, and flinging herself into her father's arms, clung closely to him, as if no power on earth could tear her from the shelter of his breast.

"Do?" repeated Okhrim contemptuously. "Why, become a good Christian, and go to church and pay the Church dues. Ay! And drink vodka as other Christians do. I believe you Stundists are the greatest fools living. The child is to be brought up Orthodox, and if you won't do it, somebody else must. I'll take her myself, and if fair means won't 'tice her to church, there is always this."

He cracked his whip, which he always flourished in his hand, and was not reluctant to use it on anybody he dared to tyrannise over. Alexis felt Velia tremble violently in his arms.

"There you go," said Okhrim, with a sneer and a laugh, "as if God Almighty could hear you amid all His angels and archangels singing and chanting, to say nothing of the blessed saints. If I were in your plight, I'd pray humbly to one of the smallest saints, and get him to speak to those higher up; and maybe it might reach at last the ear of the Mother of God. Not that she'd do anything for a cursed Stundist. Besides, she'd never interfere with our archbishop and the consistory."

"I must think," said Alexis, turning to him with an expression of almost hopeless anguish; "we have no power, no influence. Oh, if I had only sent Velia to Scotland with you, she would have been safe! But there are other fathers and other mothers. Oh, my God! Help us to bear it!"

For once in his life Okhrim's conscience stung him, and he turned away, slowly passing out of sight.

Alexis carried Velia into the house, and Paraska locked and barred the door, as if she could shut out the coming trouble.

It was a sleepless night for Alexis, as well as for Father Cyril. The thought crossed his mind that he would have time to carry Michael and Velia to Odessa, and get his wife's kinsman there to send them away to Scotland. But a step like this would only precipitate and intensify the storm ready to burst, not only upon himself but upon hundreds of fellow Stundists in the district. There were other parents, even in Knishi, who would have the same most heavy cross laid upon them. They were not only to be bereft of their children, but they knew those children would be brought up in tenets which they themselves renounced with such fervour that they were willing to sacrifice everything rather than profess to believe them. No, he could not save Velia in that way.

Then he thought pitifully of Tatiania, whose husband, Khariton Kondraty, had been in jail for nine months. She too would now have to give up little Clava, her youngest child, the pet and darling of the house. Poor Tatiania! Could she stand fast in her faith, so severely tried? Could any of the mothers refrain from going back to the Orthodox Church, if by doing so they could keep their little ones? Ah! This was the sharpest weapon of all in the Orthodox armoury. "Give me the children," the Church demanded, "and the mothers will follow."

Then Father Cyril was so good and kind and persuasive; so different from Father Vasili, who had been an idle, self-indulgent, and arrogant parish priest. It would make it much easier for the women to go back to the Orthodox Church. By slow degrees they would relapse into the old condition of superstitious observances, and the lamp of truth would be extinguished in Knishi, as it had been in other places.

But below every other thought there rang through his soul the cry, "Oh, Velia, my little child! Would to God we could die together, my child and I!"

The morning came, and a wretched circle assembled at breakfast. Michael and Velia had both slept, but their eyes were red, as if they had wept themselves to sleep and awoke with tears again. Paraska was heavy-eyed, and completely dumb. They were lingering together, as if they could not bear to separate, even for an hour, when Father Cyril appeared at the door.

"Ah, Okhrim has been before me!" he exclaimed. "I ought to have come last night. My poor Alexis! But the order is not to be executed before Sunday that the people may have time to make their submission, and be reconciled to the Church. Those parents who come to confession will keep their children, on condition that they bring them up as Orthodox Christians."

"We shall see who can bear the severest temptations," said Alexis, with a sad smile.

"But I will start off to Kovylsk at once if you can drive me," said Father Cyril; "and I will ask for an interview with the archbishop. Come, Alexis; I am a father too. I feel for you. I can guess the terror little Velia feels, poor lamb."

He sat down on the bench, and took the trembling little girl into his arms. The tears rolled slowly down his cheeks. He felt great shame in the errand forced upon him. This terrible order, which he was called upon to execute, seemed to him a monstrous attack upon a parent's rights—those primal rights which existed before the Church was founded. He sat in silence for some minutes, until he could command his voice. From time to time, he stroked Velia's hair and patted her cheek. And the child nestled close to him, much comforted.

"And leave the result to God," added Alexis. "But how can I quit my little daughter just now?"

"Let her go and play with my little ones," answered Father Cyril; "the Matoushka will be like a mother to her. We will put her down at the church-house; for we must tell my wife we shall be away for one or two nights."

CHAPTER IX

AS they drove across the steppe, in the two-wheeled cart without springs, at the slow, monotonous trot of the old mare, Father Cyril had a better opportunity than he had ever had before of a prolonged discussion with Alexis Ivanoff on the tenets and history of their young sect. He was filled with surprise and admiration. The absolute simplicity and truthfulness of the farmer, united as it was with mental strength and a close grasp of his subject, astonished the Batoushka. Alexis was not logical; he had had no training in a theological seminary, like Father Cyril. He argued as the fishermen of Galilee would have argued. But his convictions were as strong as theirs, who had seen the Lord with their eyes, and heard Him with their ears. Father Cyril could not help admitting that the worship of the Stundists was far more in accordance with that of the apostolic age than the ornate, multitudinous, and magnificent ceremonies of the Orthodox Church. He owned that the peasants, in their ignorance, did worship the icons with idolatry. Yet in fundamental Christian doctrines, he and Alexis were one. They prayed to the same Father in heaven; they believed in the same Lord; they studied the same Holy Scriptures. There was real spiritual communion between them, as they slowly crossed the brown autumnal steppe, now lying under a thin veil of mist, which hid the horizon, and enclosed them in a soft circle of mellowed light.

They reached Kovylsk too late to go to the consistory that night. But quite early in the morning Father Cyril presented himself at the gate, and inquired for Father Paissy, who was known throughout the diocese as the archbishop's right hand. They had been at the theological seminary together, where they had been on friendly terms, but they had seen nothing of one another since Father Paissy had elected to enter the order of the monastical clergy, who take vows of celibacy, and who alone can be raised to the higher ranks of the Russian priesthood. He was already a powerful personage. He was a small, sharp-featured man, with a soft voice, and a perpetual smile on his thin lips.

"Father Cyril, parish priest of Knishi?" he said interrogatively, without condescending to recognise him as his former comrade. "Ah! You have a troublesome flock. Heresy runs like an infectious disease among them. We must stamp it out—stamp it out effectually."

It was a great blow to Father Cyril; for the archbishop never refused him an interview, and he had placed great hopes on his indulgence. It is easier to prevent a thing being done than to get it undone. There was no sign of indulgence in the hard face opposite him.

"I came to intercede for my poor parishioners," he said gently, "those unhappy parents who are to be deprived of their young children. Some of them are scarcely out of their mothers' arms, and still require a mother's care in childish maladies. Only a mother's patience is strong enough to bear them through the first seven years. A child's heart is capable of great sorrows, and its spirit is quickly broken if it is sent among strangers, and separated from all it has known from its birth."

"The unfortunate people who have left our holy Church," he continued, "are most affectionate parents. It is their universal practice to treat their little ones with the utmost tenderness. They look upon their children as entrusted to their care by God Himself. True, that may be an error, but it is their belief. The children never hear uncivil words; they never see a drunken person in their homes. Think, your reverence, what it must be to children so carefully reared to be distributed among the houses of peasants who are ignorant and degraded by vodka-drinking. There would be great difficulty in finding suitable homes for them with our Orthodox peasants."

"You seem to think very highly of your heretics," said Father Paissy in a scoffing tone.

"I grieve over their heresy night and day," he answered earnestly; "it makes my life in Knishi a burden to me. I never had this trouble to encounter before. But oh, believe me, harsh measures will never bring them back to us, above all, not such a measure as this! Every father, every mother worthy of the name, will cry out against it. I assure your reverence, I was gaining some influence over them; I have seen two or three steal in at the church door to listen to my sermons. Let me plead their cause to you. Do you, with your powerful influence, get this terrible order rescinded. The Stundists will bless you, and it will add greatly to my influence in the parish."

"Do you forget the children's immortal souls?" asked Father Paissy. "Is their salvation of no moment?"

"Alas!" cried Father Cyril. "If salvation means to be saved from sin, I must confess that these poor straying heretics have advanced farther along the path of salvation than our superstitious, half-pagan Orthodox peasants. I am striving my utmost to teach and raise them, but only a parish priest can know how deeply they are sunk in degradation and drunkenness."

"I can do nothing for you," said Father Paissy in a chilling voice; "the consistory has issued the order, and it must remain as it is. It must also be obeyed promptly, Father Cyril."

The Batoushka felt his heart sink within him, as he looked at the set and stubborn face before him, with its cruel smile still playing about its lips. Neither this man nor the archbishop could understand what a father's love was, and they had no knowledge of a child's nature. His chief hope was gone, but another was left to him.

"I may place the children as I please," he asked, "provided I settle them in Orthodox families? Some houses are much better than others."

"Just as you like—just as you like," said Father Paissy impatiently; "only let me warn you, Father Cyril, no indulgence to the heretics! We intend to weed them out, root and branch. Our long-suffering is at an end. Church or Siberia! Church or Caucasus! They must choose between them."

Alexis was waiting at the entrance to the consistory when Father Cyril came out. He had been to see two or three friends in Kovylsk, who had sympathised with him deeply, but gave him no hope that the order would be rescinded. It had been sent to many other villages besides Knishi, and there was lamentation and bitter weeping in them all: "Rachel weeping for her children refused to be comforted."

"Yet, 'Thus saith the Lord,'" said Alexis, "'Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy. And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own border.' Send that message to the churches, and bid them trust the Lord to keep His promises."

He knew the moment he caught sight of Father Cyril's downcast face that he had failed in his mission. But Alexis had regained his habitual courage and resignation. He said to himself, "'He that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.'" Hard words! But they were the words of his crucified Lord.

They scarcely spoke to one another until they were some distance out of Kovylsk, and could no longer see the glittering domes of its numerous churches. Then Father Cyril owned his bitter disappointment. "It will break my heart," he said.

"The soul is stronger than the heart," replied Alexis. "Now I submit myself to God's will, and leave my little child in His hands. He loves her better than I can; yes, He loves her with an infinite and everlasting love."

Alexis dropped the reins and turned to him, as if he had not heard clearly what was said.

"My wife and I have settled that," Father Cyril went on, with tears in his eyes; "they shall be to us the same as our own children."

"Oh, you good man!" interrupted Alexis. "Oh, how can I thank you? What can I do for you? Oh, if all Batoushkas were like you!"

"I would take them all if I could," said Father Cyril, "but I will find the best houses I can for every one of them. Yarina will take two, I am sure. Then there are seven or eight more. The worst part of the order is that the parents are to have no intercourse whatever with the children, and not in any way to interfere with their training. But they will live in the same village, and see them from time to time, though at a distance. They will know they are all under my protection, and they can always come to the church-house and hear from me, or the Matoushka, of their welfare. Oh, I will do my best for them."

"Oh, as for religion," replied Father Cyril, "they must come to church, and be brought up to observe the Orthodox rites and accept the Orthodox doctrines. There is no way to escape that, but, Alexis Ivanoff, there is salvation to be found in every Church."

The telega stopped at the church-house after nightfall. Father Cyril called to Alexis to come to look through the uncurtained window. There, on a rug near the stove, sat Velia, with Father Cyril's two little daughters, one on each side of her. The children's heads were close together, and their faces shone in the lamplight. They were laughing merrily, and the Matoushka was laughing too.

CHAPTER X

BUT to get little Clava away from her mother, Tatiania, was a hard task, almost an impossible one. The other parents recognised the absolute impossibility of evading the order of the consistory, and they listened submissively to the arrangements made for their children by the Batoushka, who was supported by Alexis Ivanoff. But Tatiania would listen to no reasoning or persuasion. Her husband had been in prison for nine months, and but for Sergius and Marfa, who had done all the work on their land, and with their beehives, the family would have fallen into dire poverty. They were, of course, much poorer than they had been in former years. But she would not give up her darling, she declared—no, not if the archbishop himself came to take her away. The Matoushka came to entreat her to trust little Clava to her, but in vain.

"Oh, foolish woman!" cried Paraska to her. "You'd know where she was, and how kind they were to her, and you'd see her in the street, and watch her growing up and changing into a girl. And I shouldn't know my boys now if I saw them. They were babies when they took them from me eight years ago, and now—! No, I'd pass them in the road and not know them for my own sons."

It was not until a letter came from Khariton Kondraty, written in his prison cell in Kovylsk, bidding his wife give up the child, that Tatiania yielded, and little Clava went to the church-house, where Velia was already settled.

Profound grief, underneath which lay a presentiment of still heavier calamities, if that were possible, took possession of the little community of Stundists. Every house had lost one or two of its children. Several of the mothers, with their hungry love for their little ones, could not keep aloof from the village church, where alone they could see them and be for a short time under the same roof. Paraska told them they were highly favoured; she did not even know if her boys were living. Alexis Ivanoff in his great pity did not reproach the women for their stolen attendances at the parish church. Velia had returned to him for two or three days before he was compelled to resign her to the care of Father Cyril and the sweet-tempered Matoushka. They had been days of unutterable anguish, the Gethsemane of his soul. After this sacrifice to his faith, no trial could be too bitter.

The old Matoushka, Father Vasili's widow, took care that a report of the return of the heretic mothers to the Orthodox Church should reach Father Paissy's ears. He heard it with a smile of self-satisfaction. At last, then, he had discovered a way of dealing with the Stundists of the diocese.

Michael's spirit in those days was hot and mutinous within him. Not so much on account of Velia, whom he could visit frequently, but for the sake of his father and little Clava's mother, who could hold no intercourse with their children, and who were visibly aged by their grief. Why could not the Stundists do as the Scottish Covenanters had done before them, set up the standard of revolt, and defend themselves until the right cause triumphed? Why should not they strike a blow for freedom—at any rate, for freedom to serve and worship God according to their conscience? Alexis listened to his boy with a melancholy smile.

"First of all," he answered, "because we remember that our Lord suffered His enemies to take Him and crucify Him, though He might have had a legion of angels to take vengeance on them. He said to Simon Peter, 'Put up thy sword into its place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.' 'The cup that My Father hath given Me, shall not I drink it?' Yes, Lord, we must drink the cup that Thou givest us! Cannot God save us, if that be best for us and for our country?"

"That is the chief point," pursued Alexis, "but to revolt would be utter madness. It would mean our extermination. Scotland is a small country, and the Covenanters could easily band together. Besides, the people were mostly in their favour. But Russia is vast, and the people are our enemies, and will be as long as superstition and drink have the upper hand. Here in Knishi, with nearly a hundred parishioners—that is, heads of families—only nine of us are Stundists. Our nearest sister church is in Kovylsk, a day's journey from us; there are some thousands of inhabitants, and not more than a hundred brethren who are quite sound in the faith. Our little churches are feeble in themselves, and lie miles apart. Truly, if we took the sword, we should quickly perish with the sword. We could not combine for resistance; we can only do so for mutual sympathy and help. No, my boy, it is God's will, and we must submit to it."

The Russian people, like all Eastern nations, are fatalists; and Alexis Ivanoff was not without this strain in his temperament. There is an element of peace in it, but not much element of progress. Boy as he was, Michael chafed against it with all the love of freedom, and a desire to strike a blow for it, which he had inherited from his Scottish ancestors. God's will was ever for the right, and this persecution was wrong.

The children over ten years of age were suffering in many ways, besides having their younger brothers and sisters ruthlessly separated from them. They could not pass along the village street, or drive their parents' oxen to water at the village well, without having stones or clods thrown at them. If they went out in numbers for mutual protection, the Orthodox children formed bands which lay in ambush to attack them. At a lonely cottage, left in charge of two girls whilst their parents were working in the communal lands, the door was locked, and the young persecutors gathered a quantity of reeds and ill-smelling weeds, and set fire to them under the unglazed window, until the noisome smoke almost suffocated the terrified girls. It was useless to complain to the Starosta, and Father Cyril found himself powerless to prevent such outrages.

The women dared not send their girls to the shop; and only big boys like Michael and Sergius could water the cattle, or fill the buckets for home use. They did it under a constant shower of abuse, occasionally accompanied by skilfully aimed missiles. But on the whole the village boys were afraid of Michael.

One day, as Michael was going down to the river to look after some wicker fish-traps he had hidden in the water, he saw a girl standing in the track leading to the washing-place, with a big boy brandishing a whip over her. Before he could reach them, the long lash was falling upon the girl's bowed shoulders and bare ankles in rapid stinging stripes. She stood motionless, protecting her face with her hands, and uttering no cry. The clothes she had been washing lay trampled in the mud. It was Marfa, and the boy who was flogging her was Okhrim's grandson, and a bully and a coward. Michael had just been reading how Moses in Egypt saw one of his brethren suffer wrong, and forthwith avenged him that was oppressed, and smote the Egyptian. He considered the example of Moses was to be followed.

"Stop that!" he cried, seizing the whip, and breaking the handle of it in two. "You coward! Come on and fight me, if you dare, you mean, skulking, miserable coward!"

But the boy dared not fight. He stood still for a moment glaring at them; then, spitting at Marfa, turned away, running as fast as he could. Michael was for pursuing him, but Marfa held him fast by the arm.

"Oh, Michael, you shouldn't, you shouldn't!" she sobbed, lifting up her tear-stained face. "I could have borne it. Oh yes, I was bearing it. I was saying to myself, 'This is for Jesus Christ's sake.' I didn't cry out, did I, Michael?"

"No," he answered; "you were quite dumb. But I couldn't stand by and see a girl flogged like that. No, no, Marfa! I did right, and I should do it again."

"It will bring us both into trouble," said Marfa, picking up the soiled clothes, and carrying them back to the washing-stage.

Michael lingered about till she was ready to go home. And after seeing her there safely, he went on to his father's house, carefully avoiding the village street. Alexis looked greatly troubled when Michael told him what had happened.

"I will go and tell Father Cyril after dark," he said. "If anyone can help us, he can and will. You did right, but no one knows what the issue may be. Tell me, my son, did you feel angry with the boy?"

"I felt as savage as a wild beast," he cried; "if I had not broken the whip and flung it away the first moment, I should have flogged him."

"Thank God you didn't!" answered Alexis. "But oh, Michael, my boy, you must learn to 'love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you.' It is our Lord's command."

"It is too hard for me yet, father," said Michael frankly. "I could forgive them gladly and make friends again, if they wanted it. But they delight in being enemies. It's as much fun to some of them to lurk round corners and throw stones at us from behind, as it used to be to play games with us. But I'll try to keep our Lord's commands; I'll try my utmost. A boy can't be perfect all at once."

"Nor a man either," said Alexis, with a smile and a sigh. "It is a hard saying, but He who said it will give us grace to obey it. Only love Him, Michael, and, presently we shall learn to love all for whom He died."

In the dusk Alexis went to the church-house. It was somewhat larger than his own, and possessed a slate roof, and glass in every casement. It stood near the church, and not far from the cemetery, where, until the last few years, all the village comrades in life had found their last resting-place for their toil-worn and wearied bodies. But now the Stundists were forbidden to bury their dead beside their forefathers. Any unconsecrated hole was good enough for their unhallowed corpses. Father Cyril was sitting alone, but the voices of the Matoushka and the children could be heard in the kitchen, where supper was being prepared. Alexis heard Velia's beloved voice singing an evening hymn with the other little ones. Father Cyril was reading by the light of a lamp with three wicks. Through the uncurtained window could be seen the dim, great plain, which lay like a sea round the little island of Knishi. The first slight veil of snow was lying softly upon it, for the autumn was already over.

Father Cyril invited Alexis to sit down. The former Batoushka had zealously testified to his religion by not permitting a heretic to take a seat in his house. Alexis sat down by the window, gazing out at the white wilderness on which the moon was shining softly. He told his story simply, without looking at the Batoushka.

"Would to God I had been there instead of Michael!" exclaimed Father Cyril. "I always suspected that young rascal was the ringleader in this persecution of children by children. If I could but have laid my hand upon him! Then I would have sent a report to the archbishop. Surely no servant of God could wink at such an evil. It frustrates all my efforts to teach them mercy and loving-kindness. It is making them more savage and cruel than their parents were before them."

Father Cyril's voice faltered, and Alexis turned to see why he ceased speaking. He had buried his face in his hands, and the lamplight shone upon tears trickling through his interlaced fingers.

Before them both, the Orthodox priest and the heretical Stundist, there rose a vision of their crucified Lord, in the hour of His bodily anguish, when rude, rough hands were nailing Him to His cross on Calvary. Both thought of that hour with profound pity and love, but the remembrance brought more strength and comfort to Alexis than to Father Cyril.

"Amen!" he repeated. "Our Lord said it. And He also said, 'Blessed are you when men shall revile you, and persecute you, for My sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad.' Father Cyril, we are ready to follow where the Lord leads."

"But what about the persecutors?" said Father Cyril. "And I am on their side. Alexis, it will break my heart!"

"I fear this will bring fresh trouble," said the Batoushka, "but I will send a report at once to the archbishop. You are sure Michael did not strike the Starosta's grandson?"

"He confesses he would have done it," replied Alexis, "if he had not broken the whip and thrown it away the first moment. But who will believe him?"

"I will go and see Marfa first thing in the morning," said Father Cyril. "Little Clava and your Velia are in there," he added, nodding towards the kitchen; "they are dear children to us."

The children had just finished singing, and pattering steps came towards the door to fetch Father Cyril to supper. He hastened to intercept them and send them back; for no heretic parents were permitted to hold any intercourse with the children taken from them.

CHAPTER XI

FATHER CYRIL'S report to the archbishop did no good. The Starosta Okhrim, mad with rage, went to Kovylsk, and had a personal interview with Father Paissy, at the consistory. This priest had a special interest in the suppression of Stundism at Knishi. Some few years before he had been present at an outbreak of popular prejudice, excited by himself, which had resulted in the death of a Stundist woman named Ooliana Rodenko. Her son Paul, and Paraska's husband Demyan, had been exiled to Siberia, with other prominent men among the Stundists. If these sharp measures failed to root out heresy, they appeared almost like crimes. Father Paissy was resolved to attain his object. The end justified the means. But what if the end was not achieved? This time he determined to stamp out Stundism, once for all, in Knishi. If Father Cyril failed to win the heretics back to the Orthodox Church, they must be exterminated.

All the men of the Stundist households, nine in number, were arrested, and carried off to the prison in Kovylsk. The women were left without their natural protectors, and without breadwinners in their desolated homes. No one was left to do the necessary winter work except themselves, and the children between ten and fifteen years of age. Alexis Ivanoff gone, Michael was left with all the toil and care of the farm upon his shoulders, shared only by Paraska, who, under this new calamity, shook off the lethargy of her despair, and showed herself full of energy and resource. Tatiania, too, roused herself from the melancholy that had possessed her since the loss of little Clava, and she went from house to house comforting and encouraging the other women in the trouble still new to them. It was an old trouble to her, for it was nearly twelve months since her husband, Khariton Kondraty, had been imprisoned.

The Starosta, Okhrim, and his grandson paraded the village street with insolent triumph, but Father Cyril kept the day of arrest as a day of fasting and prayer in the solitude of the church vestry.

Winter had already set in, making the whole wide landscape white. The houses and barns stood out against the sky like huge heaps of snow. Every morning the street was trackless under the fresh falls that fell each night; and every evening the white surface was marked with countless footprints and furrows. All the cattle and sheep were under cover, and needed to be fed and watered every day. Michael was kept busily occupied, and Sergius came to help him as soon as his own work was done at home.

The village was cut off from all intercourse with the outer world until the snow was frozen hard enough to bear the sledges. There were only two sledges in Knishi, one belonging to Okhrim and the other to the innkeeper. There was no chance of hearing news of the prisoners in Kovylsk.

Father Cyril no longer checked the visits of Michael and Sergius to their little sisters in the church-house. On the contrary, he encouraged them; and the boys went often, on one pretext or another. Velia's childish heart was full of vague dreads and sharp sorrow for her father in prison, but little Clava was as gay and happy as a child can be. The Matoushka treated them exactly the same as her own children; whilst Father Cyril was, if possible, more tender and indulgent to them than to his own. He could not look at them without a feeling of the deepest pity.

As a loyal servant of his Church, he did his best to place its tenets in a clear manner before Michael and Sergius, feeling persuaded they did not know or understand them. The boys listened to him attentively and respectfully.

"Father Cyril," said Michael one day, "if a strong man came to your house, and dragged your sister from you, and carried your father off to a dreadful prison, could you think he was God's servant?"

"That is what the archbishop has done," continued Michael; "he has done it both to Serge and me. You think he stands higher up in God's service than you do. We don't think so. We could never, never believe he is really serving God, for God is love."

Father Cyril gave no answer. He could not tell them the archbishop was ignorant—the excuse he always made for the peasants. He looked at the two earnest, sturdy lads before him with compassionate eyes.

"Be good, my boys!" he said. "Be good, and your conscience will tell you when you are disobeying God."

Michael and Sergius were much together. Sergius had only one cow and a few sheep to tend, whilst Michael had many cattle and horses and a numerous flock. The boys went to and fro daily between their homes, always avoiding the village street, infested as it was by foes, and making their way along by-paths, through deep drifts of snow. The active life and frequent exposure to extreme cold hardened their bodies.

On the contrary, Marfa and her mother Tatiania grew pallid and weakly with prolonged confinement to the house, and continual fretting about Khariton and little Clava. Only on Sunday morning Tatiania, with her hungry mother's heart, made her way along the white street, and stole within the church door during mass, that she might at least see with her own eyes her little girl sitting with the Batoushka's children.

By the New Year the snow was as hard as the roads were in summer, and much pleasanter to travel over, as it was smoother, and there were no clouds of dust. The sky, too, was clear, and of a deep blue, which contrasted beautifully with the unsullied snow. The road to Kovylsk was traced out plainly by the tradesmen's sledges, which had come to bring supplies to the village shops. But no letters had arrived from the prisoners in Kovylsk; and every heretic soul was longing for some tidings of them.

In Alexis Ivanoff's barn there was a rough sort of sledge, which he had been wont to use for carrying up reeds from the river. Michael and Sergius determined to get over to Kovylsk secretly in this old sledge, taking only Marfa and Paraska into their counsels. This was necessary, as they would have to tend the cattle during their absence. Tatiania they dared not tell, lest she should talk about it to some of their Stundist neighbours.

In the dead of the night the boys dragged the sledge along the silent street, hearing every little jar of the runners as if it had been a shriek loud enough to arouse the neighbourhood. They hid it behind a low hillock where the open steppe began; for luckily they found the gate at the barrier not securely fastened. At sunrise they led the mare, with sacks slung across her, through the street, as if they were going on some errand to Yarina's farm, which lay on that side of the village. Okhrim's grandson saw them, and shouted some words of abuse, but kept at a safe distance. No one else took any notice of them; and before long they were driving over the snowclad steppe.

It was bitterly cold, but they had on their sheepskin coats, and caps of Astrachan fur. In their sacks was food enough for three or four days, which Paraska had provided, besides a present for Markovin, to whose house Michael was bound. The air was stinging but wonderfully exhilarating. The low sun lay like a red ball in the filmy sky. The old mare ran at a much brisker pace than her jog-trot under the sultry sunshine. They were jolted and jerked by the shaking of the rough sledge, but this was part of the pleasure to the hardy lads. They sang and laughed and talked as if there was no sorrow for them in the past, the present, or the future.

The short day was over before they reached Kovylsk, but the night could not be dark on such a snowy plain, and under such brilliant stars. They parted as soon as they reached the town, Sergius going to a cousin who was living there, whilst Michael went to ask help and shelter from Markovin.

The timorous old man looked scared when he saw the boy, the notorious Alexis Ivanoff's son. But he could not find it in his heart to send him away. He felt a superstitious pleasure in the fact that he had never turned a Stundist away from his door, however terrified he was at harbouring them. The fresh outbreak of persecution redoubled his dread, though he had no reason to suppose the authorities suspected him of heresy. But who knew where a spy might be lurking? He diligently attended mass in the cathedral, where he had been for some years a verger; and he crossed himself, and bowed to the icons. When the brethren reproached him with time-serving, he excused himself by citing the example of Naaman the Syrian, who said to Elijah, 'Thy servant will henceforth offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice to other gods, but unto the Lord. In this thing the Lord pardon thy servant, when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon . . . the Lord pardon thy servant in this thing.' This history was a great comfort and support to Markovin, and he was generally known among the Stundists by the name of Naaman.

Markovin led Michael into an inner room, where no one could hear or see them, and almost in a whisper told him all he knew about the prisoners. They had been brought several times before a committee of investigation, of which Father Paissy was the chairman, held in the consistory. Every effort had been made to get them to recant; promises and threats had been showered upon them. But all remained firm and faithful to their convictions, except perhaps Nicolas Pavilovitch, who seemed shaken by the rigour of his prison experience, and the promise of reward if he returned to the Orthodox Church.

"Why can't they hold their opinions as I do?" asked old Markovin querulously. "The Scriptures don't say, 'Thou shalt not cross thyself, Thou shalt not bow to the icons'—"

"There you're wrong," interrupted Michael hotly; "did you never see the commandment, 'Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, neither of things in heaven, nor things on earth, nor things under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down to them, nor worship them'? Not bow down to them, Markovin Petrovitch! Not even bow down to them. And you know they worship them—pray to them."

"The icons are painted, not graven," answered Markovin; "besides, there was Naaman the Syrian—"

But before he could utter another word, a loud knocking at the outer door made his old knees tremble and his hands shake as with palsy.

"Go to the door," he murmured, "and tell them I'm ill in bed. Oh, I am ill, true enough!"

CHAPTER XII

MICHAEL, feeling greatly disgusted by Markovin's cowardice, threw open the door boldly. The visitor, who was carefully wrapped up in a huge sheepskin coat, was no other than the friendly warder from the jail—Pafnutitch.

"Of course I do," answered the warder; "it's part of our business to know folks again. You're the young cock-of-the-walk that crowed so loud and ready to thrust your head into Kovylsk Jail last spring, to have a look at my jail-birds. Your father's one of them now. A good man; oh, as good almost as Loukyan the saint! What do you say to trying a rig like that?"

"Hush!" whispered Michael, pointing to the door of Markovin's bedroom. "Hush! It would kill him with fright. To see my father! Oh, I'm ready! When will it be?"

"Now! To-night," answered Pafnutitch. "Oh, what luck I came here to-night! Our head men are all going to the governor's ball, and we intend to have a jolly night of it. But you shall see your little father first; only you must have a bag o' tools, or something—"

"That will do," agreed the warder; "and don't you speak if anybody speaks to you. They'll think you are Mitiushka, my sister's son by her first husband, but he was flogged once for talking to a Stundist, and now he won't answer anybody he doesn't know very well. His mother, Matriona, had two husbands—but there, I can't tell you all about it now. I must be at my post in an hour. Tell Markovin Petrovitch you are going out a little while on business, but don't mention me. Now, then, Nephew Mitiushka."

Michael followed Pafnutitch through the streets, his heart beating high with courage. The wind was piercing, but he did not feel it. The stars glittered in the narrow strip of sky between the roofs of the houses; and he fancied they looked down on him like kindly eyes in heaven. Once again he had the strange sensation of feeling his mother near to him, walking unseen at his side, and telling him, without words, not to be afraid.

When they reached the jail the gatekeeper, who was playing at cards with a comrade, admitted them, with scarcely a glance at Michael. The light from the lamp was dull, and the man held a good hand of cards, which he was eager to play. The small door constructed in the heavy gates, through which they passed, clanged behind them, and the strong bolts were shot back into their places. Michael felt already the depressing and stifling atmosphere of a prison.

They went through long dark passages, and up two flights of stairs. On the topmost floor was a corridor, dimly lighted by one oil lamp at the head of the stairs. On each side were a number of little cells. Another warder met them half-way down this corridor, and gazed suspiciously at Michael.

"Go on, Mitiushka," said Pafnutitch. Drawing the other warder aside, "He's bringing some victual for the heretics," he whispered, "they've got powerful rich friends in town—friends that pay well; and I said my nephew, Mitiushka, should bring them some comforts. There's a bottle of the best vodka ever went down a man's throat—for me, you know; the poor heretics don't drink vodka. I'm just mad to taste it, and you and me 'll go and have some. I'll just turn Mitiushka in here," he added, stopping at the door of Alexis Ivanoff's cell; "you know he's a poor softy and won't, talk to anybody. I'll lock the door on him; and we'll see what the vodka is like."

He pushed Michael into the cell, and turned the key loudly in the lock. There was not a gleam of light, except that just under the ceiling a little square of sky, with two or three stars in it, was visible. Michael heard his father's voice in the darkness.

Groping till they felt one another in the narrow cell, the father and son stood for a few minutes clasped in one another's arms. Never had Michael felt a rapture so pure and overwhelming. For the moment he forgot they were in a prison. They were together again—he and his father. But very soon both of them remembered how precious time was. They sat down side by side on the wooden plank, which served for seat and bed, and Michael told briefly how it happened he was there. There was so much to say, and so short a time to say it in. Alexis gave Michael some news of the prisoners to take home, and messages to carry to sundry friends in Kovylsk, who were stretching to the utmost their influence on behalf of the imprisoned Stundists.

"For me," he said calmly, "it must be either Siberia or the Caucasus sooner or later. If it is sooner, before you are fifteen, you may get permission to go with me as my child. Tatiania and Sergius and Marfa will go with Khariton Kondraty. But we must leave Velia and little Clava behind us. They will never give back to us the little ones they have robbed us of."

"Ah! That is my only comfort," Alexis went on. "But oh, my boy, they will be brought up in the practices we denounce, and for which we are suffering even unto death! But we must leave them in God's hands, He loves them more than we can. If they keep us in prison for years, as some of our brethren have been, you and Sergius will be too old to go with us—"

"We will follow you wherever you go," interrupted Michael, "if we have to walk every step of the way. Paraska is saving up every kopek she can get to join her husband in Irkutsk. If a woman can do it, we can. If it was all round the world, we would follow you."

He threw his arms round his father's neck, and laid his head on his shoulder. Oh, if he could but remain with him now, and share his prison cell! By this time his eyes had grown used to the darkness, and he could see the dim outline of his father's face. He told him how he had fancied his mother was walking at his side as he came to the jail.

"Why not?" said Alexis. "Surely she loves us better than she did while she was here."

"Not more miserable than our Lord," he answered; "what He can bear to see, she can bear. They know the end. Your mother has joined the cloud of witnesses which compasses us about; and though they see our afflictions, they also see the far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory laid up for us if we fight a good fight. It is even here a glory and a joy to suffer for Christ's sake."

Alexis spoke in a tone of sober gladness. But before he could say more, they heard the voice of Pafnutitch speaking loudly in the corridor.

"I'd clean forgotten the lad," he said; "he'll be scared out of his poor wits at being shut up in the dark with a cursed heretic. Come out, my poor boy, come out! Good sakes! This key wants oiling, I can scarcely turn it."

He fumbled at the lock for some seconds, giving Michael and his father time for a last embrace and farewell. Michael was breathing hard with stifled sobs as he stumbled out of the cell.

"Poor lad! Poor lad!" exclaimed Pafnutitch, catching him by the arm, and hurrying down the corridor, "Scared almost to death! Ay, scared to death! And he was always something of a softy. I'll put him out into the street, and be back in a jiffy."

His fellow-warder winked slowly behind his back, and wondered what heavy bribe Pafnutitch had received. If possible, he would make him share it. The vodka had been very good, but that was not what had made Pafnutitch run such a risk as this. Should he report the little incident to the governor? No. They were good friends; besides, Pafnutitch knew too much of what he had done himself. It was best to keep a still tongue in his head.

CHAPTER XIII

FOR the next two days, Michael was busy delivering messages his father had sent by him to the brethren living in Kovylsk. He told no one how he had received these messages, for fear of betraying the warder, and thus closing the channel of communication between the prisoners and their friends outside. He could not help suspecting that someone made it worth while to Pafnutitch, though it was against the tenets and the customs of the Stundists to give bribes. Pafnutitch himself declared he ran the risks solely for love.

Now and then Michael met Sergius in the streets, but the boys took no notice of one another, thinking it safer not to appear acquainted. They imagined they saw a spy in every man and woman who happened to be walking in the same direction; and Markovin deepened this impression by his gloomy forebodings. He had no suspicion that Michael had been smuggled into the prison. The mere thought would have killed him. He was exceedingly glad when Michael bade him farewell, though he had shown him every kindness in his power. The old man kissed the boy on the forehead, with a profound sigh, and prayed that God's blessing might rest upon them both, "Me as well as him, O Lord!" he said in a trembling voice.

Michael and Sergius had much to say to one another as they drove homewards. Sergius had less to tell, for though he had been pitied and sympathised with as the son of Khariton Kondraty, who had been so long in prison for his faith, his father was not a well-known and beloved presbyter, as Alexis Ivanoff was. His arrest had been a blow to a score or more of little Stundist churches. Then there was Michael's adventure in the jail, and his stolen interview with his father, a secret which he confided to Sergius under a solemn vow of inviolable secrecy. There must not be a hint or a whisper of such an event, for fear of getting Pafnutitch into disgrace or danger, if he was found out.

They left their old sledge among the reeds growing along the margin of the river, and led their tired horse at nightfall by a narrow by-path to Ostron. Paraska hailed their arrival with a gladness the boys had never before seen on her joyless face. The news of their return soon spread, and before midnight, one woman after another stole in to ask if there was any news of their husbands, and any hope of their liberation. The wife of Nicolas Pavilovitch came amongst them, but Michael did not say a word to her that it was rumoured her husband was about to recant, and bear witness against the other Stundists. It seemed too shameful and too treacherous a thing for him to put into words.

It was not many weeks, however, before Nicolas himself arrived in a police-sledge. Every man and woman in Knishi ran into the frost-bound street to watch its progress. The sledge was driven straight to Father Cyril's house. Nicolas had been ordered to make his submission to his parish priest. When he entered the house under the eye of the policeman, he bowed profoundly to the icon, and with a tremulous voice asked for the priest's blessing, and humbly kissed his hand.

"Nicolas Pavilovitch, you desire to come back to the Orthodox Church?" said Father Cyril, after reading the order from the consistory.

Father Cyril's voice was stern, and his gaze penetrating. The miserable-looking man only bowed his head, he could not utter a word.

"You will have your children restored to you," continued Father Cyril; "and I am to see that they are carefully brought up in the sacred rites and doctrines of our holy religion. I am also to report to the consistory how frequently you and your wife come to mass and to confession. Go home now. To-morrow I will come and bless your house."

The driver of the sledge had already spread the news. And when Nicolas left the church-house he found he had to pass through groups of unsympathetic neighbours, most of whom jeered at him or hailed him with mock applause. Pale and haggard, enfeebled by long confinement and prison fare, he could not hurry homewards out of their way, but crawled along with bowed-down head and eyes almost blinded with tears. Was it for this he had belied his conscience and turned renegade and traitor? The veriest drunkard did not believe in his conversion. What were those words repeated again and again in his brain? "Seeing he has crucified to himself 'the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame.'" Oh, terrible words!

His house was the peasant's hut next to Khariton Kondraty's, and Sergius, seeing his arrival, rushed in, after giving him a few minutes to greet his wife and children, to ask how it was he had been released. Surely his father would be set free too, and perhaps Alexis himself, though as presbyter he was least likely to escape exile.

Nicolas had thrown himself breathless and exhausted on the bench beside the stove, and his wife was standing before him speechless and bewildered.

"Is my father coming?" cried Sergius. "Are the others let off? Oh, Nicolas Pavilovitch, tell me quickly!"

"They could all come home if they'd do as I've done," answered Nicolas in a muffled voice.

"He has denied the faith," sobbed his wife. "He was a miserable drunkard before he joined the brethren, and now he is a lost soul."

Sergius stole away quickly and silently. If that was the price to pay for liberty, he knew well his father would not give it. No, not to gain the whole world.

The recantation of Nicolas was a great shock to the little community of Stundists in Knishi, consisting now only of a few desolate women and their children. Father Cyril ordered the children of Nicolas to be sent home, notwithstanding his wife's persistent refusal to join her husband in abjuring her faith. The three little ones, all under ten years of age, were very dear to her, and to hold them again in her arms, or to work from dawn to dark for them, was a great consolation, but nothing would induce her to go to mass with them and their father. When she heard that her husband had given evidence, mostly false, against his fellow-prisoners, she refused to quit the house, or to hold any intercourse with her old friends and neighbours. Her tribulation was greater than that of the other women.

The winter wore slowly away; and the women's hearts grew heavier as they heard nothing of the liberation of their husbands. They were wanted sorely at home. As soon as the thaw came, the numerous labours on a farm, so necessary in the spring, must be done. They had patiently borne many hardships through the winter, but if their breadwinners did not come home soon, starvation would stare them in the face. Okhrim, the Starosta, exacted the taxes as if the men were at their usual work; and already some of the stock had been sold at low prices to meet his demands.

The snow melted away, and the fine blades of corn sown in the autumn began to push upwards through the rich, moist soil. Michael and Serge toiled from the first streak of dawn to the last gleam of light in the western sky, scarcely snatching time enough for food. But what could two boys do unaided? Besides, there were houses where there was not one child big enough for heavy work; and the women could not do it all. Even if they had possessed the means to hire labourers, they could not have done so; for it had been made illegal for a Stundist to have an Orthodox servant in any capacity.

CHAPTER XIV

THE short spring-tide was almost spent when news came. The men were all sentenced to exile in Eastern Siberia for various periods; Alexis, whose term was the longest, for ten years. As usual, the wives who chose to go into exile with their husbands might do so, and take their children. Not one of the women, warned by Paraska's experience, chose to remain behind. There were only a few days for disposing of all their possessions, and they were forced to sell their goods for what their neighbours would give. Yarina, the richest woman in Knishi, bought a good deal of the stock; and it was noticed that the sellers looked satisfied and grateful, whilst Okhrim went about swearing at his daughter-in-law. Father Cyril seemed much pleased, and very friendly with her.

The boy was so manly in his bearing and so well-grown it was difficult to believe him still under the age at which he could be entered in the convoy-list as a child.

"A good thing!" said Father Cyril. "But you will have to go as a child, my boy."

"I'd go as a baby," he answered, laughing, "rather than not go with my father. But there is Velia," he said, his face growing grave and anxious.

"She cannot go," said Father Cyril; "the children already separated from their parents are not to be restored to them. And it is best! Think of such a journey, month after month, through the bitter winter and the scorching summer, for little children. My heart aches whenever I think of it."

"But our poor little Velia!" exclaimed Michael, suddenly realising what his departure would be to her. How would the tender-hearted little soul bear the separation? He recollected her cry, "Never go away again, brother! Never leave little Velia again!"

"Michael," said Father Cyril, "trust me. Velia and little Clava shall be as my own children. They must observe the rites of our Church, but I will teach them the truths that lie underneath the symbols. Do not be afraid. They shall not cross themselves except when they do so in remembrance of our crucified Lord. They shall not pray to the icons, but to the saints whom the icons recall to our minds. I will take care no superstition is mixed up with their religion."

"But we pray straight to God," objected Michael, "neither to the icons nor the saints. Our Lord said, 'When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven.' He did not speak of saints."

"They shall say the Lord's Prayer night and morning," answered Father Cyril gently; "my boy, you have no voice in this matter. Only trust in me. As far as mortal man can guide them into truth, I will do so. Trust Velia to God also. He loves her more than you can."

Tatiania, like the other women, had sold her few possessions, and made all the necessary preparations for joining her husband at Kovylsk with her children. But when she heard that little Clava would not be given back to her, she declared she would not stir without her. There were other almost broken-hearted mothers, who were leaving their little ones behind in far less happy circumstances than little Clava. But their remonstrances and entreaties were in vain. Tatiania sat down in her empty house, and refused to listen to anyone.

Michael, like the rest, had sold the cattle and sheep, and the store of grain left from last year's harvest, for a small sum indeed. But he was rich in comparison with the others, though he had given half the money to Paraska, who must now leave Knishi. She would be homeless and friendless, hardly able to earn a living, as no Stundist could be taken as a servant into an Orthodox family.

"Your mother is going mad!" she said to Sergius. "Tell her to think of me! I had the chance of going with Demyan, and I gave it up to stay with my children. They were torn away from me, my two little boys, and I never set eyes on them again, and never knew what became of them. That's enough to make a mother mad! But she knows good Father Cyril has adopted little Clava. I'll go and reason with her," she added, running off to Tatiania's house.

The poor mother was sitting on the side of the bed which was no longer her own, rocking herself to and fro.

"They were all born here," she cried; "and two of them died here before my little Clava was born. She is the dearest of them all! I'd rather see her lying dead here than leave her behind, and never know what was happening to her. She'd fret so after her mother if she didn't see me at mass in the church. No, I cannot go! I will not go without her."

"But you have sold all your goods," urged Paraska; "you have nothing left but a few roubles. After to-morrow, you'll not have even this roof over your head. Think of your husband! If you won't go, of course Serge and Marfa cannot go. Because it is you who choose whether you'll go or stay. They only count as children. You'll all be beggars together."

"And who can they work for?" asked Paraska. "They mustn't work for the Orthodox folks, and there 'll not be a Stundist left in all Knishi. There's Vania has to leave three children."

Paraska went back to Ostron, where Sergius was awaiting her return. Oh, how mournful the old familiar place looked, now the barns and the stables were empty! There was only the old mare left; and the telega, already holding her luggage and the small bundle of clothes which Michael was taking for his long journey to Siberia. There was no pleasant cackle of poultry in the deserted fold-yard, no bleating of young lambs and calves, as was usual at this time of the year. The broken-hearted woman all at once realised how peaceful had been her days of sorrow, protected and comforted by Alexis and Catherine Ivanoff. She was losing a second home and a second family.

She hastened on to the desolate house, already stripped of furniture, and the two boys asked her eagerly what Tatiania said.

"She will go mad to-night, if she is not mad now this moment," answered Paraska. "She won't go; and of course nobody can make her. She is not a prisoner."

It was a cruel dilemma. He and Marfa could not accompany their father into exile if their mother persisted in her refusal. Now all their possessions were sold, the small sum realised by the sale would barely keep them through the summer. Unless they became Orthodox, they could not maintain themselves by labour; and both of them were old enough to know and understand the religion for which their father had suffered a long imprisonment, and was about to encounter exile. They could not renounce their faith, though the most miserable poverty, if not starvation, awaited them in the near future.

But the inmost heart of their distress was the thought of their father going alone, forsaken by his own wife and children, to his distant place of exile. He had never beaten them, as most other fathers did, had never even spoken an unkind word to them. Their mother had been fretful, and unreasonably angry at times, especially with Marfa, but their father never.

Then they would lose Michael; and what would Knishi be without him? He would go with his father, march by his side, share his lot all through the long journey by rail and river and on foot, till they reached their place of exile; and there he would make a new home in that far-off country. Sergius had looked forward to this fresh experience with profound interest. He had only once been out of Knishi, and that was when Michael and he had driven in the sledge to Kovylsk. He was longing to travel. He did not care how or where, but a passion for roving had taken possession of him.

Never had Father Cyril been so unhappy as since the order had come to Knishi for a clean sweeping out of heresy from his parish. He could not bring himself to acquiesce in the stern decree; though rather than leave the victims of it to the cruel measures of the Starosta Okhrim, he had carried the tidings to the unfortunate women whose husbands had been in prison all the winter. Heartrending scenes he had witnessed, and harrowing petitions he had listened to, but he could do nothing. Those few days aged him by years.

But still he went about, comforting the sorrowful women, and as far as possible seeing that no very great injustice was done to them. It was through him that Yarina bought at fair prices many of the cattle. He had done all he could to soften the severity of the sentence.

"I cannot," he replied sorrowfully; "it is against the order. But she shall be as one of my own. My poor woman, you must submit to the will of God."

"It's not God's will I should be robbed of my child," she replied; "if He had been pleased to take her to Himself, I would say, 'Thy will be done!' They are cruel men who have torn her from my arms; and I'll stay here and die rather than forsake her."

"I love her better than all the world," cried Tatiania passionately—"better than our Lord Himself. God forgive me!" she added, frightened at the sound of the words she had uttered.

"Amen! God forgive you, poor mother!" he said. "She does not know what she is saying."

He went homewards, pondering in his heart the strange and terrible problem of how Christians could persecute their fellow-Christians. How was it possible they could think they were doing God service? To-morrow nine homesteads would be left desolate, and the hapless women and children would start on a journey of which many would never reach the end. And this was done in the name of the Lord, whom both oppressor and oppressed worshipped.

CHAPTER XV

AT night Father Cyril could not sleep. The scenes he had recently passed through haunted his brain, and drove away sleep.

On the day that was just past, the last day, he had allowed every mother to see the children she was compelled to leave behind, for the last time. Tatiania had not come to say good-bye to little Clava; and to Father Cyril this seemed the saddest thing of all. He dreaded the day that was coming; for then the women would be carried away from their native village, probably never to return.

They were in his parish, his people, though they did not acknowledge him. Yet he was absolutely powerless to help them. He had gained a few alleviations for them. He had obtained permission for Michael to join the convoy at the nearest railway station, which was two days' march from Kovylsk. But that was all.

His brain whirled with useless and hopeless thoughts. Hour after hour he lay awake, praying for the unhappy people who would rather perish in Siberian wildernesses than forswear themselves. More than the rest, the fate of Tatiania and her children perplexed him.

Between two and three hours before the dawn, he heard stealthy footsteps pass his window. Most of the rooms were on the ground floor; and the little chamber where Velia and Clava slept opened out of his own. Very quietly he got up, and looked cautiously through the window. It was bright moonlight, and, three shadows, one that of a woman, lay upon the ground. Very soon he heard a stifled cry. The door into the children's room fitted badly, and there was a chink wide enough for him to look through. He recognised Michael and Sergius; Michael was bending over Velia asleep and softly kissing her hair, whilst Sergius was holding Clava in his arms, and wrapping a sheepskin about her. Father Cyril understood in an instant what the boys were going to do.

He stood spellbound; tears smarting under his eyelids. He had never doubted for a moment that to take children from their parents was a crime against God. He had hesitated to carry out the order of the consistory, but to refuse to obey was simply to give over his parish to the hands of those who would execute the sentence without mercy. What was he to do now?

He watched the silent and rapid movements of the boys, and saw them give the sleeping child into the stretched out arms of the woman whose shadow he had seen. They were only going to steal Clava away. He knew the vital importance of this step for Khariton Kondraty's family. If they remained in Knishi, to-morrow they would be plunged into the direst distress. The boys were doing the best thing in their power. Should he hinder them?

It was Paraska who received little Clava into her arms; for the boys had not ventured to tell Tatiania of their desperate scheme. Michael and Paraska were to start at daybreak in the telega for Kovylsk, and the child could easily be concealed at the bottom of the cart, till they were far enough away to be no longer afraid of detection. Once in Kovylsk, Clava could be included in the convoy, as Kondraty's children, three in number, were entered on the list. They started at the first streak of dawn, calling at Tatiania's house, that she might see for herself that little Clava was with them. Michael was so much excited that he scarcely thought how he was leaving home again, this time probably for ever.

Sleep was farther than ever from Father Cyril's eyes, after what he had seen. He felt almost as if he was a boy again, rejoicing with the boys' joy over the success of their enterprise. At any rate, the burden of Kondraty's family would now be taken from him.

He had never before been in a parish containing heretics. He was known throughout the diocese as a very estimable and successful parish priest in country places. And in consequence he had been chosen to follow Father Vasili, and had been sent to Knishi to wage war with the Stundists. He came willingly, with high courage and confident hope. But instead of finding blasphemous, ignorant, and godless people, he met with devout and simple Christians, better grounded in the Scriptures than himself, though ready to listen to him with respectful attention. Now he saw and shrank from the pitiless spirit of persecution. He had never been face to face with it before. Well might our Lord say to His disciples, who wished to command fire to come down from heaven on the Samaritans, "Ye know not what spirit ye are of." Father Cyril understood now the spirit of persecution, and he quailed before it. It might turn cowards into hypocrites, but it could not make true men forswear their consciences.

When the Matoushka awoke in the morning, Father Cyril was up and dressed. His eyes looked heavy, and his whole appearance was dejected.

"Clava is gone to see her mother," he said briefly; "do not speak of her to anybody, my dear wife. Take Velia and our little ones into the forest for the day. I do not wish them to see the women and children setting off."

"Is Clava going with her mother?" asked the Matoushka, who sympathised deeply with Tatiania.

The hour for starting was early, and Father Cyril went down to the barrier. A crowd of villagers surrounded the carts which were taking away their old friends and neighbours, probably for ever. There were nine women, the oldest, Matrona Ivanovna, nearly seventy years of age; and the youngest just over twenty, with her first baby, only two months old. Thirteen children were with them, either big boys and girls over ten years or babies under two years of age. All the children between those ages were left behind in Knishi. Six out of the nine were bereft of some of their children. One amongst them was bereft of all, and she sat in the cart, tearless and speechless, with a look of despair on her face. The others were weeping and lamenting, calling out the names of their little ones, and beseeching Father Cyril to take care of each of them. All except Tatiania, who sat still, with closed eyes, yet with an expression of secret satisfaction struggling against the sorrow of quitting her native village.

Marfa gazed about her with bewildered and sombre eyes. All of them had been born there, and most of them had never been a day's journey from Knishi. They were passing out of a familiar and beloved world to enter into one of which they knew nothing. It would have been less strange to go to the City of God, whose pearly gates and streets of gold they had often dreamed about.

In the crowd, watching their departure, there were brothers and sisters and other relatives who had not abandoned the Orthodox Church. The young wife who had a baby two months old had a father and mother gazing their last at her with tear-dimmed eyes. What crime had their child committed that she should be torn from them, with scarcely a hope she should ever see them again?

Yarina was there, her heart aching for the mothers of the two children whom she had adopted, who were now holding their little ones in a last passionate embrace.

"They shall be as my own," she cried, sobbing; "and when I know where you go, I will write to you about them."

The last minute was come, and Matrona stood up in the cart where she was sitting, and looked round her with eyes dimmed with age.

"I've lived here sixty-five years," she said, "and now I go away; and I shall never go to the well again, and never hear the church bells ringing. Tell me, have I done any one of you any harm? Have you aught against me? Have I ever refused to help when I could help?"

"Then I bid you farewell comforted," said Matrona; "for this I know, that wherever they send us, we shall be in the hollow of God's hand, and no man can pluck us out of our Father's hand."

"Come, we are all ready to start," said the officer who had come to convey the women and children to Kovylsk.

Then Father Cyril stretched out his arms in the attitude of blessing. The Orthodox people knelt down, and the women in the carts bent their heads, whilst he said in a tremulous voice—

"'The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.' . . . 'The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all. Amen.'"

At last the sorrowful cavalcade set off. The banished women stood up in the carts, and stretched out their arms towards their lost homes, the hearths where they had rocked their babies, and the roofs that had sheltered their happy families. The villagers tried to set up a shout, but they broke down. Now the heretics were going, old animosities and jealousies were forgotten. These sorrow-laden women and sad boys and girls were never to return. As they passed slowly out of sight, a low wailing came back on the wind, and was echoed by the sobs and moans of the crowd.

Father Cyril went home, and passed the long day in solitary meditation and prayer before the altar in his church. He was greatly distressed in spirit. These exiled men and women were accepted of God; for did they not fear, ay, and love Him, and work righteousness? Yet they were despised and rejected of men, oppressed and afflicted, and acquainted with grief. They were fellow-Christians, disciples of the same Lord, and yet they persecuted them in His name, and thought that even when they hounded them to death, they were doing God service.

CHAPTER XVI

IN the meantime Michael and Paraska, who had set off at daybreak, were far on their way across the steppe toward Kovylsk. Until they were quite safe from recognition, Clava lay at the bottom of the telega, her sweet little face peeping up from time to time and smiling merrily at them. She was a small, delicate child, and was easily intimidated, for she had been tenderly guarded from all unkindness and hardship. After a while, Paraska took her on her lap, kissing her often, with a mother's yearning after her own lost children. Her deepest sorrow had befallen her some years ago. She was accustomed to grief.

But Michael was not yet benumbed by sorrow. He was troubled, sorely troubled at leaving his home again; and above all at leaving Velia behind. True, she could not be better off than in Father Cyril's house; and though he knew but little of the perils and hardships of the journey which lay before the exiles, he knew enough to make him thankful that his young sister was not to share them. But should he ever see her again? They would be separated by thousands of miles; and he did not know for how many years his father's term of banishment would run. He never realised as he did now how much he loved her.

Velia was four years younger than himself; and he could recollect her as a little child, following him with tottering feet, and stretching out her tiny arms to him. Would his mother be watching over her, as he sometimes felt sure she was near to him? Velia had never felt her presence as he felt it. Yet, if it was only a fancy that his mother came to him, it was surely true that God cared for both him and Velia. "Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father! Are you not much better than the birds?" he murmured to himself.

He was not afraid for himself. On the contrary, he looked forward almost with pleasure to the long and exciting, though forced, journey he was about to take. What were hardships to him? Many men encountered them for the sake of money; others from a thirst for adventures. He would be journeying with his father and his friend Sergius, every step of the terrible wildernesses through which it was said they would have to pass. He must keep up heart and courage, that his father might never have the grief of seeing his spirits flag. Whatever happened, he must show himself brave and patient and cheerful. He was strong, and hardened to fatigue by the toils of the past winter. Surely if a delicate little creature like Clava could live through the long journey, there could not be anything very dreadful for boys like Sergius and himself.

But he felt grieved when his thoughts reverted to Father Cyril; and he began to realise that he might get into trouble as soon as it was discovered that little Clava had been stolen away. Michael had written a letter, which he had left on Clava's bed, imploring Father Cyril, for God's sake, not to have the child pursued and claimed; begging him not to betray them to Okhrim the Starosta, or to the police who were to convey the women and children to Kovylsk. If the child was taken away again, Tatiania would go mad; and nobody could say what severe measures might be taken against Sergius and himself. Michael felt tolerably sure Father Cyril would grant his petition, even at the risk of trouble to himself.

When they were about half-way across the steppe, Paraska produced a leather bag out of her pocket, and addressed Michael with tears in her eyes, which were red and sunken with much weeping.

"Michael," she said, "going into exile wants all the money you can get. I've been saving every kopek I could to go some day to my poor husband Denim. I forsook him for the sake of my little boys. Take the money; for there are many of you, and only one of me; and I fear I shall never save enough."

"But, Paraska," he answered, "I think you can get leave to join your husband, if you ask the governor. You might have come with us, if you were willing to give up all hope of finding your children."

"Oh, why didn't I know?" she cried. "I shall never find my boys! I'll come after you, if that's true, Michael. You'll see Demyan first; tell him I'm coming soon."

They reached Kovylsk some hours before the arrival of the rough carts bringing the women and children. Michael drove to the house of a well-to-do tradesmen, Orthodox himself, but kindly disposed towards the Stundists, as his wife was secretly a member of the persecuted sect. He undertook to get Clava smuggled into the prison the next morning, in time to pass out with the other families. Khariton had given her name with those of Sergius and Marfa, and it was already entered on the convoy-list; so no question would be raised on that account. He promised also to look after Paraska, and get permission for her to join the next exile party; and f that could not be done, to find work for her. In Kovylsk it was much easier to escape the notice of the priests than in the villages; although the archbishop and the consistory were there.

CHAPTER XVII

MICHAEL lingered about the prison behind whose walls his father was confined, until the carts came in carrying his neighbours and their scanty possessions; for the free exiles were limited in the quantity of baggage they might take. They were to be lodged for the night in the city hospital, as the prison was already overcrowded. This would make it quite easy to restore little Clava to her mother at once; and when Tatiania cast an anxious glance at him, he nodded back with a smile. The weary, worn-out women, exhausted with emotion, alighted from the springless carts, which had jolted heavily and slowly along the muddy, ill-made roads. Sergius came up to him, and clasped his hands warmly; and Michael felt a paper pressed into his own. As soon as the party had entered the hospital, he hurried back to Markovin's house, where he was to pass the night. He was too much afraid of spies to venture to open it before. It was a letter from Father Cyril.

"MY SONS, MICHAEL AND SERGIUS,"—it ran—"I saw you last night taking away little Clava, but my heart forbade me to prevent it. I prayed to my God and your God, my Father and your Father, to bless you! For whosoever is to blame, it is not you. You put your parents before the priests; and this is the law both of nature and of God. Love your parents: honour, obey, and cherish them. God gave them to you, and you to them; and no man can break that bond. You are about to face an army of difficulties and sorrows, but remember! You can never go where God is not! I give you two verses to think of daily, 'If I go down into hell, Thou art there,' and, 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me: Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me.' Death and hell are filled with the presence of God. Tell your father again, Michael, that Velia shall be as my own daughter. Kiss little Clava for me—the dear child!

"I feel myself, though you acknowledge it not, your father in Christ."

Michael kissed this letter. And resting his forehead on the hands that enfolded it, he thought with love and gratitude of Father Cyril. Oh, if all Batoushkas had only been like him! Then his father and the Stundist brethren would never have been driven to leave the Orthodox Church. The boy did not yet know how deeply rooted were the principles which separated his people from a State religion. He was, however, keenly awake to the danger there would be to Father Cyril if such a letter was found in his handwriting. He set himself to learn it by heart; and when he was satisfied that he knew and would remember every word of it, he lit a match, and held the burning paper in his fingers till they were almost scorched, taking care that no vestige of the writing should remain.

Markovin looked on with nods of understanding and approval. "A wise lad! A prudent lad!" he murmured. "His head is screwed on right. I'd trust him with a secret."

The next two days Michael drove alone along the route he and his father had traversed on his return from Scotland. He was to join the band of convicts and free exiles at the same station; and in the meanwhile he was charged by his father with the commission to deliver up the funds of the churches in his district to the man who had been elected presbyter in the place of Alexis Ivanoff.

Michael had besides to carry sundry messages from the Stundists in Kovylsk to the little congregations dwelling in scattered villages. It was considered safer to employ a boy than a man; and every precaution was necessary not to arouse suspicion. He reached the station where he was to join the convict party about an hour before the train was due; for the first few stages were to be taken in an ordinary train, though in special carting.

Michael lingered about the station-yard, anxiously looking out for the first indication of the approach oft the prisoners. The stationmaster was raging about the unpunctuality of the prison-convoy. In a siding stood a small number of comfortless carriages, little better than cattle trucks, but with benches and a roof. These were set apart for the exiles.

At last a confused sound was heard in the distance, which by and by came more clearly to the ear as the clanking of chains, the harsh creaking of cart-wheels, the tramp of horses' hoofs, and the cracking of whips. It was a sound to which Michael was to grow familiar, but now it seemed to jar through all his being. Both mind and body were shocked by it; and to the last day of his march with the prisoners the ominous discord made him shiver.

For the last few miles the prisoners had been made to march at a rapid rate, as the convoy feared to be too late for the train. They were driven like cattle into the yard, with oaths and blows, almost running, notwithstanding their heavy leg-chains. They were chained two and two together, which added greatly to the difficulty of marching, and even the strongest among them came in breathless and exhausted. Those prisoners who had been confined for some months in narrow cells were half fainting.

There were nearly two hundred convicts, all dressed alike in long grey overcoats. Their heads were closely shaved on one side, looking bare and blue; whilst on the other side the hair, grown long in prison, fell in a tangled mass over the ear. Michael could not for some time recognise his father, whom he had not seen since last autumn. At last he saw a gaunt, haggard man, in a filthy shirt, and trousers of coarse grey linen, limping painfully beside a vicious and brutal-looking criminal. This man smiled at him with a noble serenity in his eyes, and with a sharp cry of agony, Michael pushed his way through the jostling crowd, and flung his arms round his father's neck.

But before his father could speak, the convict to whom Alexis was chained pulled him forward with a jerk and an oath. The waggons set apart for the exiles were rapidly filling up, and he, an old criminal, knew they must make haste if they wished to secure a seat for the night.

Khariton Kondraty was close behind, with his wife and children marching beside him; all of them worn-out and footsore, for they had walked twenty miles since morning, and for the last hour they had been almost running. But there was no time to linger, the waggons were being crammed with women and children and their bundles, amid calls and cries and an uproar of voices. Sergius was anxious to prevent his mother and sisters being separated from himself.

Michael soon found his hands full in helping his old neighbours from Knishi, lifting the young children into the different compartments, and looking after their baggage. Some of the strangers who were accompanying their convict husbands into exile were willing enough to lose their children for the night, which was rapidly closing in. The waggon was so overcrowded that many of the children sat on the floor; and there was no room for Michael and Sergius except standing against the doors, which were now locked and guarded by the soldiers of the convoy-guard.

Tatiania was in a corner beside the boys, with little Clava on her lap, and Marfa squeezed closely to her side.

Before the long dark night was over, Michael thanked God fervently that Velia was not there. For all night long, as the train sped through the level plains, there was mingled with the rumbling of the wheels, and the throbbing of the engine, the wailing of children and the loud hysterical sobbing of women, rising now and then to despairing shrieks.

Tatiania, who was always an emotional woman, broke down completely, and wept till she was quite exhausted. Marfa took little Clava on to her lap, and sang soothing songs to her. But they could do nothing for Tatiania, only Sergius looked down on his mother with unutterable pity for her in his heart.

But it was not the dark night only, it was the long day that followed, and succeeding days and nights, night and day. They had some hundreds of miles to travel before they could reach the nearest station on the Volga, where they would exchange the convict-train for the convict-barge. The ceaseless motion of the rumbling train became a positive torture to the cramped bodies, which had no space for moving. They escaped the torment of extreme heat or excessive cold, for it was the pleasant spring-tide, and on every side the sweet wind blew in upon them, carrying away the foul air, which must have collected in closed carriages. Twice a day the train was stopped for necessary refreshment, when they could stretch their stiffened and weary limbs. But the families could hold no intercourse with the convicts, who were carefully guarded by the convoy to prevent any attempts at escape.

CHAPTER XVIII

AT last they reached the forwarding prison, where they had to await the arrival of the convict-barge which was to take them up the Volga. Here the fathers were to join their families, and occupy the family kamera, or ward set apart for those prisoners whose wives had chosen to accompany them into exile. Through filthy corridors, the women and children were conducted to a still more filthy kamera. It was a long and narrow room, with two windows which would not open. No furniture was in it, except two parallel wooden platforms, each about twelve feet wide, raised a few inches in the middle, thus giving to them sloping sides. This was to be their bed, where the whole party was to lie as closely packed as possible, with heads touching one another in the middle, from the opposite slopes. There were no pillows, no mattresses, no bed-clothing of any kind. Russian peasants are a hardy race, not accustomed to comforts, but this absolute bareness filled the women with dismay for themselves and their children. Every limb, every bone, every muscle was aching from their long journey, and these bare planks formed their only resting-place. There was not even a bench for them to sit down upon.

"Look at it!" she cried, putting the baby in his arms. "I haven't been able to wash it for five days. And oh, Michael, it's covered with horrid things, and so am I."

The tiny creature's skin was blotched and smeared, and its little face was terribly disfigured. Michael could hardly find voice to comfort Katerina.

"It will be better now," he said at last. "One of the convoy men told me we were sure to stay here five days or a week. We shall have time to rest. And, Katerina dear, God knows all about it."

But before he could answer the prisoners came in. Michael flew to his father and flung his arms round his neck, holding him in a close embrace; for he could not bear yet to look into his dear, disfigured face. Khariton met his wife and children in speechless delight, too happy to find even words of endearment. Michael saw Katerina hanging on her young husband's arm, no longer sobbing. All the Stundists had their heads half shaved, like the worst criminals. Sergius and Marfa turned their eyes away from their father's grief-worn face, but Tatiania kissed the poor dishonoured head tenderly.

"We're all together, Khariton!" she cried. "Not one of us is missing. If we all get through to the end, we shall have a home again."

Marfa ventured to look at her father, and stole to his side, though she said nothing. They felt happier than they could have imagined it possible to be a few hours before. The cramped limbs and aching heads were almost forgotten. They were together again, with no fear of separation in the future.

Alexis and Michael sat hand in hand on the foot of the sleeping-platform, not able to utter more than a few disjointed sentences. Alexis had been almost utterly cast down by the discovery of the clean sweep which had been made of the Stundists in Knishi. They were all here, with the exception of Nicolas the renegade, and the children who had been taken from their parents to be brought up in the Orthodox Church. Whether they were all to be sent to the same place of exile as himself, or scattered hither and thither in Siberia, he did not know. Just now he was as much worn-out in mind as in body, and he could hardly think of his fellow-prisoners. He could only think feebly of God. From time to time, he muttered absently, "'Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.'"

Michael sat beside him, stiff and weary in body, but with his mind in a tumult. This going into exile, on étape, was very different from what he had imagined. It had seemed beforehand a much lighter experience, mingled indeed with some elements of adventures and pleasures in the long march. But to be pent up in railway waggons like cattle trucks, and be conveyed like cattle from place to place, was quite a different thing. The cries of little children, the wailing of babies, the sobs and prayers and curses of women during the long journey, had entered like iron into his very soul. Hunger and thirst, plank beds and bitter cold, he had been prepared for, but not for the degradation and the untold misery and the wickedness that surrounded him. His father was no longer chained to the brutal murderer who had been his comrade on the march from Kovylsk, for that man's family had abandoned him. But there were men and boys in the kamera so evil and depraved that they did not open their lips without uttering words so vile as to appal him. How could they hinder the girls and children from hearing the common conversation around them? He thanked God again that Velia was not there.

There were women there of the lowest class, degraded to the deepest corruption, not worthy of the name of women. In the corner near Katerina and Tatiania, a young lady sat on the edge of the nari, gazing round with terrified eyes. She was a political prisoner, going into exile as a suspected person. Children of all ages crawled about the filthy floor. There was still light enough to see them—unwashed, weary little ones, with matted hair hanging about their begrimed faces. There had been no chance of washing for any of them; and some of these children were too much accustomed to such a condition to be consciously affected by it. But the Stundists were used to cleanliness, and they suffered from enforced defilement. They felt degraded and injured by it. Clava's sweet little face was soiled with dust and tears. Michael shook himself as if in a rage, as he felt the indescribable offensiveness of the surroundings.

Was it possible the archbishop could think he was doing God service by dooming men and women and children to such a state of misery? Father Cyril said the archbishop was an eminent servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, and only desired their salvation. It could not be true. Either he was quite ignorant of what was being done in his name, or he belonged to the synagogue of Satan—that terrible congregation of devil-worshippers, the very name of which made him shudder when he read the words, "'Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie.'"

His father was falling into a troubled sleep beside him, and Michael heard him muttering in an undertone, "'My God! My God!'" It was the only prayer his weary, worn-out brain could form. Michael bent over him and kissed his shaven head reverently.

CHAPTER XIX

THE band of exiles had several days' rest before the convict-barge which was to carry them up the Volga returned. This gave them all time to recover from their terrible railway journey. The women washed and mended the clothes. But there was no decent privacy. In the family kameras men and boys were confined with women and girls in an indiscriminate herding together. More than anything else, worse than the filth and the vermin about them, the modest Stundist women felt this indecent exposure. But there was no help for it. They did not even dare to hold themselves altogether aloof from the coarse, wretched women who were forced upon their companionship.

Alexis and Khariton urged them to do any little act of kindness in their power both to women and children. They themselves sought to gain an influence over the men; they talked to them, wrote letters for them, and made many efforts to interest them and wile away the tedious hours of idleness. The days dragged heavily along, and most of the men spent them in gambling and quarrelling.

Over the big boys and girls, Michael, Sergius, and Marfa soon exercised a good influence. Michael especially could interest them by long stories of his voyage out to Scotland and his twelve months' sojourn there. He could talk for hours of that foreign country; and the boys squatted round him in the prison-yard, listening with breathless attention to his tales of his brave forefathers, the Covenanters, their hairbreadth escapes and courageous deaths.

So the days passed by, spent altogether out of doors in an enclosed yard with high palisadings, which shut out all glimpses of the world outside, excepting the blue sky overhead. But every night they had to herd in the unventilated kamera, reeking with foul air, and swarming with vermin. It was better at night than in the morning, for the open door had admitted some fresh air. But after the kamera had been closed an hour or two, the atmosphere was poisonous. This misery would follow them all along the route to the very end.

At last the convict-barge arrived, and the men were separated from the women and children. More convicts joined the band from Kovylsk, and there was much overcrowding. But this was nothing like as bad as it would be later in the year, when the bands of exiles would be larger. There was no yard here to pass the days in. Instead were two big cages of strong bars, in which the exiles were able to stand upright, though it was almost impossible to move easily about. In the railway waggons they had been compelled to sit, and could not stand. Here they were compelled to stand, and could not sit. But unless they stayed in the foul atmosphere of the cabins below, which no fresh air could enter, they must stand all day long, closely packed in these cages, more like wild beasts than human beings.

It was early summer. Day after day—the sun shining joyously on the rejoicing earth; the happy, free peasants pausing at their labour on the banks of the river to watch the convict-barge go by; the merry sound of church bells ringing—the laughter of girls at the washing platforms—the singing of the larks and the calling of the cuckoo filling the air—day after day, through all this gladness, the terrible load of untold misery sailed up the Volga. Yet this was only one amongst many that would follow in their wake until the winter came. But the day was better far than the night, when they were fastened down below, and the atmosphere in the cabin grew so heavy and polluted they could hardly breathe it.

They left the barge, as they had left the train, with the sense of relief which any change in misery brings. There was a short journey by railway again; and then, because there had been a landslip on the line farther on, it was decided that the convoy should take the old route along the Great Siberian Road. The exiles left the train with the idea that the worst lay behind them. For now they would be able to move freely; they would live in the open air, and at present the early summer was full of sweetness and beauty.

The country through which they passed was carpeted with gay flowers, and the road led through meadows and forests, along valleys, and over the flanks of mountains. Here and there were village streets stretching for a mile or two along the sides of the road. Cattle were browsing on the common pastureland, and corn was shooting up rapidly under the sunshine, which was growing hotter every day. The cloudless sky above them, and the sweet fresh air breathing softly about them, revived the spirits of Michael and Sergius. This was something like what they had anticipated. Little Clava, too, regained her merry ways in some measure, as the children were free to run where they chose, and pick the flowers, provided they kept up with the convoy. Sometimes the convoy-guards were kindly and indulgent, but when the guards were changed they proved often to be impatient and even brutal men. But as the march was a steady one, and about twenty miles a day, there was not much time for rambling among the flowers, and it was forbidden to lag behind. There were rough, springless carts for carrying the children under twelve, as well as the men and women who were too ill to walk. But little Clava did not ride in the cart. Michael and Sergius said they would carry her on their backs whenever she was tired, along the Great Siberian Road. Tatiania was only too glad to keep her darling by her side.

But Marfa was suffering in silence more than any of them suspected. She had spent the winter indoors with her mother, who would not let her out of her sight, and this confinement had sapped her strength before she set out on this sorrowful journey. The scenes she had passed through, of which she had formed even less idea than Michael and Sergius, had given her a more severe mental shock than they had felt. Everything had revolted her. But above all, the infamous and abandoned men and women with whom she had been brought into close contact were insufferably loathsome to her. She felt herself in a hellish atmosphere, amid a band of monsters, from whom she could not escape. Her mind as well as her body was ailing. Though she was not separated from her family, an indescribable home-sickness took possession of her. She longed with a hopeless longing to see once more her old home at Knishi.

Marfa kept her grief, which was gnawing at her heart, to herself. But the home-sickness grew greater as every day took her farther away from her birthplace. They had not yet passed the boundary which separates Russia from Siberia. The exiles were still in their native land. But presently they reached the frontier. A midday halt was called around a square stone pillar, about twice the height of a man, on one side of which lay Russia, and on the other Siberia. It was half-way between the last Russian étape and the first Siberian one; and the cavalcade, with its convoy-guard, its chained prisoners, its carts laden with children and invalids, and its families of free exiles, rested for a short time at this place of farewell.

The midday halt was usually a time of relief and comparative enjoyment. But to-day there was a universal outburst of grief. Even the most brutal and most stupid of the criminals wept at the thought of quitting Russia—their fatherland. Scarcely one among them had ever trodden a foreign soil. Most of the women knelt down, with sobs and prayers. The Stundists stood bareheaded, looking away from the boundary posts to the western land, and taking a last submissive gaze at the dear country they were leaving for conscience' sake. Michael and Sergius, linked arm in arm, leaned sorrowfully against the pillar. Suddenly a wild shriek rang through the sobs and groans of the crowd, and looking round they saw Marfa falling forward against the foot of the pillar, close to the spot where they were standing.

She was quite insensible when they lifted her up. As soon as the order to march forward was given, they carried her to one of the rude carts, at the bottom of which she lay on a little straw, and Tatiania obtained permission to go with her. She was not quite conscious when they reached the étape in the evening. The family kamera was overcrowded as usual, and all they could do for Marfa was to lay her on the hard, bare planks of the sleeping-platform. All night did Khariton and Tatiania watch waking by their delirious child, able to do nothing for her, and only longing for the return of daylight. Fortunately the nights were short, and a dim dawn soon shone through the dirty casements of the étape.

CHAPTER XX

FOR the first time in his life, Sergius began to realise how much his sister Marfa was to him. She had always been so quiet and reserved, so passive, that she had seemed almost a cipher in the family. Tatiania, his mother, with her lively, impulsive temperament, and Clava, with her coaxing, merry ways, had nearly engrossed his own and his father's regard. None of them had paid much attention to Marfa, either in their home in Knishi or during the long journey which already separated them from it by many hundreds of miles.

But Marfa was no cipher. She was a thoughtful, pensive girl, with very limited powers of putting her inmost thoughts into speech. Her mother was so fluent that she was reduced to silence; there was no need for her to speak. At home she had often done all the housework diligently and steadily, whilst her mother visited the neighbours, or read the Bible sitting close to the warm stove. It was taken for granted that Marfa liked work better than reading. A strong sense of duty possessed her, strengthened by a constant study of the little New Testament which her father had given to her as soon as she could read, and which she always carried in her pocket. Perhaps more than any other woman or girl among the exiled Stundists, Marfa understood why they were banished from their native country.

What she suffered when she bade farewell to the home of her childhood, no one knew but herself. Not a murmur had escaped her quiet lips. Through the wretched railway journey, and the still more trying voyage for many days in the crowded convict-barge, she had not uttered a word of complaint. Often she had taken little Clava from her mother's arms, when Tatiania was moaning and praying alternately, and the girl of thirteen would nurse the child of seven until her young limbs grew stiff and ached with pain. The long and bitter winter preceding their exile, followed by the great strain upon her strength during the journey, had at length broken down her silent courage and endurance. The shock of emotion caused by passing the boundary, and witnessing the uncontrollable distress of the whole band of convicts and exiles, had been the last blow on her breaking heart.

The next morning Marfa was laid in one of the telegas which carried those unable to walk, and the march set out again. There were no seats in these rough, springless carts, and only a thin sprinkling of hay was laid in the bottom of each. Three women lay or crouched beside her. In front of the telegas went a convoy of soldiers, and behind them was the band of chained convicts, shuffling along in low shoes, with their heavy leg-fetters weighing upon them, and now and then clanging against their ankles. Behind the telegas came the baggage-waggons, followed by the free exiles, and the women and the children over twelve years of age who were following their husbands and fathers. After these was a rear-guard of soldiers.

It was full summer now. The sun beat upon the dried-up road, and the dust lay inches thick. The long procession numbered hundreds, and at every footfall the fine, pulverised earth rose in quantities, until the whole cavalcade was almost hidden in a cloud of yellow dust, suffocating to all who breathed it, but to those who were ill, this atmosphere was almost deadly.

Marfa lay along the bottom of the narrow telega, with her head on the lap of a convict who was suffering from asthma, and who could only breathe at all when sitting upright. The woman was gentle and kindly, but there was no escape from the terrible jolting of the springless cart, and the dust-laden air which set the asthmatic convict coughing, and shook her whole body. Marfa looked up into her face pitifully, but what could she do and say to comfort the poor woman? Fever was burning in all her veins, and the heat of the sultry sun seemed to scorch every nerve. She was conscious now, and alive to all the anguish of her position. But her weary brain was unable to recall some memory which haunted it.

"Who was it said, 'I thirst'?" she asked, looking up into the face leaning over her, in an interval of rest from the racking cough.

"I don't know, dear," answered the woman; "nobody in particular. We all say it."

When the midday halt was called, Sergius and Michael rushed to the telega, followed more slowly by Tatiania and little Clava. But Marfa did not recognise them. She was lying quietly, however, and the friendly convict was sitting in a cramped position to give her more room. They bought some tepid water from the peasants who brought provisions for sale, and she drank a little, but she could eat nothing.

"What can we do?" cried Tatiania, wringing her hands. Whilst little Clava climbed into the cart, and crept close to Marfa's side.

"Nothing, nothing!" replied the convict sadly. "We have days to travel yet before we reach any hospital. If I were her mother, I'd pray God night and day to take her to Himself soon, rather than leave her alone in a prison hospital. Soon! O Mother of God! Soon! This misery is more than a child can bear."

The halt came to an end too quickly, and clouds of dust rose again, hanging over and travelling along with the melancholy procession. Michael and Sergius fell back to their own places, panting with the intense heat and suffocating air. But what was their suffering compared with that of the women and children, especially those who were ill like Marfa!

"More than two thousand miles," answered Michael; "father told me last night, when I was thinking of Marfa. We are to go at a rate of about one hundred miles in six days. We can't get to the end before next February, or perhaps March, if the winter is a bad one and we are detained on the road."

"Nor little Clava," Sergius continued; "she's too young and too tender! Oh, Michael! If we'd only left her with Father Cyril!"

They walked on in silence for a few minutes; and then Sergius spoke under his breath, with a faltering voice.

"Michael," he said, "I feel it would do me good to curse the archbishop and the consistory."

The two boys halted, gazing into each other's faces, till a sharp cry of command brought them back to recollection.

Again they marched on silently, each pondering in his own heart the temptation that had just assailed them.

"You could not have stayed behind in Knishi," said Michael at last; "you must have starved, all of you, or given up your religion. Even if we all die, it will be better than that."

"Yes," answered Sergius; "father was reading to us last night, and he made me learn the verses. I was glad to learn them, for the Apostle Paul said them about himself: 'Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeyings often, perils of waters, perils of robbers, perils by my own countrymen, perils by the heathen, perils in the city, perils in the wilderness, perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness!' We've suffered nothing like that yet, Michael."

"And oh," continued Sergius, with a sob, "the Apostle Paul hadn't got his mother and his little sisters with him!"

CHAPTER XXI

DAY after day passed by. The burning sun beat down upon the exiles, scorching their skin and almost blinding their eyes. The fettered convicts could hardly drag their feet along the hot dust; and the women lagged behind in a straggling line. The convoy-guards grew irritable, and more brutal than in milder weather. They too suffered, but there was no despair added to their sufferings. They had only certain stages to travel, and then they would hand over their charge to a fresh captain and guard.

Every third day there was a respite. After two days' march came a day of rest. Then the sick people were delivered from the choking dust and rough jolting of the telegas. Marfa could lie during the day out of doors under the shadow of the prison walls, with all her friends about her. They listened to her plaintive wanderings in delirium, now and then catching a gleam of recognition or a word or two of intelligence.

But the fever was high, and there was no alleviation for it. Anna Grigorovna, the friendly convict, did her utmost to comfort Tatiania, and reconcile her to Marfa's death. But she refused all consolation. Anna had no children, and knew nothing of a mother's heart. If only she could sit beside her dying girl, she would be satisfied. But that they all knew it was utterly useless to ask. The telegas were already overladen, and some of the children were carried on the baggage-waggons. Tatiania was in fair health, and quite able to walk.

"Even if I could walk," said Anna, "they would not let me give up my place to you."

She was dying slowly of consumption, and knew she must be left behind in one of the few prison hospitals along the Great Siberian Road. Though she dreaded the place, she was longing for the rest she would find there, if the death she prayed for did not overtake her before they reached it. She longed to die before she was parted from this strange little band of Stundists, whose company she had sought because of their quiet and decent ways. What astonished her was that not one among them murmured at their hard lot—excepting Tatiania, who only lamented not being able to ride with her dying girl in the telega. For that Marfa would die there was no shadow of a doubt.

Khariton prayed in his inmost heart that death would come soon, but Tatiania could not bring herself even to say, "God's will be done!"

Two or three children had perished already on the route, from the foul air and from the utter impossibility of cleanliness. None of them were Stundists' children; and their mothers had grown apathetic with despair, and were almost glad to be rid of a charge which became every day more and more burdensome.

But Marfa had been an unfailing, untiring help, not a burden. What should they do without her? To see her lying in the creaking, jolting telega, with the fierce sun smiting her, was maddening to her mother.

They came at length to the last stage before they could reach a hospital. Two days' march would bring them to it, and there they must leave Marfa and the friendly convict Anna. Every one of the little band of Stundists dreaded the day when Khariton and Tatiania must bid farewell for ever to their daughter, and abandon her to a lonely death. Khariton marched all day with bowed-down head and speechless lips. Tatiania wept bitter tears. Sergius and Michael walked side by side, now and then clasping one another's hands, but unable to talk together, as they usually did. Even little Clava, whom they carried by turns, was very quiet and languid, as if she understood their sorrow.

Marfa was carried into the overcrowded kamera, unventilated, and reeking with foul air, and heated with the sultry sun which had beaten upon the low roof all day. The convoy captain was a humane man, and allowed some of the exiles to sleep outside on the ground of the prison-yard. But within the kameras the men and women could hardly breathe; and the dying girl lay panting on the plank sleeping-platform. But even that was comfort compared with the jolting telega. Her mother lay beside her, and little Clava crept close to her on the other side. Her father and Alexis, Sergius, and Michael stood near; and in that corner of the kamera a comparative stillness prevailed; for their fellow-exiles had learned to respect the Stundists. And one of them was dying.

"The end is coming, thank God!" said Anna, turning away and leaving Marfa alone with her own people.

She was quite conscious now, but too weak to lift her hand or turn her head towards her mother, whose sobs filled her dying ear. She could see them who stood at her feet, and a very peaceful smile came over her wasted face.

"Home you know," she repeated; "not to Knishi—but to be with the Lord. He says, 'To-day shalt thou be with Me in paradise.' It's better than living."

She could hardly gasp out the words, but her voice was clear, and they heard her distinctly amid all the din and racket of the crowded kamera. Once more she smiled very peacefully upon them, her eyes resting upon each one with a look of recognition.

She closed her tired eyelids, and seemed to fall asleep in her mother's arms. All night she lay there, breathing softly, but as the first rays of light dawned, they saw her spirit pass away in peaceful silence. It was the third day, the day for resting twenty-four hours, and so they were able to see the body laid decently away in the grave. The cemetery of the little Siberian village lay near the étape, and all the free exiles were at liberty to go to it, though none of the men, being convicts, could attend Marfa's funeral. All the Stundist women and children went.

The open plain surrounding the cemetery was bright with flowers, and the hum of bees filled the air. It was too hot for the birds to sing. Many of the graves had black crosses at the head, and were fenced in by gaily-coloured rails. The letters I.H.S. were painted on one of the arms of the crosses, and on some of them there was a rude representation in white paint of the Lord crucified.

As yet, in this far distant and isolated village, with leagues of uninhabited country surrounding it, there was no inclination to refuse burial to a Stundist. The old parish priest was willing, so that he got his dues, to let them bury their dead as they pleased. In the case of paupers, such as this dead exile must be, it was usual to let the relatives dig the grave and lay the body in it; and in course of time, when a sufficient number were interred, the funeral service was read over all the graves together. Michael and Sergius dug Marfa's grave.

The women and children stood round the grave in silence, whilst the boys lowered the rude coffin into it. They were all still alive, those who had left Knishi, but they were emaciated and broken down, the shadows of their former selves. Katerina carried her baby in her arms, but the tiny face that looked up at her was starved and shrivelled, with dull, solemn eyes, and a tremulous, unsatisfied movement on the lips that would never learn to speak. Little Clava was thin and wasted, and every day made her a lighter weight for Michael and Sergius to carry across Siberia.

There was no man to pray, but Matrona stood at the head of the grave, and read, in a voice faltering with old age and pity, these words—

   "And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they?

   "And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

   "Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple; and He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them.

   "They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat.

   "For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."

So they buried Marfa thousands of miles away from her beloved home. She who had never been separated from her own people for a single day, was to lie in a grave that not one of them could visit and weep over. To-morrow they would be already miles away from this sacred spot, and the end of their journey would place still more thousands of miles between them and the lonely grave.

CHAPTER XXII

TWO days later the exiles reached the city prison, larger than the roadside étapes, which possessed a hospital. Anna Grigorovna had been looking forward eagerly to the hour when she would be delivered from the suffocating dust, the burning sun, and the jolting cart, and lie down in a quiet cot in a hospital ward, which she would never leave again. She had kept herself aloof from her fellow-convicts, and there would be no painful last farewells.

The last evening, when they reached the half-way étape, she sought the company of the Stundists. It had become the custom, as far as possible, for the better class of exiles to keep together in the kameras, avoiding the drunken and more degraded convicts. The Stundist men alone mingled freely with them, seeking earnestly any opportunity of lifting them a little out of the deep mire of their debasement. The band of exiles had been so long together, that they knew one another as intimately as the inhabitants of the same village. On the whole, the Stundists, both men and women, were regarded favourably by their fellow-exiles, to whom they were always ready to render any kindness.

Anna Grigorovna, who had seldom spoken to anyone, seemed to-night anxious to talk with the kindly comrades who must leave her for ever to-morrow. She sat on the edge of the nari, where Tatiania was lying speechless and tearless, and listened attentively to Alexis as he explained to her the simple creed of his sect.

"It is very beautiful," she said, with a sigh; "you believe that in very truth Jesus Christ, being equal with God, left His throne in heaven and came down to this earth, becoming a poor working-man, and dying a shameful death for our sakes. So He sacrificed all for our salvation."

Tatiania lifted up her trembling hand; and Michael and Sergius cried, "Yes, we believe it!"

"You believe," she went on, "that He who was crucified Himself knows all your sorrows and sufferings;—nay! I've heard you say He is here, seeing all and knowing all."

"Yes," answered Alexis; "because He said, 'Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.'"

"You believe," she continued, "that without any priest, or any form of prayer, you may ask God Almighty for all you want, as a child asks his father."

"We believe it," replied Alexis, "but with this reservation, that what we ask is in accord with His will. A child may ask for a scorpion or for a burning coal."

"Would to God I could believe as you do!" said Anna, with a sob. "Do you know that I, too, have sacrificed all, and given up my life for the sake of the people?"

"We know it," answered Alexis; "and God knows it. Be sure He who made the greatest sacrifice of all will not overlook it. He is not far from you, and you are drawing nigh to Him."

It was the evening of the next day when they reached the prison, where there was a hospital. It stood in one corner of the high stockade which enclosed all the prison buildings, a low-roofed kamera, very much like the rest. There was to be the usual third days' halt here, and the next morning the prison-yard was thronged with exiles. The men lounged under the walls, smoking and gambling, whilst the women washed and mended, or crouched on the ground gossiping. It was intensely hot again, and all were glad to rest as quietly as possible. Before the day was over, Michael and Sergius heard their names called in a shrill voice. A woman was standing at the door of the hospital, and they ran to her.

"A convict who came in here last night wants to see you," she said, looking with open admiration at the two sturdy, sunburnt boys; "she says she is fond of boys, and I don't wonder at it. We don't see many of your sort here."

They followed the woman into a filthy corridor, where the floor was thickly covered with all kinds of sweepings and slops from the wards. A noisome stench pervaded it, even worse than the foul air of the kamera to which they were so well used. With the tainted atmosphere of disease and rotting refuse was mingled the sickening odour of drugs and liniments. Michael and Sergius could hardly breathe, but they followed the woman in silence, keeping their lips closely shut.

But if the air was poisonous in the corridor, it was far worse in the women's ward. There were a number of low, narrow cots, placed so close together that there was barely room to pass between each pair of them, and as the suffering women lay, they breathed and coughed into each other's faces. But those who lay in the cots were well off, for the dirty floor was strewn with wretched creatures wherever there was sufficient space for them. These were packed as closely as the convicts in the kameras, and could not stir without disturbing their companions on either side. There was no ventilation except a few holes in the walls, for the windows would not open, and the cots were ranged against them. There was a dim light only, for the glass panes were thick with dust, and had, moreover, a coat of white paint obscuring them. In the grey gloom, surrounded by pallid and fevered faces, the boys were at a loss to find Anna, until they heard the racking cough with which they had grown familiar during Marfa's illness. They stepped carefully among the crowd of sick folk.

Anna was stretched on the ground, almost under a cot. A thin straw palliasse lay below her, but the sheet which had been thrown over her was ragged and bloodstained. It was impossible for her to raise herself, even when her throat and chest were most convulsed with coughing. She was choking now; and Michael knelt beside her, and put his arm under her head, until the paroxysm had passed away.

"Man makes it, not God!" cried Michael. Father Cyril's letter came into his mind, and he said in a low voice, "'If I make my bed in hell, Thou art there!'"

"Thank God, Marfa died before we came here!" exclaimed Sergius, looking round with horror at the agonised forms and distorted faces of the women, whose mouths were open, gasping for breath in the suffocating atmosphere, and whose staring, feverish eyes wandered hopelessly in search of relief.

In a corner, on a layer of straw, five children were huddled together. The eldest was about seven years old, the youngest about five months. They were tossing to and fro, and wailing with the peculiarly piteous cry of ailing children. Sergius went to them, and sat down on the floor with the baby in his arms, after he had soothed the elder children, and given each of them some tepid water to drink.

"Their crying maddens me," said Anna; "all night long they were moaning, and I could do nothing for them, poor little creatures! We were locked up all night, with no nurse to help any one of us. One of the women died in the night, and lay there till the morning. Michael, this is the worst hell of all! I prayed to God to let me die too, but He did not hear me."

"I'm only a boy, and I hardly know how to say it," answered Michael, "but if I was here, I'd rather think God was here too, knowing all about me, and all I had to bear, than think that the devil was reigning here, with nobody stronger than he was, like the Czar."

"We don't know yet," replied Michael, looking round with appalled eyes, "but this I do know, I'd rather be here than be one of the people who send us here. God knows them too! Oh, I wish my father could come and pray for you!"

"Do you pray for me," she said; "God will listen to an innocent soul like yours. Beseech Him to let me die this minute! Beseech Him to send the angel of death to sweep this place of all its misery. Let us all die at once, and then something will be done. But we go one by one, and nobody cares."

Michael was still kneeling beside her, and over him hung the yellow, withered face of an old woman, in the cot above listening eagerly to what was being said.

"I dare not ask God that," he answered; "our Lord does not teach us to pray for things like that. He bade us say, 'Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.' I can say our Lord's Prayer for you."

The boy's clear young voice sounded distinctly through the ward, as he lifted up his head, and said "'Our Father!'"

The moans and cries ceased for the time, and pallid faces were turned to him. Some of the parched lips murmured the familiar words, as the women recalled the years when they were children, and said this prayer at their mothers' sides, in the old church at home. For a very brief space there was a lull in their misery—a moment or two of forgetfulness. They too, even they, had a Father in heaven.

"That is good," she said, when the prayer was ended. "After all, I shall soon know the great secret. Michael, I have a commission to charge you with."

She begged him to let her friends know that she was dead, as soon as he could, but not to pain them by details of her misery. He repeated the address she gave to him, and called Sergius to commit it to memory. Then Anna lifted up her feeble hand and touched his cheek.

"Kiss me!" she said. "I have a young brother Michael like you at home. Oh, how he will miss me, and mourn for me! Kiss me, and bid me good-bye."

CHAPTER XXIII

A GREAT change came over Tatiania. Instead of being a woman of many moods, she had now but one—an almost silent but peaceful resignation. Day after day she paced silently along the hot and dusty road, with downcast head, and feet that grew ever more languid. She never grumbled at the heat and weariness, and she greeted Khariton, when he joined her at the étapes in the evening, with a placid smile. To Sergius and little Clava she was more tender than ever in their happy days at home. For now she knew that neither she nor Clava could live through the march that lay before them. In some roadside jail they must lie down to die, and she began to long for the time to come.

With the rest of the Stundist band, the joy of martyrdom was constantly growing and deepening. A sense of triumph filled their inmost souls. They had proved to themselves, beyond a doubt, that their love for Christ and truth was stronger than any other love. A secret peace, passing all understanding, filled their minds. The hymns they sang night and morning were full of an enthusiastic gladness. They chose hymns of praise in preference to any others. Their voices were well harmonised, and the melody of their hymn tunes attracted their fellow-exiles. These, especially the women, sometimes joined in the singing; and it was not often that the convoy-guard interfered with them. The Stundists gave no trouble; on the contrary, they exercised a wholesome influence over the whole company.

Little Clava was gradually losing all her frolicsome and merry ways, and she became a lighter burden to the boys week after week. They had never let her travel with the other little ones in a closely packed telega, where they fought together, and cried and screamed all day long.

Michael and Sergius were saddened. The long march, which had now lasted many weeks, was not without its charm for them. They did not shrink from its hardships. True, they were often hungry and thirsty, but that was the common lot of poor travellers. They were dirty and in rags, that was little and inevitable. They marched barefoot, that was their custom in the summer. They were quite prepared to endure greater hardships than these. They were passing through strange scenery, which had great charms for them. Now winding through the gloomy shades of vast forests; then crossing steppes which seemed boundless; creeping along the margin of swift rivers, and being rowed across them on rude ferryboats; climbing up steep mountain-paths, and going down again into beautiful valleys. They marched from twenty to twenty-five miles a day; not often more quickly than at the rate of two miles an hour, on account of the convicts burdened with leg-fetters, the heavy waggons, and the women walking in the wake of the men. Ten or twelve hours a day they were out in the open air, with the bright, though burning, blue of the cloudless sky above them.

Michael and Sergius, hardy as young bears, enjoyed these long marches. Besides all this, the enthusiasm of the Stundist band filled their hearts. The sober triumph of the men rose to rapture in the boys.

Still, they could not shut their eyes to the grief and misery which perpetually surrounded them. The faces of the exiles, burnt to blackness by the sun, wore a look of stolid despair, into which they had sunk after the first rage and anguish at their position had subsided. Here was a small batch of human beings, some of them dangerous criminals, cut off from all association with the outer world by a living wall of armed soldiers, some of whom were irreclaimable brutes. As they marched on, their living prison walls moved with them, uttering stern threats and menacing oaths. Already each one knew all his comrades, and all that those comrades chose to tell. A profound and stupefying dulness fell upon them. Day after day they marched on like men in a dream; the only break in the monotony being the change of guards at various stages. To-day was like yesterday, and to-morrow would be as to-day.

They knew, too, that, isolated and solitary as they were, there was another band of banished men and women, precisely like themselves, pacing the same road only a few days in advance; and that behind them, week after week, hearts as heavy and hard as their own were beating along the same dolorous way. For scores of years this sad procession had been passing along the Great Siberian Road. They had left traces of themselves, messages written on the dirty walls of the étapes, many of which were undecipherable from age.

The boys' spirits could not fail to be touched by this apathy of hopeless wretchedness. They could feel for it, though they did not feel it themselves. What amazed them was that most of the exiles turned a deaf ear to all the teaching of the Bible, which filled the Stundists with divine courage and strength. They could not hear the heavenly music or see the heavenly light which filled their own souls.

Yet a certain lethargy fell upon them. They walked for hours side by side in silence, only now and then glancing sympathetically at one another, as they took in turns the burden, alas! very light now, of little Clava, who was growing smaller and weaker every day. She scarcely ever set her foot to the ground now.

"What are you thinking of?" asked Sergius one day, after a long silence. The jingle of the clanking chains and the creaking of the cart-wheels had become insupportable to him.

"I began," answered Michael, "by wishing God would let me bear all these troubles, and let the rest go free, but a voice in my heart said to me that could not be, every man must bear his own burden. Then the thought came to me, that was just what our Lord felt, when He looked down from heaven, and saw all the misery and all the oppression under the sun. So He came, and He did bear our griefs and carry our sorrows. Then the same voice told me He was bearing them now, even in heaven, at the right hand of God. Surely, if He shares our troubles, we can bear them. We are following our Captain, and must be like brave soldiers, fighting manfully under His banner."

"Yes," said Sergius, stepping out more energetically; "look at my father and yours, Michael. Always same, brave and faithful. But my mother! And little Clava! We can't expect them to feel like soldiers. They feel the hardships worse than we do. Katerina's baby is dead; and another baby died last night while were asleep. They have put it there, in the baggage-waggon. Only the strongest children will reach the end of the journey."

"Where will the other children go?" asked Clava, with her languid head resting on his shoulder. "Where shall I go, Serge?"

"Why, my little darling," he said, "you know they go to heaven, where there are beautiful gardens, and happy places for little children to live in. Marfa is there; and the Lord Jesus takes the little ones into His arms, and wipes away all their tears, and there is no more crying for ever and ever!"

"For ever and ever!" repeated the child, with a wan smile. "But, Michael, do you hear the children crying in the telega? Why doesn't the Lord Jesus take them all away into His beautiful garden, and keep them there for ever and ever? Oh, Michael, I wish He would take me!"

"If father and mother and Serge and you could go too," she said wistfully; "I'd be so alone by myself."

They plodded on in silence after this short conversation, until the midday halt was called, when Michael carried little Clava to her mother, and Sergius followed with their bag of coarse food, of which neither Tatiania nor her child could eat much.

CHAPTER XXIV

SO the protracted, monotonous march went on; the only change, a change of guards. Some of these made the life more wretched than others; and now and then a captain would compel the whole cavalcade to make a forced march in quicker time than usual, if business or pleasure awaited him in the town they were approaching. Of the towns the exiles saw nothing, but in the villages on their route they were allowed to beg from the inhabitants; for the allowance of money made to each person by the Government was a pitiful pittance, quite too little to sustain life on the merest necessities.

As they drew near to a village, the chained prisoners let their fetters clink and jingle as loudly as possible, to call attention to their passing by. The shrill ring formed an accompaniment to the convicts' begging song, which each man sang, not in unison, but in an almost tuneless chant, which, however, had a heart-shaking modulation of its own.

"Have pity on us, O our fathers!
Don't forgot the unwilling travellers,
Don't forgot the long-imprisoned.
Feed us, O our father!—Help us!

"Feed and help the poor and needy!
Have compassion, O our fathers!
Have compassion, O our mothers!
For the sake of Christ, have mercy
On the prisoners—the shut-up ones!
Behind walls of stone and gratings,
Behind oaken doors and padlocks,
Behind bars and locks of iron,
We are held in close confinement.
We have parted from our fathers,
From our mothers;
We from all our kin have parted,
We are prisoners;
Pity us, O our fathers!"

This mournful chant rang on far in advance, and the pitiful notes brought many a peasant to the door, with half a loaf of bread or a few handfuls of meal. The Stundists were usually deputed to beg, as they could be trusted not to secrete any alms that might take the shape of money or tobacco. Alexis, with his grave and noble face, and old Matrona, whose bowed shoulders and wrinkled features appealed strongly for pity, were the most successful suppliants. The placid and grateful old woman often moved the peasant women to tears.

When the midday halt was called, the food collected by the way was divided among them all. A rough sense of fairness and comradeship prevailed among this band of murderers, robbers, and criminals of various kinds and degrees; besides the political prisoners and persecuted Stundists. They slept under the same roof, and traversed side by side the same road; their lives were absolutely similar, as far as the Government could make them.

The autumn came, and with the rain the dust disappeared. For a short interval the long-drawn-out pilgrimage was more endurable. The weather was still warm, and the sunshine was soft and genial. The leaves were still upon the trees. The vast, unfenced cornfields were bare. Innumerable flocks of birds fluttered over the stubble, feeding on the grain which had been too ripe to carry. In the villages the gifts were more bountiful with the abundance of the harvest. Flowers lingered in dells and hollows, where the frosty night-breeze passed above them. The convict band felt this cheering change. There was a less languid stepping out, and they were better fed. The children began to laugh and play again; and even the women looked less wretched and exhausted.

But the autumnal rains grew heavy and persistent, and still the endless journey continued. The shoes provided for the convicts had fallen to pieces a week or two after they started; and they had tramped barefoot through the hot dust. One shirt of coarse linen was given to them once in six months; these were in rags. Their coats and trousers were also of grey linen, and were equally tattered. The voluntary exiles were scarcely better off, though they wore their own clothes. But each was allowed only a small bag for carrying all the possessions they wished to take with them into exile. Many of them had sold what they could spare for food. Under the pitiless rain, drenched to the skin, they travelled on, the chilly breeze benumbing their ill-fed and emaciated bodies, and the mud, half-frozen, oozing through their worn-out shoes.

Nor was there much relief when they gained the shelter of an étape, for they could not dry their saturated rags, nor had they any change of clothing. They must sleep as they were on the wooden platform, in their drenched and dirty garments; the natural warmth of so many closely packed human beings producing a malarious steam, added to the already foul air. Shivering with cold, yet seething in a reeking atmosphere, the miserable creatures could not rest in sleep.

Presently the rain changed to snow; the first snowstorm of the winter coming swiftly down upon them from the north. They were weather-bound for a few days, so blinding and baffling were the thickly-falling flakes. Then hunger set in; such hunger and starvation as had never yet befallen them, for no provisions were laid up for the exiles, and the peasants from whom they bought their food could no more go to them than they could march along the road. The convoy captain allowed them a scanty share of the soldiers' rations, just sufficient to keep them alive, but he could do no more for them. Without food or fire, in clothes that dried upon their bodies, huddled together, they passed the miserable days and nights.

At last the snowstorm ceased, and a sharp frost set in. A number of peasants came with rough sledges, judging rightly that all the women and children, and some of the convicts, would be unable to walk the next stage. The winter had come upon them so early and so unexpectedly that even the guards were not prepared. The convicts were in the rags of their summer clothing, and barefoot, but at the next forwarding prison winter garments would be given out.

But to the half-famished men and women the next few days were bitter, under the gloomy sky, with an icy wind whistling around them. In dead silence, except for the jingling of their chains, the procession crawled slowly and weariedly across the snowclad plains. The prisoners kept closely together, to avoid being frozen to death, but not a word did one man say to his fellow. In the telegas, and the sledges also, the women were speechless, in a half stupor; and only now and then the children uttered a cry at the death-like apathy of those around them.

Michael and Sergius kept as near as they could to the telega where Tatiania was crouching, with little Clava on her lap. But they too were appalled at this universal stupefaction, and could not speak of it to one another.

They reached at last the forwarding prison, where winter stores were kept. They were to rest there for a few days to recover strength, for several of the older convicts had broken down on the way. It was a great relief to them all. Tatiania, who had seemed near unto death, revived a little.

"Khariton," she said one night, as she lay beside him on the nari, "you know that little Clava and I are going to leave you soon?"

"It's time for me to give up what Alexis trusted me with," she whispered in his ear. "I've kept it safe; nobody has suspected. But if I die on the road, they'll find it, and you'll lose most of it—perhaps all."

"But who will take care of it for us?" he asked. "Matron is too old; who could expect her to live to the end? We have still many weeks to travel, and all the women are failing."

"Let the boys take charge of it," she continued, still whispering, "fifty roubles to Michael, and fifty to Sergius. They are both as wise and prudent as men. Oh, they've been a great comfort to us, good boys! There 'll not be too much to divide among you when you reach Irkutsk; only there you'll soon get work."

"Then my mind will be quite easy," she murmured; "I should have died to-day, only I prayed the Lord to spare me until I could give up my trust. Now I shall have nothing to think of but how blessed we shall be when we are all together again, with the Lord. We were very happy in Knishi, husband!"

"We might have been happy in Irkutsk," she went on, "but I'm worn-out, body and mind. I long to get away out of this world. You'll let Clava and me go?"

CHAPTER XXV

TO Michael and Sergius it was a solemn charge to be entrusted with the funds on which the Stundists were to subsist when they reached their journey's end. To be sure, the convicts would still have the miserable pittance allowed by the Government, but this would not suffice for the women and children who accompanied them. Tatiania found an opportunity the next day to stitch the rouble notes into the boys' coats. It was a busy day; the baggage-waggons were unloaded, and winter clothes got out. But they were damp and mildewed, for the rain and snow had saturated the bags. The convicts receive their winter equipment from the Government stores, which were at least dry and warm. They set out again in renewed spirits.

It was well for the Stundists that Tatiania's precaution had been carried into effect. A day or two after they started, and were crossing the exposed steppe, over which a searching and freezing north wind was blowing, Sergius and Michael went as usual at the midday halt to carry food to Tatiania and Clava, who now never left the telega. The child was sleeping, and Tatiania was very drowsy.

"Quite well, dear boy," she answered. "I've no more pain; and I'm not tired even. But oh, so sleepy! Tuck the cloak over us, my son."

Sergius carefully folded the sheepskin cloak over her and Clava, and bent down to kiss the pallid faces. Both were chilly.

"The captain says we shall reach Irkutsk before Christmas," he said cheerily, "if we are not delayed by more storms."

"That's good news," she answered sleepily; "I'm glad for your father's sake. Be good like him, my Sergius."

During the short afternoon a light fall of snow and sleet came on. Every one of the cavalcade was covered with a fine, crisp powder. The telegas looked like silvered chariots; and the horses drawing them were beautifully white. Every blade of grass, and the bare stubble of the cornfields, was delicately frosted over. It was a white procession, long-drawn-out, passing through a white landscape. Towards the north the sky was of a livid darkness; and the captain of the convoy ordered a quick march.

They reached the half-way étape before the telegas came up, and were ready to lift down Tatiania and little Clava. They had not stirred since Sergius tucked the sheepskin round them; nor did they move when he lifted it off, and called "Mother!"

They were fast asleep, in a profound and peaceful slumber, little Clava locked in her mother's arms, never more to wake again to this world's pain and anguish. No trouble like this could befall them, the boys said to one another the next day, as they followed the telega which carried the dead bodies to the nearest cemetery; nothing worse could happen.

Yet in their inmost hearts there lurked a dream of other losses. Khariton looked fearfully ill to-day; and Alexis did not seem much better. Each one of the Stundist band was terribly cast down. Their wives and children were so exhausted and feeble they could hardly hope, nay, they could hardly wish, they would live to reach Irkutsk. Every now and then there were delays, made absolutely necessary from snowstorms, which made it impossible to continue the march for days together. Then came the alternative misery of semi-starvation. They never had enough to eat, but in these weather-bound intervals Famine laid its skeleton hand upon them. Christmas was past before they reached Irkutsk.

This was the end of their calamitous journey. Here Paraska's husband, Demyan, was already established, and probably awaiting their release under police regulations. In this place they would probably be allowed to settle down, thousands of miles from their native village. The Stundists gathered together, in sad and solemn thanksgiving. Of the nine women who had elected to go with them into Siberian exile, four were lying in scattered graves along the route, never to be visited by those who loved them. Of the fourteen children, only five were left; Michael and Sergius being two of them.

Even while the survivors sang their usual evening hymn, "Oh, happy band of pilgrims!" the tears rolled down their rugged and wasted faces, and their voices faltered.

   "'The ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

   "'I, even I, am He that comforteth you: who art thou, that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that shall die, . . . and hast feared continually every day because of the fury of the oppressor, as if he were ready to destroy? and where is the fury of the oppressor?

   "'The captive exile hasteneth that he may be loosed, and that he should not die in the pit, nor that his bread should fail. But I am the Lord thy God, that divided the sea, whose waves roared. The Lord of hosts is His name.

   "'And I have put My words in thy mouth, and I have covered thee in the shadow of Mine hand.'"

   "'Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:

   "'By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.

   "'And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope;

   "'And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.'"

Over the faces of the women there stole an expression of placid resignation. The men looked at one another with exultation in their eyes. What were these light afflictions compared with the glory that would follow?

CHAPTER XXVI

THEY expected their release every day. The band of exiles who had marched together for so many months was broken up, and scattered to various places of exile, excepting those criminals who were sentenced to the mines. But the Stundists seemed to be overlooked. Demyan was aware of their arrival, and sent in messages of welcome. He had already provided a shelter for them, and obtained promises of work in Irkutsk.

At last one morning they were summoned to the prison-yard, where a party was being made up for the Kara Mines. Was it possible that they were doomed to that place of horrors? The men were again chained to other prisoners, with leg-fetters; the women and children were placed in telegas; and once more, over ground frozen many feet deep, and with the thermometer, even at noonday, several degrees below zero, they set out on their dreary march, uncertain now what their destination might be.

They crossed to the eastern side of Lake Baikal, into a wild and desolate region, at this time lying under a thick cover of snow. But the second time they reached an étape, a few days after quitting Irkutsk, their fellow-prisoners started on without them. The captain of the convoy, which was now returning to Irkutsk, waited some time for the arrival of a police officer to take charge of the Stundists, but growing impatient at his delay, and afraid of the short day leaving him before he could reach a shelter, he called Alexis to him.

"You are a trustworthy man," he said, "and I must leave you to report yourselves at the police station. They will tell you under what conditions you are to live here. It's not a cheerful spot. Have you any complaint to make to me?"

They watched the convoy until they were hidden in the frosty fog. Then they turned towards the village, which lay about half a mile away. At the barrier a wretched old man came out of a hut which looked like a huge snow-stack, and challenged them. Alexis explained who they were; whilst Michael and Sergius tried to decipher the inscription on a rotten post. They made out, "thirty-four houses, sixty-five males." The women and children did not count in the population.

But it was a small place. The houses were log-huts, and were scattered in two long, straggling lines on each side of the road. They too looked like edifices built wholly of snow. It was evident that extreme poverty prevailed. Such of the inhabitants as appeared in the street had a Mongolian cast of features, and seemed uncouth and savage.

The Stundists marched to the police station, and gave their names, and the paper entrusted to them by the convoy captain, to the village Ispravnik. He was certainly a Mongol. He looked at each one of the men keenly, as if to make sure of knowing them again; and told them they must report themselves to him once a week, and whenever he chose to summon them. The women and children stood outside the station, shivering in the freezing air.

"Just where you please," answered the police officer; "you're free to live where you like in this village, but nowhere else."

"None that I know of," said the man; "you see, brother, it is a very little place. There are two or three families in every house already."

"You can go and try, brother," he answered; "you are free, and the people are free. They may lodge you if they please."

Then began a weary search for shelter. At some of the huts the inmates would not even open the door, for fear of letting in a blast of freezing wind; they shouted to them through the frosted windows there was no room for them there. There were no young children in the homeless band, but the five women and the two girls who had survived the terrible journey were suffering from the intense cold. Their spirits, too, were depressed at the sight of the savage and inhospitable spot to which their husbands had been exiled for several years. Some of them would have wept but for fear of the tears freezing on their eyelashes. Khariton Kondraty silently thanked God that his wife and daughters had been mercifully taken from him.

At length, after traversing the village from end to end, they returned to the hut where a withered bush frosted over delicately proclaimed the village inn. They were quickly admitted, and the door closed behind them. The atmosphere was almost as foul as that of the kameras they had slept in, but they had grown used to it, and this roof was at least a shelter. Here they could rest and warm themselves, and get food to eat.

The innkeeper was a Jew, and more intelligent than anyone they had yet seen. But he could not tell them of any hut or barn, or shed even, where they could find a refuge. Nor could he tell them of any place where more than one could be lodged. The dwellings were all too full already. No work could possibly be had until the thaw came, and then strong labourers might earn a few pence a day on the common lands. No one wanted any women, he said; there were women enough and to spare.

At last he bethought himself of a half-ruined hut at the extreme end of the village, which had been empty for some years, ever since a whole family had been horribly murdered by some runaway convicts from mines. The innkeeper gave the details of the crime, with zest; and the women shuddered as they heard them.

"Folks here say the spirits of the dead people have never left the spot," he added; "they'll not go till murderers are punished. But you can have it for small rent if you dare."

The men went off, as soon as they had finished their meal, to inspect the place. It was a fair-sized hut, and the log walls and great stove were in tolerable repair, but the frozen snow showed white through the clunks in the roof. There were some out-buildings that also needed restoring. But little could be done before the thaw came.

There were thirteen of them; the nine men and the four boys who had outlived their hardships. They were gaunt, haggard, and emaciated; the women they had left in the inn were almost skeletons. Yet as they stood under the ragged roof, they lifted up their hands, and in solemn words dedicated themselves afresh to the service of their Lord. Here they would make homes; and here, too, should there be a church where they could worship God according to their conscience.

They decided, if possible, to find lodgings for the women; and to live together in this hut till they could put it in repair. The prospect lying before them was not cheerful, but the present was better than the past. They would have to endure hunger and cold and poverty of the greatest, but they would no longer witness the unutterable wretchedness and wickedness of the kameras. The misery they had passed through was stamped indelibly on their memories.

"There's one good thing," said Michael, "we may write what letters we like. The Ispravnik cannot read."

"Yes," answered Michael; "he held the list of your names upside down, and pretended to check them off, as if he was reading them. I'll begin a school as soon as the people know us a little."

CHAPTER XXVII

THE weeks of winter crept slowly by. But at last the thaw came, and the hut the men had occupied was deluged with melting snow.

By this time the new settlers had become favourably known to the inhabitants, and there was no difficulty in getting temporary lodgings whilst they repaired the haunted hut. With the coming of the spring, fresh hope and energy took possession of them. But their funds, however carefully husbanded, were melting like the snow. They were very near parting with their last rouble.

They were busily at work one day, mending the damaged roof, when a strange peasant came up, and gazed at them for a minute or two in silence.

Khariton sprang down the sloping roof and over the low eaves, and clasped the stranger in his arms.

He was a Knishi man who had been banished during the first persecution some years ago. They all knew him except Alexis and Michael. Until his banishment they had worked and worshipped together. It was a great joy to meet again.

"How vexed I was to hear you'd been sent on from Irkutsk!" he said. "There was work for you there, ready. But we soon found out where they'd sent you; and as soon as we could make a little collection, I just stole a march, and came out to bring it."

"Well, somebody must run a risk," he said doggedly; "we could not leave you to perish in this wilderness. You could not get our collection—it's only thirty roubles——without somebody venturing. But I want news. Tell me about Paraska."

"They are quite lost sight of; we could find no trace of them," answered Alexis. "Even Father Cyril—a good man—could hear nothing of them."

"Ah!" he exclaimed. "That's the Batoushka Paraska speaks of. I've a letter from her, with Knishi news. But I must be quick, it's four days' journey here, and four back. I reported myself last Monday, and I must not be later than Wednesday or Thursday in showing up again. Oh, here's Paraska's letter! I was to tell you,—

"'Father Cyril has been sent away from Knishi, thanks to Father Paissy. He was not permitted to take Velia with him—'"

"'He was compelled to leave her behind with the widow of Father Vasili; and folks say she is going to marry again to old Okhrim, the Starosta. If possible let Michael know at once—'"

"All the children under ten years of age were taken from us," said Khariton; "and Velia was adopted by Father Cyril. This is terrible news!"

Every man there saw at once the threatening meaning of it. The tender, delicate child had been put into the hands of a tyrannical and unscrupulous woman; and possibly into the power of a brutal and cruel man, who would vent upon her his bigoted hatred of her people. Alexis fell down on his knees, and groaning, hid his face in his hands.

The letter had been written nearly four months ago. Thousands of miles stretched between them and the desolate child. Already she must have endured a winter of misery. What could be done for her?

"I must go, father!" exclaimed Michael. "If I have to beg my way, I must go. And oh, I'll save her, father! Velia, little Velia!" And the boy's voice rose into a passionate cry, as if he would make her hear him across all the space that divided them.

The affair had to be settled speedily, for if Michael went, it was best that he should go as far as Irkutsk with Demyan, before the roads were broken up by the thaw.

"Let him come with me," said Demyan; "we've got friends in Irkutsk. They'll give him letters to other friends on the way. We'll get a few more roubles together. And as soon as he catches up the railway, he'll spin along. He'll get to Knishi before next winter; and the summer is better. Yarina will befriend her, be sure of that."

"You must go, my boy," said Alexis, "but you must make your way first of all to Odessa, and get your kinsman there to help you. At any rate he will help you with money."

In a few hours Michael had said farewell to his father, and the whole band of Stundists. In a short time they would be settled in their new dwellings, and begin to make decent homes of them. "The winter's woe was past," and new hopes were springing up. But for this bad news Michael felt that life even in the Trans-Baikal might be full of gladness.

Sergius accompanied Michael as far as possible along the route to Irkutsk. They had much to say to one another, but for the last mile or so they were speechless. Knowing they could not meet again for years, if for ever, they embraced each other silently, and in silence each went on his way.

CHAPTER XXVIII

A revulsion of feeling had been brought about by the persecution that had made a clean sweep of the heretics from Knishi. As the crowd which collected to be spectators of the departure of the women and children saw their terrible distress, and heard their cries of lamentation on being driven from their old homes, a wave of pity and sympathy spread from heart to heart. They had only a vague idea of what exile to Siberia really meant; no one had ever returned to Knishi from that distant bourne, but it had always been the most fearsome threat held over them from infancy. What had these old neighbours, these brothers and sisters and cousins, done to deserve such a doom? They had always shown themselves kind and friendly, and ever ready to help in any time of trouble. And if they were somewhat conceited and crazy about their new religion, was that so wicked as to merit the loss of home and property?

The women especially began to brood over the question. The Stundist children under ten years of age, who had been distributed among the Orthodox families, were more intelligent and obedient than the others. In school they almost formed a class apart, several of them could read well, and these had, as usual, little Testaments of their own.

Copies of the New Testament began to appear as if by magic in the dwellings. The travelling colporteurs, who carried in their packs Testaments from the great Bible depot in Odessa, found many customers in Knishi. There was something attractive in listening to the Gospels read in one continuous narrative, instead of the detached fragments they heard in the church services. Here was the whole history. It was quite true what the Stundists said: there was not a word about confession, or the priest's dues, or the blessing of the houses and the fields, or the many feasts, when it was unorthodox to labour. The men liked to hear of this, but the women loved most to hear how the Lord Jesus treated the women and children.

There was a general movement of the slumbering intellect and conscience of the peasants; and Father Cyril was astonished at some of the shrewd questions put to him on doctrinal points. His own teaching favoured the movement. The persecution, shortsighted as all persecution is, was having its usual results.

Time after time, and by cautious degrees, Velia fetched the Bibles and hymn-books hidden in the roof of the hut in the forest, and distributed them among the Stundist children, who were as truly orphans as if their parents were really dead. Some of them had been so young when they were taken away that the remembrance of their parents perished in a few months. But most of them had been present when the carts carried off their weeping mothers, and nothing could ever efface the memory of that scene from their hearts. There was still a root of the Stundist heresy left in Knishi.

Yarina, the daughter-in-law of Okhrim, had been most touched and shocked by the banishment of the inoffensive Stundists. She had married, some years before, Panass, Okhrim's only son, who had proved an unkind and neglectful husband. But he was dead, and left her with an only child, a girl. At Father Cyril's urgent request, she had adopted two of the Stundist children to bring up with her little daughter. Secretly she was attaching herself to the Stundist faith, but she did not dare to avow it, for the sake of her child. Besides, Father Cyril's character, and the sermons he preached, still attracted her to the Orthodox Church.

The mental sufferings of Father Cyril during the persecution were greater and deeper than words could tell. He believed it to be mischievous as well as unchristian. The utmost limit of persecution he could find in Christ's teaching, was, "Let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican." This did not open the door to imprisonment, flogging, deprivation of civil rights, and exile. For how did Christ deal with the outcast classes? His own dealings with the publicans were full of forbearance and sympathy. He had visited them in their houses, and ate with them publicly. He had not driven away the heathen woman who besought Him to heal her daughter; or refused to see the Greeks, who came to Philip, saying, "Sir, we would see Jesus." Nay, when the disciples wished to call down fire from heaven on the Samaritans who refused to receive them into their town, He rebuked them, saying, "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of Man hath not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." The utmost that could have been permitted by the law of Christ, was to leave the heretics alone. "Let them be as publicans and heathens."

Father Cyril could not himself think of the Stundists as heathens. He mourned over their separation from the Church, and believed they were mistaken in withdrawing from it. But he could not shut his eyes to their sobriety and integrity, their loyal submission to every law that did not go against their conscience, their faith and charity; and, more than all, their surrender of everything that makes life pleasant to man for the sake of their religious faith. He could not trust his own people to show equal devotion to their Church under similar circumstances.

Father Cyril and his wife did their best to make Velia happy. The girl was very affectionate, and responded warmly to the love they displayed. Father Cyril bestowed upon her more caresses and indulgences than he might have done if she had gone to him under happier circumstances. The little Stundist orphans left in his charge in the village gave him more anxious thought and care than all the rest of his flock. He felt more responsible to God for their welfare. Could he bring them back into the safe fold of the Church?

But Velia was not young enough to be made Orthodox. She was nearly ten years old when she was forcibly taken away from her own home, and she had been trained in the Stundist faith from her earliest childhood. The traditions of her mother's ancestors, the Scotch Covenanters, had been the fairy tales told to her by Michael, long before she could grasp their meaning. They had played at being persecuted whilst they were children—it was no new thing to her. But now she understood what it meant. These real persecutions linked her to the children who had suffered so long ago in Scotland; the mysterious tie of blood relationship awoke within her. She too would die rather than forsake the faith of her father and his people.

"My Velia," said Father Cyril one day, after the village schoolmistress had been complaining of her, "could not you, to please me, bow to the holy icon, and cross yourself when you go to school? The teacher complains of you and some of the other children. They will all do as you do, dear child."

"Oh, I cannot!" she cried, with tears. "If I could, I'd do it to please you. But I know it's wrong, and God would be displeased. I must obey God."

"My child, they are nothing but signs," urged Father Cyril. "Surely you love the Lord Christ, and couldn't you, to show your love to Him, use the sign of the cross on which He died for us? And you reverence the Mother of Christ—cannot you bow to a representation of her? All these actions are only symbols. I have seen you kiss the keepsakes your father and Michael gave you. Do these things in remembrance of our Lord and His Mother."

"Oh, it does not mean that to them!" she answered, pointing towards the village. "They really pray to the icon as if it was God; and they cross themselves out of fear, not for remembrance. They think they will have bad luck. I cannot do it; no, never! But oh, I wish I could, to please you!"

Father Cyril sighed, but said no more. He told the schoolmistress gently not to observe the Stundist children too closely. They would conform in time, if they were discreetly dealt with.

But Okhrim, the Starosta, was one of the managers of the school, and the zeal of the teacher led her to take her complaint to him.

"How can I teach religion," she asked, "if these little pagans defy me? I've punished, and punished, but they won't bow to the holy icon, and it's the Mother of God herself. And all the Batoushka says is, 'Be gentle.'"

Okhrim's eyes sparkled, and his hard mouth twitched. The lust of persecution had taken possession of him, and he must gratify it, even by persecuting children.

"So our Batoushka says, 'Be gentle!'" he snarled. "I'll be gentle with him! He's unorthodox himself—teaching the folks all sorts o' nonsense, and telling the men it's a sin to drink much vodka. We don't want doctrine like that here."

The village inn belonged to Okhrim, and since Father Cyril's influence had been felt the receipts had fallen off seriously. The church was filled, but the inn was comparatively empty. Okhrim hated the priest as fully as he hated the Stundists. At the first favourable opportunity, he drove over to Kovylsk, and going to the consistory, humbly asked for an interview with Father Paissy, through whose efforts Stundism had been rooted out of Knishi.

Shortly afterwards Father Cyril received a mandate to appear before his archbishop, who had always shown himself very friendly to him. But it was not the archbishop who received him, it was his old fellow-student, Father Paissy, who owed him many a grudge, and who treated him with scant courtesy.

"Father Cyril," he said sharply, "we thought we had destroyed, root and branch, the damnable heresy in your parish. But I am informed it is not so. I hear you are bringing up a Stundist girl as your own daughter in the church-house itself."

"She is a delicate child," answered Father Cyril, "scarcely eleven years of age; quite unfit for a rough life among the common peasants."

"Yet you must place her elsewhere," said Father Paissy; "we cannot permit a parish priest to make his house a refuge for heretics."

"Let me beg of you to leave her with me for a few years!" exclaimed Father Cyril. "Who knows whether love and kindness may not bring her back to the Church? She is a mere child, Father Paissy, most docile and tractable. In time—yes, in time, she may come back to us."

"Yes," he answered reluctantly, "but he was banished to Siberia in the early spring; and Michael, his only other child, went with him. She has not a soul related to her in the village. All the other children have relatives who can take some care of them. There has not been time yet for her to forget. But time does wonders. Let the child remain under my care and my instruction, and by and by she will comprehend the truths of our holy Orthodox Church. She will learn none of them by living with a peasant."

"Oh, I don't care to make the girl a theologian," said Father Paissy, with a sneer; "it will be sufficient for her to conform because she must. The people ought to obey the Church, without asking why."

"Alas! Too many of them do," thought Father Cyril; "and they only come to church and to confession because they must."

"I will make a servant of the girl," he said aloud; "and we will forego the monthly payment made for her. It would be dangerous to place her into a peasant's family, for she is thoroughly versed in all the Stundist doctrines."

"We have considered all that," replied Father Paissy, "and we will place her where she can do no harm. The archbishop requires you to deliver up this Stundist girl to the widow of your predecessor, who is still living at Knishi. She is a pious woman, though not over-learned. I am acquainted with her, and I have already apprised her of the archbishop's decision."

"The old Matoushka!" exclaimed Father Cyril in a tone of dismay. She bore the character of a virago; and there was not a woman in the village who would work for her.

"Yes; the most suitable person to deal with the girl," replied Father Paissy. "Before you go, take a friendly warning from me. We hear you secretly favour these ignorant and impious heretics. We hear also that you interfere too much with secular affairs. There are several complaints lodged against you; we had none in Father Vasili's time. Take care, Father Cyril; take care!"

CHAPTER XXIX

THE long white line of the road to Knishi, running straight up to the distant horizon, lay before Father Cyril, as he drove slowly along it, lost in thought. He was very unhappy, and his heart felt like lead. There was not a home in Knishi where he would not rather have placed Velia than with the old Matoushka. He knew her to be a hard, mean, and hypocritical woman; very devout, for she never failed to be present at mass every day. But he felt that she hated him for the many changes he had made in Father Vasili's slovenly performance of his duties, though she paid him exaggerated deference as her priest. She came often to confession— a religious duty more painful to him than to her. How could he give up the dear child, Velia, to her?

There was, too, a painful sense that he was held in the iron hand of tyranny. He had never felt it before, and the touch penetrated to his very soul. It was a sin against humanity to give the child up to this woman; his conscience rebelled against it. Was it not also a sin against God?

Father Cyril dropped his reins, and let his horse crawl on slowly at its own pace. Here was the question of questions—the question that had sent his parishioners into banishment. The tyranny man exercised over man, piercing to the very thoughts of the heart—was it a thing to be endured? "No!" said the Stundist. "We stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free."

But Father Cyril found himself bound fast under a yoke of bondage. It made him very miserable to feel its weight as he had never done before. He knew there was no help for him. He must do a thing which his soul and his conscience abhorred. The child would be taken from him by force, if he did not give her up.

It was heartrending to him to tell Velia of the doom that was pronounced against her. He took her on his knee, and pressed her head tenderly against his breast, not daring to look upon her face as he broke the painful news to her. He felt the little heart beating fast against his encircling arm, and the convulsive clasp of her small hand. At last she spoke.

"They could not, my darling," he answered, tears stealing down his cheeks; "the Government is too strong, and the Church is too strong, for feeble folks like us to resist them. We must submit. I will do all I can for you, and watch over you; and you shall come here as often as possible."

Father Vasili's widow lived a little way on the other side of the church, near to the cemetery, in a log-hut she had had built for herself when her husband died. She was very well off, thanks to her own thrift, and her clever faculty for squeezing gifts and dues out of the parishioners during Father Vasili's life. But she chose to live as if she was in the deepest penury. She had never kept a servant, but now she was growing old, she had to pay a woman—when she could get one—to do her washing and cleaning. To give her her due, her house was far cleaner than the peasants' huts. For some months she had coveted the possession of Velia and the three roubles a month paid for her maintenance. Now she had got her, her chief aim was to make her do as much work and to cost as small a sum as possible.

She had a secondary aim—that of making Velia into an Orthodox Christian. She never missed going to church, and thither Velia was bound to accompany her. Father Cyril, at the altar, saw the strong old woman take hold of Velia's reluctant hand, and make the sign of the cross with it, and force the girl to bend her head before the icon. The action scandalised him, and Velia's miserable face tormented him. It was in vain he remonstrated with the old Matoushka; she was only too glad to be able to wring his heart.

Father Cyril found himself powerless to soften Velia's lot. The woman was cruel, but not with such manifest cruelty as to arouse the indignation of the neighbours, and give him sufficient ground for a representation to the archbishop, and a petition to get Velia placed elsewhere. He knew she suffered from a want of nourishing food; and as the winter passed by he saw that she went shivering about in very deficient clothing. He felt that he should have to stand by, his hands tied, and his tongue silenced, whilst the child he loved was dying by inches. He made an effort to induce the old Matoushka to allow Velia to come to his home once a week, by promising to provide her with wood split ready for her stove—a task too heavy for the little girl.

But Velia could not be prevailed upon to go to confession. Her father had thought it wrong, she hardly knew why, but that was enough.

Father Cyril appealed to Yarina; and Yarina, who was the richest woman in Knishi, invited the old Matoushka to spend a day with her, and bring Velia to play with her children. The old Matoushka went, but she locked Velia up in a closet to which there was no window. The girl was her slave, and no one should interfere between them. The Starosta, Okhrim, was on her side, and both of them triumphed over Father Cyril. They held fast a scourge to flog him with. For Velia's sake, he gave up the useless conflict.

It was almost a relief to Father Cyril when he, found himself, through the influence of his wife's relatives, transferred to a larger and more important parish on the other side of Kovylsk. He could do nothing for Velia, and her misery was greater than he could bear to witness. No letter had reached him from Alexis, and he did not know how to find out his place of exile. Besides, what could Alexis do? The knowledge of his child's position would only torture him.

Father Cyril could not even bid the girl farewell, except in the presence of the old Matoushka, who would not let Velia go out of her sight. He drew the child to him, looked into her appealing eyes, kissed her forehead, and tearing himself away took refuge in his church, where, before the altar, he prayed long and fervently for the conversion of the misguided Stundists to the Orthodox faith.

After Father Cyril was gone, Velia's life was a blank despair. To children there is no hope in the future, for they can foresee nothing. The daily glimpse of Father Cyril in church, the fond and pitying glance he never failed to give to the eager, miserable little face always turned to him; the sight of the young Matoushka and her children—all these had been something to look forward to, day by day. They had been what Velia lived by, the scanty food on which her young heart fed. Now this food was taken away, she grew hungry, with a desperate hunger, for the sight of a beloved face. There was no face to be seen in her world save the harsh, forbidding visage of her mistress.

It was the gossip of the village that the old Matoushka was about to marry Okhrim, the Starosta. This was not true, though Okhrim went often to visit the widow. Neither could ever arrive at a satisfactory knowledge of how much property the other possessed. Their conversation was always of money, or of the almost as interesting topic—the Stundist heresy. Both were supremely Orthodox. When Okhrim was there, Velia hardly dared to breathe. She crept into the darkest corners, and made herself as small as possible. Nothing amused Okhrim more than to force the trembling child to make a profound obeisance to the "Mother of God," a really handsome icon which occupied the place of honour in the hut. It proved how devout the priest's widow was.

"She'll make a good Christian yet," he was wont to say, with a sneering smile which frightened Velia more than his worst oath.

By day Velia scarcely knew a moment's rest. The old Matoushka was a strong old woman, and she had never had a child of her own. She did not know, and she did not wish to know, the limits of a child's strength. As long as Velia could move, she must be kept to work. When she could work no longer it was time for her to go to bed, on a ragged mattress behind the oven. It was warm, but it swarmed with crickets and cockroaches. Velia worked till her young limbs ached, and her eyes grew dim with sleep, before she could resolve to seek rest. But every night nature compelled her to succumb, and creep exhausted to her dreaded bed.

So the long dreary months of the winter wore slowly away—those bitter days and nights when her father and brother were marching across the icebound wastes of Siberia, often congratulating themselves that Velia was safe, and cherished as a daughter in Father Cyril's home. The girl cried after them incessantly in her heart, though her tyrant knew nothing of it. It is terrible, but children are sometimes too sad for tears or cries.

CHAPTER XXX

A STUNTED, emaciated, broken-spirited child, dumb, and not opening her mouth, was Velia when the spring came. Yarina's heart ached for her, but she could show the girl so little kindness! Her house was quite a mile away, on the farther side of Knishi; and the old Matoushka did not welcome visitors, unless they brought in their hands gifts worth having. Yarina was rich, and the old Matoushka was obsequious to her, but she gave her no chance of seeing Velia alone; and the warm clothes she brought for the girl lay in a chest till there was a chance of selling them.

The summer brought out-of-door work for Velia. It was better for her than the dark, cold days of winter, when she was always under the lash of her mistress's tongue. But in every other way her lot was unchanged, and the toil was even harder. She had never been at school since Father Cyril left.

The priest who had succeeded him was one of the old sort—a man after Okhrim's own heart, except that he was very eager after dues, and extorted a great deal more money from his parishioners than Father Cyril received. The new Batoushka could drink like a man, said Okhrim; and was a sharp hand at making bargains. The drinking shops prospered, and the congregation in church dwindled. But there were little secret meetings in the village for reading the Bible, where the seed sown by Father Cyril, as well as by the Stundists, was springing up. Many of the people in Knishi knew now the difference between true religion and the imitation of it. But the chance of a real revival of religion in the Orthodox Church was gone from Knishi.

Yarina felt it more deeply than anyone else, and her heart yearned after her old friends the Stundists. She felt speechless indignation at the thought of their sufferings. She longed to hear them sing praises as if God was really listening to them, and praying as to a real Father ready to give good gifts to His children. There were many besides herself who remembered them with affection, and almost with remorse. There was no man now like Alexis, to whom they could go for intelligent counsel, or the friendly settlement of disputes. There was no woman like Matrona, or Tatiania, to watch beside the dying, and pray for them with simple, heartfelt prayers, which the passing soul could join in.

The last days of harvest were come, and every man and woman, except Yarina, were busy in the golden harvest-field, when one evening, as the air grew cooler, she strolled down her garden to the margin of the river, which formed one of the boundaries of it. She was quite alone, for the children were gone with the servants to the harvest-field. A tall, thin, overgrown lad was hiding among the thick forest of reeds, but crept away as she came into sight.

"Come out! I see you!" she called, in spite of the fact that she saw nobody. "I see and hear you. Come out, or I'll send for the Starosta."

Still there was no sign of any human being. She could hear the joyous twittering of birds, and the distant lowing of cattle feeding along the banks of the river, the swish of the current and the rustling of reeds, but there was no other sound. Yet she was sure someone was near her.

"Come out," she said gently, "and I'll help you, if you need help. Perhaps you are hungry, I will bring you food. Even if you are a thief, I am sorry for you."

She thought she had seen it before, but was not sure. It was a thin, pinched face—one that had been burned black under a scorching sun, and made pallid by cold and hunger. But the deep blue eyes that gazed beseechingly into her own touched some chord of memory.

The next moment she took the wayworn face between her hands, and kissed the sunburnt forehead.

"Thank God!" she cried. "You're none too soon. But oh, we must be careful! Stay, while I fetch you something to eat."

She ran hastily to the house, and brought back with her a knitting-basket and a stool. She could sit knitting on the bank of the river without anyone suspecting she had a companion hidden among the reeds. This artifice she had learned when she was a girl.

So Michael, lying out of sight, ate his food, of which he was sorely in need, and told the story of the journey to Eastern Siberia.

Yarina wept bitter tears, and flew into a passion of anger and horror as she listened. So many of her old friends dead—murdered, she called it—and the children! Nine of them, did Michael say? Was it true? Oh, the pity and the shame and the sin of it!

"Every night I go to the haunted hut," he said; "there's no danger of being found there. But all day long I linger here, on the chance of seeing Velia alone, but I have not seen her yet."

"I must!" he exclaimed. "I've money enough, if we can once get out of Knishi and reach Kovylsk. My mother's cousin in Odessa has given me money, and got somebody's passport for me. Only Velia will have to travel as a boy. I've got boy's clothes for her."

They discussed plans as long as they dared, until they heard the voices of the harvesters coming home in the bright moonlight. One thing only was settled, that Yarina should conceal enough food for every day among the reeds. Michael had been living on berries. It was a great thing to be supplied with food. He could afford to wait longer than he could have done otherwise.

But day after day passed by, bringing no chance of seeing Velia alone. The harvest was gathered in, and concealment among the reeds became more risky. The men had time to fish in the river; the children were playing about; and very soon the cutting of the reeds would begin. Then it would be impossible to hide among them.

Now, too, came the autumnal washing of clothes, after the harvest was over and before the winter set in. Troops of women and girls carried great bundles, hanging upon yokes, down to the little wooden pier, where the washing was done in the river, amid much laughing and gossiping. Michael was obliged to keep out of sight round a bend of the stream two or three hundred yards away. He could hear their voices, and often catch the words. Yarina stayed by the pier hour after hour, apparently watching her maid, but in reality hoping for a chance to speak to Velia, if the old Matoushka sent her down with any washing.

But the old Matoushka had no intention of exposing her rags to the criticism and derision of her neighbours. She reflected that she was the widow of a priest. Waiting till the bulk of the merry party had gone home with their dripping burdens, she went down to the pier, with Velia dragging after her, broken-hearted and despairing. The harvest had brought no joy to her, for she had not been permitted to speak to one of her old neighbours and friends.

The poor girl knelt down on the wet planks, and stooped over the water, washing the old clothing with her wasted hands and arms. The last peasant had gone, muttering a sulky "Good-night" to the old Matoushka.

They were quite alone now. Behind Velia was her oppressor—the hard woman to whom she was a slave, and from whom she could not escape. A terrible winter lay before her; for in this, the misery of children is greater than that of beasts—that they can foresee as well as remember. Life was a confusing mystery and an intolerable burden to her. Why did not God let her die? Her misery had taken such hold upon her that she had forgotten even the prayers her mother had taught her. Only the Lord's Prayer, which she heard daily in the church, remained in her memory, but even that was now connected in her mind with blows and curses.

The night was falling fast, but a lovely light was still lingering where the sun had gone down, and was reflected with changeful opal colours on the swift stream. She paused for a moment to look round, and then, as if some mischievous hand had snatched it from her, the old petticoat she was washing floated away down the shining river.

Velia sprang to her feet, and stood paralysed with terror for an instant or two. She heard the loud breathing of the old woman close beside her, and felt rather than saw the heavy hand lifted against her. With an agonised shriek, caring no longer what became of her, she sprang into the rapid current, which flowed under the end of the pier. To her dying day, the old Matoushka was not sure that her blow had not thrown her in.

Michael heard the cry, and saw a girl floating rapidly down towards him. In an instant, he plunged into the water, and dragged her out of the dangerous current into his hiding-place among the reeds. There was scarcely light enough for him to see the face, and this was not the sweet, smiling face of his young sister. Yet some hope, mingled with fear, set his pulses throbbing. Could this girl be Velia?

He did not know what to do. If he lingered, the life might leave the half-drowned frame, but if he called for aid, both of them would be discovered. He laid his hand on her heart to feel if it was beating, and in the bosom of her ragged dress, he found a Testament. No doubt it was Velia! No one but a Stundist girl would carry a Testament about her in secret. God had brought her to him as if by a miracle.

He would not stir, but he prayed fervently for direction. Was it a fancy, or did he really feel his mother's hand on him, restraining him? There was a sense of her soothing presence upon him, as there had been before in Knishi. No; he must keep silent. The water, heated all day by the sun, had not been very cold, and he held Velia closely pressed to him in his arms. As soon as it was quite dark, he saw a lantern moving hither and thither in Yarina's garden, and her clear voice came distinctly to his ear.

"No," she said, "it's not any use searching for it any longer. All of you go in, and get to bed. I'll stay out a little while."

But before Yarina came, he felt Velia stirring in his arms, and breathing with long-drawn sighs. She had not been many minutes in the water, and had become unconscious rather from fright than from drowning. Michael laid his hand gently on her mouth.

"Keep silent! Oh, keep silent!" he said. "I am here—Michael, your big brother."

"Are we dead?" she whispered, as she opened her eyes on the thick tangle of reeds. "Are we dead and buried?"

Yarina herself was cautiously drawing near, swinging her lantern, and calling the cat in a loud voice. When she was sure everyone had returned to the house, she came on quickly.

He parted the reeds, and came towards her, carrying Velia in his arms. They listened to the girl's account of how she had flung herself into the river, but she could not say whether or no her mistress had pushed her.

"But she will rouse the neighbours to seek you!" cried Yarina. "They will come at once to search the river banks. And who knows! Okhrim squints askance at me, as if he suspected me of being one of you. He can't bear my adopted little ones. They may search my house, and all over the place. Michael, you and Velia must get away to the forest at once."

The village was already sinking into stillness and darkness, except the inn, where the window was still lit up. But they avoided the street as much as possible, and stole along little by-paths familiar to them. It was not so late that the watch-dogs were in full vigilance, and they only growled a little in the fold-yards. The sky was full of stars so bright as to cast their shadows before them as they stepped southwards. All the pleasant yet weird sounds of night accompanied them; the shrill sighing of the wind across the stubble of the cornfields; the drowsy twittering of the birds, roused a little by their passing footsteps; the melancholy cry of the owls flitting past them in pursuit of the night-moths; the bats were zig-zagging through the sweet air, especially over the ponds, and a thin white mist hung all over the land. Michael and Velia walked on hand in hand, almost speechless, but immeasurably happy. It seemed to them as if they were wandering in some utterly strange country, and, exhausted as they were with the perils and the strong emotions of the last few hours, they only felt a joy beyond words.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE forest was dark with a blackness that blotted out every object. But here they were absolutely safe till morning. There was not a man in Knishi who would dare to enter it. Michael lighted Yarina's lantern, and guided Velia to the hut. His dreamy joy was changing into a clear, rejoicing triumph over the success of his perilous undertaking. He had rescued his sister, and the rapture of a saviour was his. True, there were perils ahead, but none like those through which they had already passed.

He made Velia lie down on his bed of dried leaves, but he slept little himself, his brain was too busy with exciting thoughts. All the past events crossed his memory—the happy life for a few years in Knishi, whilst the spirit of persecution slumbered a little; the goodness of Father Cyril, and the opposition he made to further persecution; the secret meetings for worship held in this haunted hut; the long fatal journey to Siberia; and the condition of the exiles, when he left them, just before the close of winter. All that was in the past, but it is a past which will never die out of his memory, and which will come back to him in every hour of quiet thought.

Before the first gleam of day, he roused Velia, for they were to meet Yarina at a corner of the forest past which the road to Kovylsk ran. In the glimpses they caught of the sky when they reached any opening of the trees, they saw the stars growing pale. Velia pressed closely to Michael's side as they drew near to the fearfully-haunted place. It was a grave in a deep ravine, and a tall, thin column of mist rose from it, wavering as if half alive. Trembling among the thick trees, which were still black with night, it had a mysterious and sinister appearance. Michael threw his arm round Velia, and bade her shut her eyes until they were well past the accursed spot.

At last they reached the outskirts of the forest. The sun was not above the distant horizon yet, but a sweet, soft light was everywhere diffused, a light without shadows. There was a murmur all about them of the awakening day. Michael turned towards the east, where dwelt his father and all his comrades, and watched the growing dawn. The same sun was already shining upon them, and the same Father in heaven was watching over them all.

It was not long before, in the stillness, they heard the shrill, complaining sound of creaking wheels; and Yarina came up driving alone in her dilijans. There was no time lost in climbing up beside her, for they were all anxious to put as great a distance as possible between themselves and Knishi. Yarina had heard nothing of any search after Velia.

Now, in the long, slow progress over the rough road, there was time enough for telling all the story of their lives since Michael and Velia were separated. Yarina listened, and often the tears filled her eyes. Why, these were children who were talking, young creatures who had never sinned against the laws of man, and not much against the laws of God. Yet they had suffered more than the worst of criminals ought to suffer.

It was true, then, what Father Cyril had once said incautiously—persecution was the weapon of the devil. Yarina left her dilijans at an inn, and accompanied Michael and Velia to Markovin's door, there bidding them good-bye, before ringing his bell. She kissed Velia again and again, and pressed her lips on Michael's forehead, sobbing and weeping.

"Tell them out there, in Siberia," she said, "that I'll not let my adopted children forget their own fathers and mothers. They shall hear all about it when they are old enough. I'm almost a Stundist myself, but I haven't got the spirit of a martyr, God forgive me!"

Neither had Markovin the spirit of a martyr. Nevertheless, he received his unwelcome visitors very kindly; taking care, however, to send a message to the presbyter of the church in Kovylsk that they were with him, and must be forwarded on their way immediately.

Michael noticed that the curtain which had formerly hung before the icon had been taken away, and a twinkling lamp burned in front of it. It was a significant sign that the spirit of persecution was abroad in Kovylsk, and that Markovin quailed before it.

Two days later Michael and Velia reached the railway station from which the exile party had started on their cruel journey. But they were going south now, instead of north. The train was almost due, and Michael ran with his passport in his hand to get their tickets.

The clerk glanced doubtfully at the passport, and pushed it back. "Not in legal form," he said curtly.

Michael's heart sank within him. How it was not legal he did not know, but any delay was dangerous.

At that moment Velia uttered a cry of joy, and he saw her rush away and fling her arms round a priest in a shabby cassock.

In a moment the priest took in the situation. Here was Velia, disguised as a boy; and yonder was Michael, turning away from the ticket clerk, distressed and perplexed. He took the passport from him.

"It is not visé'd properly," he said. "These two young people," he added, pleasantly, to the clerk, "have been parishioners of mine till a few months ago. I can vouch for them. Where are you going to?" he inquired of Michael.

The clerk knew Father Cyril by sight, and had heard him spoken of highly. Besides, it was impolitic to get into collision with a priest. He gave the tickets with an obsequious smile.

As the train went on to Odessa, Father Cyril, like Yarina, had ample time to hear the whole of the long and dreary story each had to tell. Velia sat on one side, with his arm about her, and her head resting on his shoulder, where she slept during the night. Michael was on the other hand, but the boy was too anxious to sleep. They talked in quiet and subdued voices; and as Father Cyril listened to them, his convictions grew deeper that persecution was as much a blunder as a crime. It had driven Nicolas back to the Orthodox Church, and made a coward and a hypocrite of him, but those who had gone into exile would never be won back.

Father Cyril did not lose sight of Michael and Velia until he had seen them safe on board a vessel bound for Glasgow. Michael's exultation at their escape was blended with grief at quitting his own country.

"I shall come back again when I am a man," he said earnestly, again and again; "not to your parish, Father Cyril, but to places where they are never taught anything true about God. I can't let my own people live and die in darkness, can I? So I must come back."

"Let it be as God wills," answered Father Cyril; "surely the Church will awake to her duties."

He watched whilst the vessel steamed slowly away amid the crowded shipping, and then turned back into Odessa, sad at heart. These young heretics were very dear to him.

CHAPTER XXXII

WHEN the old Matoushka saw her little victim carried swiftly away by the current, she stood paralysed, watching till Velia was out of her sight. Had she thrust the child in? She could not answer the question to herself. What could she do now? There was not a creature in sight. The nearest house was Yarina's, but it was on the other side of the river, and the bridge across was nearly half a mile off. The body would have sunk, or drifted far away, before she could get any help.

How she reached her hut, trembling and tottering under her load of wet clothing, she hardly knew. She sat down and did nothing. It crossed her mind that she would have to account for Velia's disappearance, but she had not strength sufficient to drag herself into the village. She swallowed a small glass of vodka, yet that did not give her courage enough to face the inquiries and remarks of her neighbours. Well, it would be of no use now. The girl was drowned. What will be, will be!

Doggedly she set about getting her supper, but she could not rid her mind of the vision of the girl drowning. She lit one wick of her lamp, but the corners of the hut were very dark, and she soon lighted all three. The silence was alarming; there was no frightened footfall or pitiful sigh in the hut. The old Matoushka tried to laugh away her own fancies, but in the stillness she could hear the terrified scream uttered by Velia when she fell into the river.

It was a great relief when she heard the familiar footstep of her friend Okhrim. He entered the illuminated hut, blinking as he came in from the darkness.

"No, no," she answered; "I'm in great trouble. I've something serious to tell you."

"Velia drowned!" he exclaimed, when she had finished her account. "Do you know what folks are sure to say?"

She could guess very well what would be said. Okhrim chuckled inwardly, and said to himself, "Now I have her between my finger and thumb."

Okhrim sat silent for some time, lost in thought. Then he looked at her with triumphant cunning.

"I advise you to let her disappear," he said. "Clava disappeared from the church-house in Father Cyril's time, and why shouldn't Velia? Wake up to-morrow and find her gone. Go at once and tell the Batoushka; and come to me as Starosta. If the body is found, it will account for the disappearance. I'll report it to the authorities at Kovylsk."

She fetched out her best vodka, and brought some bread and cheese, and sat by, not able to eat, and marvelling silently at a man's appetite. After it was satisfied, Okhrim resumed the conversation.

"We'll settle that by and by," he answered, with a sneer. It would not be necessary now to marry the old widow. He could squeeze what money he liked out of her.

Some months after Michael and Velia reached Scotland, they received the following letter from their father:—

   "BELOVED CHILDREN,—Grace be with you, mercy, and peace from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love. Let us first praise God for His tender mercies both towards you and towards us. Our kinsman in Odessa has written me concerning you. May the blessing of God Almighty rest upon him and Father Cyril! I long to hear from yourselves that you prosper and are in health, and that your souls prosper.

   "I charge you, my beloved son, that you use all diligence in your studies; especially that, as far as possible, you learn something of healing, that when you return to us, you may be like Luke, the beloved physician. This knowledge will be useful to you wherever your 'lost' is cast. Let my well-beloved Velia learn all that a woman should know: how to nurse the sick, teach and bring up children, make garments, guide the house, and glorify the Lord in doing little things. These things do, and you will gladden your father's heart.

   "For ourselves, the loving-kindness of our God towards us is marvellous. I will write you particulars. He has given us favour in the eyes of our neighbours; more especially of the police officer and Starosta, who is a Mongol, and cares nothing about our religion. I do all his writing and accounts for him; and he deals pleasantly with us. We have made a decent home—or homes, rather—of the hut and its barns; and we live in great harmony and peace together. Katerina has another child to comfort her for the babe she lost on the journey. All the rest are well both in body and soul. As we are dwelling not far from the frontier of Mongolia, Khariton Kondraty and his son Sergius are learning the Mongol language, to the intent that when our term of banishment is over, they may go forth, even as our Lord sent His first disciples, to preach the kingdom of God. He said, 'Freely ye have received, freely give.' It is the bread of life and the water of life they will give to a hungered and thirsty nation.

   "Rejoice, my children, Paraska has joined her husband, Demyan. She came to Irkutsk in the service of the Countess Nesteroff, whose son, Valerian, is in exile in Saghalien. Paraska came herself to tell us, and to bring news of our dear little ones left behind in Knishi. They stand fast, poor lambs! in our faith; all but the infants who were too young to know anything of it. Yet we trust them to Him who took little children into His arms, blessing them. Paraska further told us that Paul Rodenko's wife, Halya, has joined him in Saghalien; and that his letters are full of courage, and thanksgiving to our Father in heaven. There, as well as here, there are souls eager to listen to the glad tidings of salvation; and in every place of banishment whither our people go, the Lord's name is magnified. Is not this better than houses and lands, and the honour and praise of men? 'I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.' Remember these words, my beloved ones. Our term of banishment will end in 1904. What we shall then do, God alone knows. But if it be His will, I will meet my son at Odessa—a young man then—and we will confer together how we can serve both our Lord and our country. For Russia is dear to us all; the people are our people; the Czar is our ruler, whom God has set over us. We are ready, not only to be in bonds, but to die for Russia. We dedicate ourselves and our children to the well-being of our fatherland. God save Russia!

   "May the blessing of God rest upon all your mother's kindred! We cannot recompense them, but they shall be recompensed by Him who said, 'Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.'

   "Now, my beloved, 'unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen.'"

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of In the hollow of His hand

IN THE HOLLOW

OF HIS HAND