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THE LONG ROAD 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN OXENHAM 
 
 AUTHOR OF " BARBE OF GRAND BAYOU," " HEARTS IN 
 
 EXILE," "THE GATE OF THE DESERT," "PROFIT 
 
 AND LOSS," "WHITE FIRE," ETC., ETC. 
 
 fifotk 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1913 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1907, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1907. 
 Reprinted March, July, 1907 ; April, 1908; August, 1913. 
 
 J. 8. Cashing & Co. Berwick & Smith Oo. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
THE LONG ROAD 
 
 271288 
 
THE LONG ROAD 
 
 i 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ONE of the profoundest impressions of Stepan 
 Iline's childhood was mud, and one of the most last- 
 ing. Just as the clammy mud had stuck to his aching 
 little feet on the long, long road from Kazan in Russia 
 to Irkutsk in Siberia, the road that seemed as if it 
 would never end, so the recollection of it hung dark 
 in his memory for many a long year in fact, until 
 he grew to manhood and had other and better things 
 to think about. 
 
 And even then the mud was never to be quite for- 
 gotten, because the sight of Katia made him think of 
 it at times, and at such times he smiled, though it was 
 no smiling matter when he was up to his knees in it. 
 For, you see, Katia had come to him in the mud and 
 he had never forgotten the very first time he saw her. 
 
 "Cling tight to my gown, little Stepan, or thou wilt 
 be lost in the mud !" said his mother, as she had said 
 it many scores of times before. 
 
 And each time Stepan took a fresh grip of her coarse 
 
 NOTE. The extraordinary decree on which this story is founded 
 is not an effort of the imagination, but simple, historical fact. 
 
 B I 
 
2 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 woollen gown, and dragged his feet out of the sticky 
 mud, and plunged them in again, and dragged them 
 out again, and so managed to get along by her side 
 somehow. 
 
 They were his own feet, he knew, because he could 
 see them, or the lumps of mud that represented them, 
 at the ends of his own two legs, but he could not feel 
 them, except as weights. And if the mud had not been 
 so very cold he would not have minded, indeed he would 
 rather have liked plunging through it. But the mud 
 was cold as ice, and it was only sometimes at night 
 that his feet got warm again, and even hot, and tingled 
 and smarted. That was when his father or mother 
 was not too weary to chafe them back to life. At other 
 times they felt like frozen stones and were so heavy 
 that he could scarcely drag them along. 
 
 Where the ground was frozen hard his mother would 
 give him her hand, and he would trot along contentedly, 
 knowing that sooner or later they would stop and would 
 perhaps have something to eat would certainly lie 
 down and go to sleep. And going to sleep was the 
 very best thing life offered him in these times. 
 
 But in the bad places, where the frozen mud was 
 churned into sticky paste by the hundreds of feet in 
 front, his mother had to hold up her gown to her knees 
 or she could not have got through at all. And his 
 father trudged heavily in front laden with the things 
 he had brought all the way from their old home in 
 
THE LONG ROAD u 3 
 
 Kazan, some of his tools and odds and ends that 
 would be of service when they reached their journey's 
 end and were allowed to settle down in this new country. 
 
 His father spoke little, and his face was always set 
 in a gloomy frown, for he was all the time wondering 
 why such things were, and the answer was always just 
 beyond him. 
 
 There were close upon two hundred in their convoy, 
 men, women, and children. There were more when 
 they started. The weaker ones had reached their 
 journey's end quicker than the stronger. But they 
 would not have made good settlers, so they were just 
 as well where they were, in the snowdrifts, in the 
 swamps, by the roadside, just where they fell and 
 were left behind. 
 
 "Is it far, little mother?" asked little Stepan, for the 
 twentieth time that day. 
 
 "Not far now, my man," said his mother, cheerfully, 
 for the twentieth time also. 
 
 So little Stepan floundered on hopefully. For, al- 
 though he had had the same answer so often before, and 
 he was tramping through the mud still, his mother's 
 voice always put fresh heart into him. Besides, the 
 mud was so deep just here, and there was so much of 
 it, that he thought, from experience, that they must 
 be coming to a village. The mud was always deepest 
 as they came into or went out of a village. 
 
 "I can see the houses," said his mother at last. 
 
4 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 "Shall we get something to eat, little mother?" 
 
 "Please God," said his mother, and little Stepan 
 took a fresh grip of her gown, and drew his feet out of 
 the mud with a manful jerk, and plunged them in again 
 with resolution. For even when the village folk had 
 given all they could spare to those in front, there was 
 always some one who could find a crust for little Stepan. 
 
 The villagers crowded their doors to see them pass, 
 and the doleful song the prisoners sang emptied the 
 scanty cupboards into their eager hands. For most of 
 those who gave had in their time they or their for- 
 bears been in like dismal case, and they were used to 
 giving to the unfortunates on the long road. 
 
 By reason of little Stepan 's very short legs, his father 
 and mother were generally toward the rear of the com- 
 pany, and but for the pleading of his hungry little face 
 would often have come off badly in the quest for food. 
 
 As now. The melancholy chant of the hungry 
 seeking bread rose and fell along the wide street of the 
 village. The weary eyes of the travellers clung long- 
 ingly to the wooden houses where men and women 
 dwelt year in, year out. They thought of the homes 
 they had once had in Russia, and wondered hopelessly 
 if they would ever have homes again. The whiffs of 
 wood smoke that blew down to them from the chim- 
 neys, now and again, were very sweet. They were 
 almost as good as food. They sniffed them up eagerly. 
 
 Some got loaves of black bread, some got pieces of 
 
THE LONG ROAD 5 
 
 ttt 
 
 meat. But these were the fortunate early comers. 
 The later ones got little but pitying looks which did not 
 go far toward the satisfaction of clamouring stomachs. 
 
 At the door of the first house stood a man and his 
 wife, and a small girl with her head pushed through 
 between them, watching the long procession pass. 
 
 They had long since given what they had to give. 
 They could only shake their heads at the rest. They 
 were beginning to feel hurt at the reproachful looks that 
 were cast at them, as though they had not done their best. 
 
 Little Stepan stopped in front of them and looked at 
 the little girl. She was very pretty. She wore a close 
 little cloth cap, and her fair curls came streaming out 
 below it. Her eyes were very dark blue, and full of 
 wonder and pity. 
 
 She looked at little Stepan and Stepan looked at her. 
 She was the prettiest little girl he had ever seen in his 
 life. 
 
 Then, of a sudden, she drew her hand through from 
 behind, and held it out to him, with a large round cake 
 in it just from the oven. 
 
 It was quite too good an offer for a hungry boy to 
 refuse. Little Stepan's white teeth were in it as he 
 nodded his little thanks. Never in his life had he 
 tasted so good a cake nor seen so pretty a little girl. 
 
 And as he ate he stared hard at her, and never for- 
 got how nice she looked, with her streaming curls and 
 her blue eyes full of wonder and pity. 
 
6 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 " Da, now ! You've given away your supper, Katenka, 
 and it's all you'll get to-night," said the mother, half 
 angry at such uncalled-for generosity. 
 
 And little Stepan, understanding too late, stopped his 
 hungry little jaws with an effort, and held out the scrap 
 of cake that was left to the supperless one. 
 
 But the small girl shook her head, and smiled, and 
 clung shyly to her mother's dress, for little Stepan was 
 thick with mud, and it had splashed up even to his face 
 and almost hid it. But what little Katenka had seen 
 of it she had liked. 
 
 "The Good God and all His Holy Angels keep you, 
 little Katenka!" said Stepan's mother, and then the 
 dismal company passed on. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 AND always as they walked, little Stepan's father 
 Ivan Iline, of Kazan, in the far-away province by the 
 great river Volga trudged along with bent head and 
 perplexed face, like a grim note of interrogation. 
 
 His slow mind was always asking: " Why is this? 
 Why are we here?" and he could never find any rea- 
 sonable answers to those simple questions. 
 
 A dull-witted mind of a surety ! All the day he was 
 full of bitter thought, and fuller still when they stopped 
 for the night, and his mind had nothing but itself to 
 feed upon, and his body not much more. 
 
 For this was before the days of organised exile. 
 Badly organised as it came to be a few years later, and 
 full of heart-breaking cruelties from that day to this, 
 the days before, when the unfortunate ones were 
 driven across the steppes like cattle, but with less care, 
 and with no provision of food save such as they could 
 find or beg for themselves, the days before were black 
 days indeed. 
 
 At home in Kazan, Ivan Iline had been a blacksmith, 
 honest, hard-working, and contented, owing no man 
 anything, and giving fullest value for the money he 
 earned by sweat of brow and strength of arm. A man 
 
 7 
 
8 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 at all times given more to unceasing labour than to talk 
 or thought save of the matter in hand, the meaning of the 
 sudden catastrophe which had befallen him, uprooted 
 his home, and launched him on the long road to Siberia, 
 was still hidden from him, and still furnished his slow 
 mind with ceaseless food for dull speculation. 
 
 A Jew trader, returning from the great fair at Nijni 
 Novgorod, had stopped one day at Iline's forge for some 
 repairs to his wagon. And so well had they been done, 
 and at so reasonable a price, that the Jew, in the ful- 
 ness of his heart and the recollection of many profitable 
 overreachings at the fair, added to the paltry settle- 
 ment the gift of a packet of snuff. Snuff of so innocent 
 and adulterated a quality that, lacking purchasers, 
 he had found himself under the painful necessity of 
 using it himself, and he something of a connoisseur. 
 
 To the brawny smith it was a novelty and of ample 
 strength. A hearty sneeze now and again, as he 
 rested on the hammer, cleared his head and refreshed 
 him. He felt the better for it. After sneezing he would 
 even talk at times of matters outside the range of his 
 eyes. The snuff seemed to waken his brain from its 
 bucolic torpor. 
 
 But the awakening of sluggish brains even spas- 
 modically through the taking of adulterated snuff 
 was not to the liking of those in authority, since their 
 position was secure only so long as they could block 
 all windows to the soul and keep the people in darkness. 
 
THE LONG ROAD ^ 9 
 
 This man was catching stray gleams through the 
 cracks in the shutters. He was without doubt a Pro- 
 gressive. Before long he would be for pulling the shut- 
 ters down. He was better away. 
 
 And presently Ivan Iline found himself footing it 
 wearily to Siberia, with the fragments of his household 
 gods on his back, and his wife and little son plodding 
 behind, his sole alleged crime snuffing. The pun- 
 ishment seemed somehow out of proportion to the 
 offence. 
 
 Most of his time, as he walked, was taken up in 
 puzzled wonderment, but now and again a fellow- 
 prisoner, tramping alongside, would open his sore 
 heart and expect a return in kind. And so he learned, 
 of this one and that, that he was not the only one who 
 suffered for small cause. 
 
 One was there because he had failed to pay his taxes. 
 Another for cutting firewood on forbidden ground. 
 Another for not being able to hold his tongue ; he had 
 been in the army and had permitted himself to reply 
 to the taunts of a superior. And still another because 
 he had shown so little thrift that he became a burden to 
 the community. 
 
 They were all gloomily puzzled at the severity of 
 their punishments. How should they know, with their 
 minds accustomed only to their own small twilight 
 concerns, that those who ruled had but lately themselves 
 awakened to the fact that, beyond the confines of their 
 
io THE LONG ROAD 
 
 own land, lay a new and mighty country teeming with 
 latent possibilities, gold, and silver, and iron ; timber, 
 and grain, and furs ; fish, flesh, and fowl, sources 
 of wealth illimitable, lacking one thing only for its 
 exploitation man. Unproductive, therefore, to the 
 State, till man in sufficiency should be prevailed 
 upon to turn it to account. And as man's only desire 
 was to stop where he was and to be left alone, and he 
 showed quite unaccountable reluctance for adventure 
 in unknown parts why, there was nothing for it but to 
 drag him up by the roots and transplant him to the 
 Happy Land by force. Whence, marvels of in- 
 justice, unspeakable brutalities, miseries untold, and 
 the corruption in high places that always follows 
 autocratic power misused. 
 
 So month by month, and year by year, the doleful 
 companies streamed across the steppes to the Promised 
 Land, good and bad all bound together by the iron band 
 of evil circumstance. 
 
 And those who survived the horrors of the long road 
 settled thankfully, if perforce, where they were allowed 
 to, and the rest marked the road with their bones and 
 heartened the next comers to struggle on to their 
 appointed ends. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 BUT little Stepan's recollections of the long road were 
 not entirely and only of mud, though the mud stuck 
 to him longest. 
 
 It was springtime when they left their home in 
 Kazan, and he was nine years old. He was now past 
 ten, and they were still on the road a long, long walk 
 for small legs even if they were sturdy ones. 
 
 Spring, summer, autumn, winter, and spring 
 again, the little feet had padded sturdily alongside the 
 heavier ones. In the summer and autumn they covered 
 twice the necessary distance each day, for then the 
 steppes were gay with flowers and the woodlands rich 
 with fruit. There were endless leagues of soft green 
 grass enamelled with daisies and primroses, mile- 
 long stretches of vivid yellow buttercups, and here and 
 there blue forget-me-nots in such profusion that the 
 small boy stood and looked first at the ground and then 
 at the sky, to see if by chance some of it had not fallen 
 on the earth. 
 
 Oh, a wonderful place, those great Siberian steppes 
 at their best, when the sun shone out of a cloudless 
 sky, and quite to the liking of a small boy of an inquiring 
 
 turn of mind. 
 
 ii 
 
12 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 All day long he was never still for a moment. A 
 dozen times a day he would break from his mother's 
 side with a whoop and speed away after sparrows and 
 cuckoos, and the little tufted steppe-quails which ran 
 up fearlessly to see what all these strangers meant. 
 And sometimes his mother's eyes would grow anxious, 
 when he disappeared completely among the grasses 
 which reached far above his head. But always, sooner 
 or later, he came running in again from here and there, 
 laden with flowers, and full of deeds of prowess almost 
 done. 
 
 And sometimes the way led through mighty forests 
 of elms and poplars and maples and lofty silver birches, 
 and in the thickets he would find wild cherries and straw- 
 berries and crab-apples, and in these times he was glad 
 they had come. 
 
 Then, out in the open again, as the year faded, the 
 great steppes grew the colour of gold, and only in the 
 swampy places and half -dried water-pans could he find 
 any flowers, and the wild fruits wasted on their branches 
 and the birds went away after the sun. 
 
 And then the first snow came, and he took a grip of 
 his mother's gown and trudged stolidly with the rest, 
 and asked her twenty times a day if it was still far they 
 had to go, and each time she said, "Not far now, my 
 man," as cheerfully as she could, and little Stepan 
 tramped doggedly on. 
 
 But the winter was so dreadful a time that it almost 
 
THE LONG ROAD 13 
 
 shut the door on the good times before. The sky was 
 always gray, when it was not black dotted with falling 
 snowflakes. The wind cut like a lash, the mud was 
 icy cold and stuck like glue, and it was only at night 
 that he began to get a trifle warm, and not always then 
 unless they lay in a wood and could get their fires to 
 burn. 
 
 For years afterwards little Stepan used to break into 
 sudden sobs in his sleep at times, in nightmares of cold 
 cramped feet that felt dead and buried in the icy black 
 mud ; and cold chills would run down his spine at dim 
 recollection of frosted fingers with ragged nails that 
 groped for a coarse woollen dress and scr-r-r-r-raped 
 in it till they hooked and held. And when his mother 
 heard him sobbing in his sleep like that, she always 
 knew what it was, and she would take his feet into her 
 warm hands and chafe them gently, as she used to do 
 on the long road, and sing softly to him till the bad 
 dream passed. 
 
 It was then, too, that he grew familiar with the long, 
 melancholy howl of starving wolves. And that, 
 curiously enough and yet quite comprehensibly, stirred 
 him not to fear but to childish anger. For his mother, 
 who was brave in the dark and cared nothing for the 
 icy mud, so far as he could see, at all events, 
 shivered at sound of the wolves till her teeth chattered, 
 and she went in dread of them all day and all night. 
 
 And at such times little Stepan would forget his 
 
i 4 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 frozen feet and fingers for the moment, and would say 
 boldly: " Don't be afraid, little mother. If the wicked 
 wolves come, I will kill them." 
 
 And as the wolves never came near enough for 
 Stepan to kill them, it was hatred and anger he felt 
 for them, but no fear. And that which was in him as 
 a boy was in him as a man. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 AFTER they left the village where little Katenka 
 gave Stepan her supper-cake, they had still nearly 
 two months of the road before them, for Irkutsk lies 
 more than four hundred miles farther to the east, 
 and the roads were bad and the going was slow. 
 
 But however keen the wind, and however cold the 
 mud, little Stepan never felt either as he had done 
 before. 
 
 The remembrance of little Katenka J s shy, rosy face 
 was like a warm fire inside him, and he thought and 
 thought and thought about her till she seemed like an 
 old friend to him. 
 
 And when the gray sky softened and broke, and the 
 sun came through, and the brief spring was upon them 
 again, he thought of her still as he gathered his armfuls 
 of flowers by the roadside, and wished she was there 
 so that he could give them to her. 
 
 And over and over again he said to himself, "The 
 Good God and all His Holy Angels keep you, little 
 Katenka!" though his ideas as to what it meant were 
 dim and misty. But his mother had said it and so 
 it was good, and it certainly meant good to little Ka- 
 tenka. 
 
 '5 
 
16 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 But the longest road comes to an end and they 
 reached Irkutsk at last, and it was strange to Stepan 
 to have a roof always above his head at night again, 
 after living under the stars for over a year ; and to be 
 hedged in all round by houses, after the boundless 
 width of the long road. 
 
 But he found the town better than the steppes in 
 some respects if wanting in others. For here, at all 
 events, were food and warmth as matters of course; 
 here were boys and girls to play with; and here was 
 no perpetual moving on, no icy black mud to plaster 
 one from foot to head, and no frozen toes and fingers. 
 
 And here, for his mother, was the regular round of 
 housewifely duties to which she had all her life been 
 accustomed, and therein, since she lived for her hus- 
 band and her boy, content and happiness such as she 
 had hardly dared to expect again. 
 
 Iline was very soon in full work. He was just the 
 man for a new country and a growing town, and such 
 an excellent workman that success met him with out- 
 stretched hands. His forge was never idle from the 
 day he set it up, and by degrees the merry clink of 
 hammer on anvil dulled the remembrance of injustice 
 and oppression. He never quite forgot, however, and 
 remained to the day of his death a man of few words 
 and of thoughts apparently too heavy for him. 
 
 He worked hard, and it may be that he hammered 
 thoughts too dangerous for utterance into his ploughs 
 
THE LONG ROAD 17 
 
 M 
 
 and horseshoes and picks and shovels. But these 
 things were none the worse, and carried out of the forge 
 no messages save of excellent workmanship, and his 
 fame as a smith grew. His one indulgence was snuff- 
 taking, and none found fault with him for that. 
 
 It was a great day for little Stepan when he was 
 declared big enough to help in the forge, and thereafter 
 father and son worked side by side ; and the boy grew 
 till he topped his father in height, and could wield 
 even the heaviest sledge with equal skill, and learned 
 all that his father could teach him. Learned, also, 
 some of the thoughts that rolled confusedly in his father's 
 brain, and built upon them with his own, but gave no 
 voice to them beyond the limits of the forge, lest what 
 had been should be again, and he be sent still farther 
 afield. 
 
 For there were worse places even than Irkutsk. 
 
 And from his mother he learned the gentler and 
 higher things which it is a mother's special privilege 
 to teach. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 YOUNG Stepan Stepka to his father and mother 
 and a few besides, Stepan Ivanovitch elsewhere 
 had many friends. 
 
 He was by nature buoyant and light-hearted. The 
 troubles of the transplanting had come upon him at 
 too early an age to cloud him permanently. His roots 
 in the old country had not had time to strike deeply. 
 In the new soil they spread far and wide. 
 
 He never quite forgot the grimness of the long road, 
 but it lay far behind him like a black winter when the 
 summer is come, like a nightmare half remembered 
 at midday. 
 
 But there was one thing that he never forgot, and 
 that was the shy, rosy face of a small girl, pushed 
 between her father and mother, with wide eyes full 
 of wonder and pity, and the little hand that shot out 
 instantly to the need of a hungry small boy and tendered 
 him all she had. 
 
 He knew scores of maidens in Irkutsk, and some of 
 them lacked little in art as they knew it or nature, 
 in their appeal to a man, but they did not appeal to 
 him. His straight blue eyes set many a maid's heart 
 
 fluttering, but that was not his fault or of any set pur- 
 
 18 
 
THE LONG ROAD 19 
 
 u 
 
 pose. He held them all in equal esteem and treated 
 them all alike. 
 
 His mother watched cautiously, and with natural 
 anxiety, to see where his choice would fall. But it 
 fell nowhere, and apparently he had no thought of 
 marrying. 
 
 And, since that was unnatural, she rallied him at 
 times. 
 
 "Art difficult to please, my lad," she would say. 
 "There is Nadeja Markoff making eyes like cart- 
 wheels at thee, and thou as blind to them all as a bat." 
 
 "Does she so, little mother? She has beautiful 
 eyes, has Nadeja. But then so has Natalie Minof, 
 and so has Masha Kozlo. They are all as pretty as 
 flowers." 
 
 "And thou findest none prettier than the rest?" 
 
 "'Twould be hard to choose. I like them all." 
 
 "Ay, ay 'like' ! But it is time thou wast settling 
 to one among them. I would like to see thee wedded 
 before I die. And maybe dandle thy children on my 
 knee!" 
 
 "Who talks of dying? Seems tome thou gro west 
 younger every day, little mother. And as to wedding 
 - and children ! Bozhe-moi, time enough for all 
 that ! Art surely getting tired of thy big lad." 
 
 "Nay, but I would have little ones as well. Nadeja, 
 now she is pretty, and she is modest, though she 
 does make cart-wheel eyes at thee. But that may be 
 
20 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 excused her since she cannot help it. And she will 
 have a portion " 
 
 " Will she now ? What a provident little mother it is ! " 
 
 " And she will come to thee if thou but lift thy finger. 
 May'st wait longer and fare worse." 
 
 "All the same I will wait, little mother." 
 
 " May'st wait too long." 
 
 " My time will come like other men's, but I doubt if 
 all Nadeja's pretty cart-wheels will bring it." 
 
 And so from time to time, as the wish grew in her, 
 she sounded him in other directions, but got no nearer 
 her mark, and wondered much why her boy stood un- 
 wed while all his comrades one by one found mates 
 and set up homes for themselves. 
 
 Not that she wished him away from her. Never 
 had mother better son. He was all that her heart 
 could wish. If she longed to see him happily wedded, 
 it was because she desired more for him than for her- 
 self in the matter. 
 
 And he was in a position to pick and choose, quite 
 apart from his good looks and kindly disposition. 
 
 Honest workmanship told in Irkutsk as elsewhere. 
 The name of Ivan Iline stood high among his fellows 
 for many a long mile outside the city, and there were 
 no farming or mining tools to equal his in all the prov- 
 ince. 
 
 His business had grown, and now he had men work- 
 ing for him, forging his tools and their own characters 
 
THE LONG ROAD 21 
 
 and futures under a master eye. And his right hand 
 in the forge, and in all his business affairs, was his 
 son Stepan, taller and broader than his father by 
 inches now, full as capable a craftsman, and gifted 
 in business matters with perhaps a somewhat wider 
 outlook the result of a more liberal training than 
 his father had ever enjoyed. 
 
 A desirable mate then for any girl who could cap- 
 ture him. Whence Nadeja's cart-wheels, and Natalie's 
 conscious looks whenever they met, and Masha's very 
 obvious beguilements. 
 
 He never spoke of little Katenka even to his mother. 
 She was only a memory, but a wonderfully living 
 one only a thought, as it were, but the brightest 
 and sweetest thought in his life. 
 
 The sweet child face, with its eyes full of wonder and 
 pity, framed in its tight little cloth cap from under which 
 streamed fair golden curls, stood out against the dim 
 background of the past like a silver moon in a dark 
 sky. He saw it in the white glow of the forge, in 
 the marbled coils of the swift blue river as it rushed to 
 the Arctic sea, in the dappled shadows of the poplar 
 and birch trees, in the flower-sprinkled meadows. 
 
 Little Katenka went with him on journeys and came 
 to him in his room. 
 
 He forgot much of the past, but he never forgot her. 
 His consciousness of living as a bein^ all himself seemed 
 to date from the day he first saw her. Before, he had 
 
22 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 been a child ; ever since, he had felt himself growing. 
 It was perhaps the first time he had been stirred quite 
 out of himself and had thought more about another 
 than about his own small concerns. 
 
 And absolutely all that he knew about her was that 
 she had the sweetest face and the prettiest pitiful eyes 
 in the world, and that her name was Katenka, that 
 is, Little Katia, and that she lived five hundred 
 miles away on the road to Russia. He did not even 
 know the name of her village, for on the long road there 
 was little to distinguish one village from another, except 
 that some gave more and some gave less where none 
 gave enough. 
 
 Nadeja might have eyes like cart-wheels, but little 
 Katenka's eyes were like stars. Natalie and Masha 
 might blush and prink, but little Katenka had only 
 looked at him with eyes and face full of wonder and 
 pity, and he never forgot just how she looked. 
 
 He had no conscious intention of ever seeking her. 
 The possibilities of doing so were very remote. She 
 might be dead. She might be married. Anything 
 might be. But until some other could take her place in 
 his imagination, and occupy his mind as she did, he 
 was content as he was, and Nadeja and Natalie and 
 Masha and all the rest might be as friendly to him as 
 they liked, but they could be no more. 
 
 And so his mother waited and watched and wondered, 
 and the days drew on. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THEN Dolgourof, the Governor, died, and Paschkin 
 came to rule Irkutsk in his stead. 
 
 Dolgourof was a man advanced in years, fond of his 
 ease and good living. Not a man to keep an overfirm 
 hand on the reins, yet not to be easily ousted from a 
 seat which he held chiefly by virtue of his relationship 
 to the Empress. He had held high command in the 
 army, and had married the Empress's sister. When the 
 time came for him to give place to younger men he was 
 given the post of Governor of Irkutsk, a little kingdom 
 as large as Great Britain and France combined, and 
 there, for fifteen years, he had played the easy-going 
 autocrat to his own and his people's satisfaction. 
 
 For the time being nothing could have better met 
 the needs of Irkutsk. Colonists, under the guise of 
 exile, were being drafted in in thousands. They arrived 
 off the long road smarting under manifold grievances. 
 They found an official atmosphere milder by far than 
 that they had left. They had lived in bureaucratic 
 bondage, cramped and fettered on every side. Here 
 they were free to expand and find themselves again, to 
 live wider lives, if so they chose, than ever before. 
 
 But the very freedom which permitted such expan- 
 23 
 
24 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 sive growth left loopholes also for a certain amount of 
 license. Dolgourof held the reins lightly and took his 
 ease. His subordinates could not put him to shame 
 by any display of Spartan rigour. Things grew some- 
 what lax. There came at times muffled growls from 
 Petersburg, especially when the yearly contributions 
 to the treasury fell more and more into arrear. For 
 Petersburg was a mighty maw with an inappeasable 
 appetite for gold. And when it was not fed, the worms 
 that battened on it made themselves heard. 
 
 And so, when Dolgourof died, they sent Paschkin 
 to Irkutsk, with orders to whip his province into the 
 paths of virtue and the full and prompt payment of its 
 dues, by any means he deemed fit. And the job was 
 to his liking. 
 
 He had been holding down the Khirgish Tartars, 
 and before he had done with them, the Tartars, what- 
 ever their original beliefs on the subject, were convinced 
 of the existence of a personal Devil, and their Devil 
 was known by the name of Paschkin. 
 
 Worried mothers quieted their children by threats 
 of Paschkin. 
 
 "Stop it, or I'll send thee to Paschkin !" never failed 
 to reduced a howl to a whimper and a whimper to terri- 
 fied silence. 
 
 "Paschkin get thee!" became the direst imprecation 
 a man could hurl at his enemy. 
 
 He was that Paschkin who kept his knouts steeped 
 
THE LONG ROAD 25 
 
 L* 
 
 in brine, in their short intervals of rest that Pasch- 
 kin who had not scrupled to knout women naked 
 that Paschkin who valued a man's life at one-tenth that 
 of a horse that Paschkin who had proved himself 
 able to keep order in a province when other men had 
 failed. 
 
 That he still lived, in spite of his brutalities, says 
 something for his tenacity and courage, if little for the 
 mettle of his subjects. No man ever qualified more 
 fully for sudden extinction than did his Excellency, 
 and yet he lived, and dealt out death all about him with 
 liberal hand, and in strange and terrifying fashions, and 
 all men trembled before him. 
 
 He was said to be an unacknowledged offshoot of 
 the royal tree. He had pushed his head up through the 
 mud that surrounded the throne, and his rapid pro- 
 motion gave colour to the report. He made his way by 
 sheer bull force of will and absolute heedlessness of 
 life his own or any other's. He ran amok with life, 
 and life gave way before him. 
 
 If not as the Tartars believed the arch-fiend 
 himself, he was undoubtedly at times possessed of 
 many devils. He had a mania one among many, 
 and all alike detestable for odd and terrifying forms 
 of punishment. He buried recalcitrant Tartars up to 
 their necks in the sand and galloped his Cossacks over 
 them. He put them in holes head downward with 
 their feet sticking out, and set his men to tent-pegging 
 
26 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 with their lances at the writhing feet. And when the 
 wine worked off sooner than he had anticipated, and 
 he lay awake of a night, he spent the time pleasantly 
 and profitably devising new vexations for his people. 
 
 His own way, wine, horses, and women those were 
 his objects in life in their proper order. Any thing 
 or body who came in between was clearly marked for 
 destruction. 
 
 When the men of Irkutsk heard that Paschkin was 
 coming, they shook in their boots. And some, whose 
 thumbs pricked unduly, took warning thereby, gathered 
 up their gear, and moved on into the wilderness while 
 yet there was time. Nature at its savagest seemed to 
 them preferable to Paschkin. 
 
CHAPTER VH 
 
 So Paschkin ruled in Irkutsk. 
 
 He gripped the reins with inflexible hands, and, 
 like a wilful driver, drew them tight and used the lash 
 simultaneously. 
 
 His power was absolute, and no man was found to 
 dispute his will. Petersburg and the Tzar were very 
 far away, and at best, to most of them, no more than 
 names names that spelt to some most grievous cruelty 
 and oppression. And Paschkin was on the spot and 
 his sole word was law, though his doings were surely 
 inspired by the Devil. 
 
 Before he had been there a month the wretched folk 
 whom he held in the hollow of his hand until such 
 time as he chose to close it and grind them to powder 
 had no delusions on the subject. Paschkin was the 
 Devil himself, unmistakably and incontestably. 
 
 The laxed lines were tightened with a ruthless twist, 
 new burdens were imposed, the tribute was brought up 
 to its maximum and more, and was despatched ahead 
 of time. Irkutsk toed the line with a jerk that almost 
 threw it on its back, and fell on troublous times. Life 
 and liberty, and all the smaller things, were dependent 
 
 on the whim of this one man, and he devoid of conscience 
 
 27 
 
28 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 or even human feeling, and answerable to none, least 
 of all to God, whose very distant acquaintance he had 
 dropped even before he began to get on in the world. 
 
 Ivan Iline had prospered under Dolgourof . His wife 
 had grown content and even happy, as the old memories 
 faded behind the newer activities. If only Stepka 
 would marry and provide her with a baby to dandle 
 on her knee and fuss over, she would ask no more. 
 
 And only in that one respect did Stepka fall short of 
 their desire. In every other way he was all that the 
 most exacting could have wished, a good son, an ex- 
 cellent workman, straight as a die, and of a joyous 
 disposition. 
 
 Under Paschkin's grinding rule, Iline, wise in the 
 memory of his transplanting, walked warily, kept a quiet 
 face and a silent tongue, lived modestly, and paid his 
 share of the increased taxes without a murmur. 
 
 He had no illusions respecting the new Governor. 
 The man was a menace at large. The wise man avoids 
 an obvious danger by every means in his power. As 
 far as lay in him he would see to it that Paschkin and he 
 came to no dispute. None but a fool puts himself in 
 the path of the lightning. 
 
 If Paschkin came across him he would fall in with 
 his humours. He would agree to his wildest demands. 
 He would give him no handle against him. He was too 
 old for strife and another uprooting. 
 
 But he did not know Paschkin. 
 
THE LONG ROAD 29 
 
 It was the Governor's business to learn all about 
 the men confided to his tender mercies as soon as 
 possible. 
 
 Within two days he had gone over the roll of citizens 
 of his capital, name by name, and had gathered into his 
 unfailing memory the points he required concerning 
 each. 
 
 Within a week his three-horse tarantas whirled up 
 to Iline's forge and stopped dead in its cloud of 
 dust. 
 
 Iline met him bareheaded at the door, with impassive 
 face and tumultuous heart. 
 
 "You are Ivan Ivanovitch Iline?" cried the bull 
 voice. 
 
 "At your service, Excellency," and Paschkin's keen 
 black eyes bored into him like probes. 
 
 "You are honest, quiet, industrious, they say, and 
 meddle with no man's business. Here twelve 
 years." 
 
 Iline bowed. 
 
 "What brought you?" 
 
 "I was transplanted, Excellency." 
 
 "What brought you?" 
 
 "The real reason or the given, Excellency?" 
 
 " What brought you ? " 
 
 "Irkutsk needed men. I took snuff." There was 
 snuff on Paschkin's braided coat, and some on Iline's 
 smock. 
 
3 o THE LONG ROAD 
 
 "You snuff still?" 
 
 "At times, Excellency." 
 
 "I name you for my council. You will come to- 
 morrow." 
 
 And at that Iline's heart sank, but his face remained 
 unmoved. He bowed silently. 
 
 "And this " said the Governor in his great voice, 
 swinging suddenly round on Stepka, who had remained 
 discreetly in a corner, out of sight as he thought, not 
 knowing Paschkin "is your son ? " 
 
 "At your service, Excellency," said Iline, and young 
 Stepan stood in view in all his height and breadth. 
 
 "A likely lad. Honest?" 
 
 "As steel, Excellency." 
 
 "I have a commission for him. You know Selem- 
 sinsk?" he asked of Stepka. 
 
 "By name only, Excellency. Since we came here I 
 have been only to the mountains and the lake." 
 
 "It is easily found five days back on the road you 
 came. As I passed I saw two horses there running on 
 the steppe, perfect blacks, and well matched. Irkutsk 
 waited and I could not stop. You will go to Selem- 
 sinsk, find out to whom they belong, and bring them 
 back with you. I give five hundred roubles for the pair. 
 You will say they are for Paschkin. You will start to- 
 morrow. You will get fresh horses where you need them 
 - and food. You will say, " I travel for Paschkin." 
 If any refuse you, I will hang him from his own lintel. 
 
THE LONG ROAD 31 
 
 Come to me an hour after sunrise," and the tarantas 
 was out of sight before the dust of its start had cleared 
 away. 
 
 And Ivan Iline looked at his son with tightened mouth 
 and a face that was no longer impassive. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 " FIVE days going, one for accidents, one day there ; 
 but returning you will take your time lest the blacks 
 suffer. You should be back in sixteen days." 
 
 "I will do my best, Excellency," said Stepka. 
 
 "I shall look for you in sixteen days," said Paschkin, 
 with a black frown. 
 
 "Should the blacks be out on the steppe, Excel- 
 lency" 
 
 "I give you one more day," growled Paschkin, the 
 evil humour in him rousing at such unaccustomed 
 questioning of his orders. 
 
 "Should the rains come and the roads go, Excel- 
 lency" 
 
 "I shall look for you in sixteen days," bellowed 
 Paschkin. "And you will see that the blacks do not 
 suffer." 
 
 And so, provided with a light tarantas on which was 
 affixed an imperial badge as an open sesame to every 
 door on the road, and three good horses, young Stepan 
 set off at a jingling gallop on the most eventful journey 
 of his life. 
 
 He was in the best of spirits. Here was an adventure 
 for one whose wanderings, since the martyrdom of the 
 
 32 
 
THE LONG ROAD 33 
 
 LM, 
 
 Jong road twelve years before, had never extended be- 
 yond the mountains in search of game, or to the shores 
 of the great lake, forty miles away, out of which their 
 mighty river came roaring full born. 
 
 It was a crisp September morning. The sun shone 
 brightly in a clear blue sky. The fur shuba his mother 
 had insisted on his taking seemed out of place, but she 
 knew that he would be glad of it later on. There had 
 been a spell of dry weather, and the roads, such as they 
 were, would be in good condition. He was travelling 
 under the all-powerful hand of Paschkin, and speed 
 was of the essence of his service. What more could a 
 man desire ? 
 
 As the ponderous pendulum ferry swung them slowly 
 across from the right to the left bank of the Angara, he 
 had time to make the more personal acquaintance of 
 his horses, looked into their startled eyes, stroked 
 their panting sides and soft, flapping noses, and enjoyed 
 to the full the deference extended to his position by all 
 on board. 
 
 Tunka, gleaming in the distance like a jewel under 
 sun and snow, flung him a God-speed as he climbed 
 into his seat again and swept away along the river-road 
 to the merry chiming of his horses' bells. And the 
 other passengers stood looking after him and said, 
 "Bozhe-moi, he travels for Paschkin, and without 
 doubt his skin is at stake," which Stepka would not 
 have looked upon as flattering. 
 
34 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 Past the monastery, to which he had often made 
 excursion with his father and mother, and then at last 
 the road parted from the river and wound away among 
 the hills. 
 
 And here in places the woods were ablaze with 
 colour, the poplars burning red, the birches flaming 
 yellow, and in below, the dark, unchanging masses of 
 the evergreens. Flowers, too, here and there, in swampy 
 bottoms, golden-rod and asters, wild mustard and 
 spirea, bluebells and forget-me-nots. And when he 
 came to the open, the land lay before him like a sheet 
 of gold, here and there patches of wheat sighing for 
 the sickle, with men and women in blue and red and 
 brown leisurely at work among it; and out beyond, 
 the mighty sweep of the steppe as yellow with its 
 withered grasses as the wheat itself. 
 
 At midday he stopped at a village of a dozen gray, 
 wooden houses, and drew up at the largest and asked 
 for food and fresh horses. 
 
 He had been thinking it all out as he drove along. 
 Paschkin bound him to a time limit, but gave him free 
 hand in the matter of requisitions. It would be justice 
 neither to himself nor his horses not to avail himself 
 to the full of the powers of his imperial badge. 
 
 The mistress of the house set to work at once pre- 
 paring a meal, but at the demand for horses the master 
 looked black. 
 
 "I travel for Paschkin," said Stepan, briefly; "and 
 
THE LONG ROAD 35 
 
 L* 
 
 I cannot help myself. Paschkin's word is that he who 
 refuses, hangs." 
 
 "Ach! He is the Devil, they say. When do you 
 return?" 
 
 "In fifteen, sixteen days, or thereabouts." 
 
 "Nu ! When the Devil drives " and he went out 
 sulkily to find horses. 
 
 The meal was good, and the horses were good, and, 
 thanks to the fear of Paschkin, they were off again 
 within the hour. And as they swept across the lonely 
 steppe and wound more slowly through the wooded 
 hills, the merry clash and tinkle of his bells stirred his 
 heart to song, and the sound of his going pealed far 
 along the plains and woke brief echoes in the lonely 
 aisles of the forest. 
 
 Here and there were swamps where his horses sank 
 to the knees and his wheels to the hubs, and all round 
 these the wild flowers still bloomed radiantly. And 
 here and there the road had gone to pieces and he had 
 to go warily. And at every hill he got out and walked 
 alongside his panting horses and heartened them by 
 word and hand. 
 
 But on the whole the roads were in good condition, 
 and when he rattled into a village of size, an hour after 
 sunset, he learned that it lay one hundred and twenty 
 versts from Irkutsk, and that was just one-fifth of the 
 extent of his journey. 
 
 Here again food and lodging were accorded him 
 
36 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 willingly, and here again the master of the house soured 
 at his demand for horses. 
 
 "Of a truth this Paschkin is the Devil, as they say. 
 Does he think we're made of horses? And the wheat 
 just cutting," he grumbled. 
 
 "You will have mine," said Stepan, soothingly. 
 
 "Of course. But one does not always use another 
 man's horses as one would one's own," with a meaning 
 look. 
 
 "Some might use them worse." 
 
 "He would be a rogue who used his neighbour's 
 horses worse than his own." 
 
 "You can judge by those I bring. But Paschkin 
 binds me to speed, and horses I must have. His word 
 was that he who refuses, hangs." 
 
 "He is the Devil. What time do you start?" 
 
 "At daybreak." 
 
 And while the dew still lay white upon the steppe, 
 and the shadows were still creeping in the clefts of 
 the hills, he 'muffled himself in his shuba and blessed 
 his mother, and whirled on his way as eagerly as though 
 he knew what awaited him at Selemsinsk. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE Governor's badge and the terror of his name 
 overcame all the difficulties of the way. Where the 
 village was of a size to boast a police office, Stepan 
 drove there at once and left them to arrange matters. 
 But the loneliest hut on the steppe had heard of Pasch- 
 kin and that he was the Devil, and no man offered his 
 head for the noose. 
 
 He was blessed with fine weather, and the roads 
 were in as good condition as that could bring about, 
 and on the evening of the fifth day he carried his merry 
 peal into Selemsinsk well up to time. 
 
 "Two black horses?" said the chief of police. 
 "Ay, they are Vasili Totsin's. And so Paschkin wants 
 them ! Totsin is proud of them, but if he'd known 
 Paschkin was coming, he'd have hid them in the steppe, 
 I trow." 
 
 "He won't wish to part with them?" 
 
 "You will see." 
 
 And after supper Stepan went along to Vasili Tot- 
 sin's house, the last house in the village going westward, 
 the first house you came to going east. 
 
 He knocked on the door, and it was opened instantly 
 by a girl who stood looking out at him. The light of 
 
 37 
 
38 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 the room was behind her. He could not see her face, 
 but she seemed of a shapely figure, and the light behind 
 rayed about her brown hair as in the pictures of the 
 saints. 
 
 "I have come to see Mr. Totsin about some horses," 
 said Stepan. 
 
 "Come in," said the girl. "I will find him. He is 
 with a neighbour," and Stepan stepped into the room. 
 
 And as the girl came into the full light of the lamp, 
 he fell back with an exclamation of profoundest amaze- 
 ment. 
 
 The girl stood looking at him in surprise. And 
 indeed he was good to look upon, but here was some- 
 thing beyond her comprehension. 
 
 His eyes were fixed upon her face in a look that 
 reminded her of their dog Van when he came home 
 once after a week's wandering on the steppe. There 
 was in it the craving of a mighty hunger, and joyful 
 satisfaction at rinding himself at home again, and 
 more. For the startled blue eyes of this strange young 
 man seemed to look through her, and beyond her, in 
 a way that would have been disconcerting but for the 
 rapt gladness that was in them too. 
 
 She was used to being looked at. The good God 
 had given her her looks and she rejoiced in them. But 
 no man had ever looked at her quite as this man did, 
 with a blazing star in each eye, and an eager hunger 
 in his face that made her wonder if he could be starving. 
 
THE LONG ROAD 39 
 
 And no wonder there were stars in his eyes, for here, 
 indeed, was a thing beyond belief almost. 
 
 For, day by day, as he rode across the steppe or 
 threaded the clefts of the wooded hills, he had said to 
 himself, " Supposing now just supposing I came 
 upon that village ! Should I know her again ? Should 
 I know her? She must be grown by this time almost 
 to a woman. Perhaps she has changed out of know- 
 ledge. Perhaps she is dead. Perhaps she died just 
 after I saw her and that is why her face appears to me 
 so constantly." 
 
 That was a dreadful thought and set him gloomy 
 for a space. But the merry beat of his horses' feet, 
 and the rattle and roll of his tarantas, and the sweet 
 air and sunshine sped his fears before long, and he was 
 thinking of her again, alive, and beautiful, and shy, 
 and kind, just as he had seen her that muddy day when 
 she reached out her hand and gave him her cake. 
 
 She would be older, of course, but he would know 
 her again oh, surely, he would know her, no matter 
 how she was changed. He would know her among ten 
 thousand, for her face had been with him year in and 
 year out ever since that first day he saw her. 
 
 He had often wondered where that village was and 
 what its name. There were so many villages on the 
 long road, and all so drearily alike, and nothing to 
 recall one more than another except to him. To him 
 there was no village in the world to compare with that 
 
40 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 one where little Katenka lived, but he had only caught 
 broken glimpses of it as he trudged, holding on by his 
 mother's gown. 
 
 And here, from the darkness of the straggling village 
 street, he had stepped suddenly into a radiance brighter 
 than the sun. From the darkness of the past the child's 
 shy face had glimmered out at him for years ; and here, 
 in the sweet face that began to colour under the fer- 
 vour of his hunger-look, he had found it again at 
 last. 
 
 "Little Katenka!" he murmured, not in doubt or 
 questioning, but in long-delayed and joyful greeting. 
 
 And as he looked he saw himself standing outside 
 in the cold once more, caked in sticky black mud from 
 foot to head. His feet were lumps of lead. His little 
 legs were very tired. His little body felt like an empty 
 drum, and something inside him growled and grumbled 
 like fighting beasts. And then, of a sudden, into his 
 dreariness a rosy face pushed through; and to his 
 clamouring emptiness a tiny hand thrust out a hot brown 
 cake; and a chiding voice told him, too late, that he 
 was eating the little one's supper and that she would have 
 none. But the rosy face had smiled on him still, and the 
 hot cake filled him with more than itself, and the icy mud 
 was no longer so cold, nor the road so dreary. In the 
 strength of that cake and the manner of its giving he 
 had gone many days; and in his boyish mind that 
 straggling gray village, whose very name he did not 
 
THE LONG ROAD u 41 
 
 know, was distinguished from all the other gray villages 
 by the friendly warmth that had shone from the eyes 
 of the child. And the rippling curls that tumbled out 
 from under her little cloth cap were like sunbeams, too, 
 and he never thought of that village as bleak and cold, 
 but as always bright in the sun. 
 
 And here were the friendly eyes and the sunny hair, 
 and through the matured beauty of the maid he could 
 trace unerringly the sweet child-face of his dreams. 
 
 " Little Katenka!" he said again, and now with a 
 joyous ring in his voice. 
 
 "But yes, I am Katia," and her eyes were wide with 
 wonder. "I was Katenka till I grew too big. But 
 who are you? I do not know you." 
 
 "And I have known you half my life," and his eyes 
 never left her face. It seemed as if he never could get 
 enough of her. His thirsty eyes drank in the sight of 
 her as a horse sucks in the water after a long journey. 
 
 And then, from a corner, there came a movement and 
 the cry of a child, and Katia ran to it and lifted it from 
 its cradle, and stood swaying it with a soothing croon 
 while she still looked at him over it. 
 
 "You are not married ?" he jerked, and his voice was 
 suddenly hoarse, and she saw that his face had gone 
 strangely white. 
 
 "No, I am not married. This is Varia's. Whom 
 should I marry?" she laughed, from which he might 
 have gathered that the village was deficient in eligible 
 
42 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 yourhs. But he had only one thought, and he filled 
 it quickly to the brim. 
 
 "Me!" 
 
 And she eyed him with fresh surprise but yet with no 
 disfavour. His eyes were straight and true. He was 
 good to look upon. She had no fear of him. In some 
 strange way he knew her, though she did not know 
 him. There was something in his joyful regard of her 
 that she did not understand, but it stirred her 
 strangely. 
 
 "I will go for my father," she said. "They are all 
 in at Dimitri Saxo's." 
 
 "Wait!" he begged. "Let me tell you! Do you 
 remember twelve years ago an exile party for 
 Irkutsk passed by your house? A small boy, thick 
 with mud, begged a crust, and you gave him your 
 supper-cake " 
 
 "Bozhe-moi!" she laughed, through her wonder. 
 "I was not allowed to forget it. Whenever I did a 
 foolishness, they said : ' What would you ? She gave 
 her supper-cake to the mud-boy.'" 
 
 "I was the mud-boy, and the face of little Katenka, 
 as she pushed between her father and mother, has 
 never left me. I saw it in the forge, in the trees, in 
 the river, and always in my dreams. All my life I 
 have loved it." 
 
 "You were the boy?" and her face was rosy at his 
 vehemence. 
 
THE LONG ROAD,. 43 
 
 "And now I am a man, and I have found you again 
 at last. And Katenka Katia " 
 
 "I will bring my mother," she said hastily, and 
 slipped the sleeping child into its cot and ran out of 
 the door. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 SHE was back in a moment with her father and 
 mother and her sister Varia, and whatever she had 
 told them had sufficed to fill their faces with wonder. 
 Katia crept in last of all, and hid behind the others. 
 
 "I am Stepan Iline, son of Ivan Iline of Irkutsk," 
 began Stepan. 
 
 " Iline who makes the ploughs?" asked Totsin. 
 
 He was a man of sixty, with a long, narrow face and 
 straggly gray hair and beard. His eyes were small 
 and quick-glancing, but rather close- set. He had 
 been exiled twenty years before for daring to drive 
 his horse with reins instead of running beside it. Here 
 he drove as he chose. 
 
 His wife, Marya Feodorovna, was more generously 
 made. She had a very pleasant, good-humoured face, 
 and it was from her that her daughters got their fine, 
 dark-blue eyes. 
 
 Varia had something of Katia in her face, but was 
 several years older. Her baby was only three months 
 old and she was not yet very strong again. She was 
 pale and quiet, and spoke little before the stranger. 
 
 "He is my father," said Stepan. 
 
 "They are good ploughs." 
 44 
 
THE LONG ROAD 45 
 
 ''Everything we make is good and good work has 
 prospered us. Has Katia told you ? I am the mud- 
 boy to whom she gave her supper-cake 
 
 "Bozhe-moi," said Mrs. Totsin, with a friendly 
 laugh. "But you are grown since then. And you 
 are cleaner, too." 
 
 "We had been a year on the road and the roads 
 were mud," he said in extenuation. 
 
 "And now," said Totsin, "you are come " 
 
 " Ah, that is another business. I am sent by Pasch- 
 kin " 
 
 "Ah! Paschkin!" said Totsin, sourly, with a 
 change of face. 
 
 "They say he has a devil," said his wife. 
 
 "Is the Devil," corrected Totsin, harshly. "Bring 
 us vodka," to his wife. " Paschkin gives me a bad taste 
 in the mouth. And what does Paschkin want with me ? ' 
 
 "When he passed through here, in haste for Irkutsk, 
 he saw two black horses running on the steppe. He 
 has sent me for them." 
 
 "The devil!" said Totsin, and his cup of vodka 
 stopped halfway to his mouth, while he glared over 
 it at Stepan with no friendly look. 
 
 "The mission is none of my seeking, I assure you. 
 But none says nay to Paschkin. He came to our 
 forge, called my father to be one of his councillors, 
 and ordered me here, all in a breath. I started next 
 morning an hour after sunrise." 
 
46 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 " But bozhe-moi my horses !" 
 
 "He gives five hundred roubles for them." 
 
 "Ah five hundred roubles! That is not much 
 for two such horses as those," but all the same his 
 little close-set eyes twinkled greedily. "They would 
 be cheap at a thousand. And if only there were three 
 they would be worth a thousand apiece." 
 
 "I do not doubt it. But Paschkin fixes his own 
 price, and truly he is not one to bargain with. He 
 hangs men for a word, they say, and sometimes without 
 one." 
 
 "And you have brought his money with you?" 
 
 "I have brought his money." 
 
 "He has faith in you, for sure." 
 
 "As you see." 
 
 "Five hundred roubles, bozhe-mo'i, and they are 
 cheap at a thousand !" he grumbled, with a meditative 
 sip of his vodka. "And when would you require 
 them? They are out on the steppe, you see." 
 
 "He gave me fifteen, sixteen days. More, if the 
 horses were out on the steppe or the rains came. They 
 are to reach him in good condition." 
 
 "And where do you stop?" 
 
 "That is for the police to say. 1 travel for Paschkin." 
 
 The motherly eyes had been scanning him closely 
 and had found him good. There was no young man 
 in Selemsinsk, or anywhere in that district, to approach 
 him, did she not know them all by heart, such as 
 
THE LONG ROAD 47 
 
 they were, and much as one might love one's daugh- 
 ters, their future had to be thought of. 
 
 "You could stop here," said Mrs. Totsin, with her 
 eyes on his face. And she saw the light that shot into 
 it at the suggestion. 
 
 "But will it trouble you?" 
 
 "Nay, you can have Katia's bed and the girls can 
 go together. Varia's man is away to Yeniseisk. She 
 only came for Katia's company. She can go home if 
 needs be." 
 
 "If you are sure. I would like it if but " 
 stammered Stepan, rosy red through his tan at the 
 thought. 
 
 "Yes, you will stop," said she, liking him the better 
 every minute. 
 
 And so Stepan found himself next door to heaven 
 that night. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 VISITORS such as this were rare in Selemsinsk, and 
 they all sat up so late talking that at last the chief of 
 police thumped good-humouredly on the door and 
 asked them what mischief they were plotting, so long 
 after all good citizens were in bed. 
 
 " I travel for Paschkin," laughed Stepan, as the chief 
 came in and consented to sip a glass of vodka. 
 
 "His name covers much, they say. Thank God 
 he is five hundred miles away." 
 
 "He has a long arm and a strong one. Our good 
 old Dolgourof was easier to get on with." 
 
 "Without a doubt. You had no troubles on the 
 road?" 
 
 "None. Paschkin's name was sufficient." 
 
 He told them all they could ask about Irkutsk, and 
 expanded on the growth of the city and its riches, 
 and the beauty of the Angara valley and Lake Baikal 
 and its surroundings. And they gave him all the news 
 they had got from passing traders. And Katia sat 
 in a corner listening, and watching Stepan when he 
 was not looking cat her, and wondering at it all, and 
 liking him more and more. 
 
 And he knew she was there, though she was as quiet 
 
 as a mouse, and he knew when she was looking at 
 
 4 8 
 
THE LONG ROAD 49 
 
 him, and it was only by most resolute effort that he 
 could keep his eyes off her. And, now and again, 
 when he thought she was not looking, he could not 
 hold his eyes any longer, and then their glances would 
 meet, and Katia's would fall, and her face would 
 redden with confusion at being caught, and she would 
 try not to look at him again for a very long time, and 
 then, when she did take a covert peep, he was sure 
 to be looking at her. And that joyful hunger was 
 still in his eyes, and now she was beginning to under- 
 stand it. 
 
 When Totsin and his wife were in bed that night, 
 she whispered to him, "He wants our Katia." 
 
 And Totsin, whose thoughts had been more of his 
 horses than his daughter, and who had seen in Stepan 
 only Paschkin's messenger who had come to take 
 them away, said, "The devil!" 
 
 And Stepan? Young Stepan hardly slept a wink 
 that night. 
 
 He lay awake turning over and over in his mind 
 the whole amazing matter. And he thanked God, 
 as his mother had taught him, for bringing it about, 
 and was even grateful to Paschkin for his share in 
 it; and that was probably the only occasion on which 
 any man was ever grateful to Paslhkin for anything 
 in the whole course of his life. 
 
 Amazing, indeed, was the difference the last few 
 hours had made in Stepan's outlook. He shook him- 
 
50 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 self and pinched himself at times to make certain he 
 was not dreaming. 
 
 He had found his little Katenka! And he knew 
 that if he had been able to follow her growth in his 
 mind through all these years and to forecast her looks, 
 he would have wished her just what she was. 
 
 The shy, impulsive, generous child had grown into 
 the modest, warm-hearted maiden. A girl with eyes 
 and face like that could not but be good, and he knew 
 she was as good as she was beautiful. 
 
 And here he was in the pretty bird's own nest. He 
 caught his breath at thought of it and went hot all 
 over. It was a sacred place to him a holy of holies. 
 A bare little sanctuary, in truth, up under the roof, 
 with sloping sides and one small window in the gable, 
 and but roughly furnished, but it was clean as a bone, 
 and sweet and fragrant by her use. 
 
 That big black chest held her clothes the end 
 of a ribbon had got shut outside when she hastily 
 cleared the room for him. A tiny ikon in one corner 
 told of her devotions. Her soft, bare feet trod this 
 well-scrubbed floor. This was her bed. How won- 
 derful she was ! How sweet ! How beautiful ! And 
 her eyes ! They set him on fire. And her hair ! It 
 was more than ever like the halo of a saint. There 
 never was any girl like her in this world before ! He 
 buried his hot face in the pillow and vowed his life to 
 her happiness. 
 
THE LONG ROAD 51 
 
 And once a terrible thought took hold of him. Sup- 
 pose she should die in the night now, just when he 
 had found her ! But he shook it off. She had looked 
 all right when he bade her good night hale and well 
 and happy, though not without a touch of rosy confusion 
 about her. Perhaps he had looked at her too much. 
 Perhaps she did not like being looked at like that. 
 But, bozhe-moi, how could a man help it when she was 
 so wonderfully good to look at ? 
 
 He wondered if she knew what was in him. He 
 thought she must have seen. It seemed to him that his 
 eyes must have blazed the news to her. He wondered 
 she had not heard his heart thumping her name, 
 "Katia, Katia, Katia!" 
 
 But he would go slowly, slowly, so as not to frighten 
 her. He had days before him. He must keep remem- 
 bering that, though he had known her every day for 
 twelve years, she had known him for but part of a 
 day. 
 
 He wondered if there was any other man, and turned 
 cold at the thought. And then he remembered her 
 laughing, "Whom should I have married?" and mused 
 upon it and took heart again. 
 
 And once he marvelled briefly at the wonder of so 
 sweet a flower on Totsin's stem. But there, roses grew 
 among thorns. Her mother had kind eyes, and a good 
 face, and a warm heart, and he decided that Katia 
 took after her. 
 
52 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 And though he was weary with his long journey, and 
 hardly slept a wink all night, he was hungry for daylight 
 and another sight of his little Katenka in the blushing 
 face of this wonderful new Katia. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 KATIA had on a different dress. 
 
 Stepan could not have told you just where the differ- 
 ence came in, but he knew that she looked very much 
 alive and prettier than ever. 
 
 Her mother noticed it, but she only smiled to her- 
 self. 
 
 Vasili Vasilievitch was thinking of his horses and 
 what he would do with his five hundred roubles. In 
 spite of his grumbling at the price, the money would 
 be very useful. Roubles were never too plentiful with 
 him. He was not nearly so smart a business man as he 
 thought himself, and his horse-dealing had not so far 
 done more than provide his family with a fairly com- 
 fortable living. 
 
 Varia was busy with her baby. She smiled now and 
 then, in a knowing, matronly fashion, at Katia and 
 Stepan, but she had not much to say. 
 
 "They are up in the bend of the river," said Totsin, 
 suddenly, overlooking the fact that he was following out 
 a train of thought of which he alone was cognizant. 
 "When shall I bring them in ? How long " 
 
 "Paschkin gave me sixteen days, or a day or two 
 more if necessary," said Stepan, thoughtfully. "I came 
 
 53 
 
54 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 in five. Bozhe-moi', it took us nearly two months to 
 walk it last time ! I could stop three or perhaps even 
 four, if "and he looked anxiously across at Mrs. 
 Totsin, and gathered the signs of Katia's face at the 
 same time without looking at it. 
 
 "Nu, then! Stop if you can," said Mrs. Totsin, 
 heartily. "It is a long journey, and we don't have 
 visitors every day." 
 
 "And I have never been farther than Baikal since we 
 came through here before. I shall be glad to stop if 
 you are sure " and this time he looked at Katia. 
 
 "We shall be glad if you will stop," she smiled, and 
 Paschkin himself would hardly have moved him after 
 that. 
 
 "Will you care to see the horses?" asked Totsin, as 
 he got up to go out. 
 
 "Nay, I shall see quite enough of them before I'm 
 done with them. I will rest if I may." 
 
 "Did you sleep?" asked Marya Feodorovna, hos- 
 pitably. 
 
 " I did not sleep much." 
 
 " Da, then ! Were you not comfortable ? Was the 
 bed" 
 
 "The most comfortable bed I ever saw in my life. 
 But my head was full of thoughts and they would not 
 sleep." 
 
 "So ! Well, you will rest during the day. Sit there 
 in the corner by the stove and you will not be in our 
 
THE LONG ROAD^ 55 
 
 way," and she smiled knowingly to herself as she went 
 about her work, and Stepan thought what a nice face 
 she had. 
 
 "And what part did you come from?" asked Marya 
 Feodorovna, over her shoulder, as she washed the dishes 
 and passed them on to Katia to dry. 
 
 "We are from Kazan." 
 
 "Ah, you are of the Russki. So am I. I am from 
 Kostroma, not so very far from your country. But my 
 man is of the Rosniaki. He comes from Voronej. 
 You are tall for a north-countryman." 
 
 " It was the transplanting, I think. I am bigger than 
 my father now." 
 
 "He must be a good craftsman. We know his name 
 even here." 
 
 "He is a good man and so his work is good. He 
 gives his best always." 
 
 "That's the way to get a name and make money." 
 
 "We are always busy." 
 
 "And you help him?" 
 
 "Yes, and we have five men besides, and could do 
 with more, but skilled men are not to be found, they have 
 to be trained." 
 
 "And your mother? You take after her, I'll 
 be bound. A good son generally means a good 
 mother." 
 
 "And a good daughter? There is no one like my 
 mother unless it might be yourself. She has a warm 
 
56 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 heart and a good face, as you have," at which Marya 
 Feodorovna laughed agreeably. 
 
 "And you are the only one?" she asked presently. 
 
 "I am the only one. There has never been any but 
 me." 
 
 "And how did you know the little one when you saw 
 her after all these years?" 
 
 "I knew her the moment I saw her face in the light. 
 Did I not now?" he appealed to Katia. 
 
 "Truly, you stared at me as if you would eat me," 
 she laughed rosily. 
 
 "It was strange you should know her again, for she 
 was only a small thing then, and you had but a glimpse 
 of her. And besides you were not much bigger your- 
 self." 
 
 "That was the very best cake I had ever tasted " 
 
 "I made it myself. You shall have another just like 
 it for your supper." 
 
 "There never could "be another just like it. I mean, 
 to taste just like it. For, you see, I was half starving, 
 and very cold and miserable, and the way was always 
 long and cold. And little Katenka's hot cake, and the 
 way she gave it to me, and her bright rosy face were all 
 such cheer to me that I could think of nothing else. 
 They warmed me up whenever I thought of them, and 
 they made the way short, and took the cold out of the 
 mud. I could see her face again whenever I thought cf 
 her, and I kept on thinking of her all the time. And 
 
THE LONG ROAD ^ 57 
 
 when we settled down in Irkutsk I saw her face still. 
 When I went into the forge I saw it in the glow of the 
 fire. And I saw it outside in the trees and in the river. 
 It was always with me. And I wondered, as I drove 
 along over the steppe, wherever Katenka's village could 
 be, for they all seemed the same when we were on the 
 road, and I did not even know its name. And then I 
 came to the house here, and as soon as I saw Katia's 
 face in the light I saw little Katenka's face inside it, 
 and it nearly struck me dumb. But I knew her in a 
 moment. Did I not now?" he asked Katia again. 
 
 "I thought you were crazy," laughed Katia. 
 
 " Bozhe-mo'i, it was enough to make any one feel a bit 
 crazy," said her mother, heartily, with a well-pleased 
 look at Stepan's eager face and sparkling eyes. 
 
 Yes, he was an honest lad, she said to herself, and if it 
 was so that he wanted their girl, she would not be the 
 one to oppose him. 
 
 "And you," she said to her daughter, "had you 
 any thought who he was? You did not know him 
 again?" 
 
 "But he was all mud when I saw him before, and I 
 could hardly see his face," said Katia, in extenuation. 
 
 "It is true. He was truly very muddy. You were 
 holding on to your mother's gown and she had a good 
 face. It made me sorry I had nothing more to give, but 
 the first comers had got all. Why were you sent out?" 
 
 "I heard Paschkin ask my father the other day, and 
 
58 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 my father said: 'Irkutsk needed men. I took snuff/ 
 And then Paschkin asked him if he still took snuff and 
 he said, 'Yes/ and the Governor named him for his 
 council. It's a queer world." 
 
 "Ay, truly! My man was sent out for using reins 
 when he drove, and here if he had a rein to every hair, 
 they would take no notice." 
 
 "His horses would," said Stepan, which set Katia 
 laughing more than the saying seemed to warrant. 
 
 She was so extraordinarily pretty when she laughed 
 in that way with the abandonment of a child that Stepan 
 wished he could think of something else like that, so 
 that he could make her go on laughing. But if you 
 had asked Katia why she laughed so, she could not have 
 told you. If he had told them anything sad, she would 
 have cried just as readily. 
 
 Varia went out with her baby to see her father-in-law, 
 who was lying ill a few doors away. They had all been 
 in there the night before when Katia ran to fetch them. 
 
 Katia and her mother busied themselves about the 
 rooms, and Stepan's eyes followed the girl's lissome figure 
 and springing step with rapt delight. Deft of hand, 
 light of foot, graceful as a mountain birch, and sweeter 
 of face even than the little Katenka of his dreams, his 
 heart swelled to overflowing as he watched her. 
 
 He wondered, wondered. For his time was so short. 
 
 How was it possible that she could care for him? 
 Bozhe-moi, she had only known him a few hours, though 
 
THE LONG ROAD 59 
 
 LA 
 
 of course he had known her half his life. But the 
 thought of parting from her, now that he had found her, 
 was not to be borne. His heart curdled inside him at 
 the possibility, and the pain was so great that he had to 
 grind his teeth and clench his hands. He could not 
 leave her. He could not. He could not. And, 
 bozhe-moi, he said to himself he would not. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 MARYA FEODOROVNA went out on some household 
 affairs, and at last Katia, having done everything that 
 had to be done, and some of it twice over, for the tumult 
 of her feelings which set her to fearing hoping Da 
 she could not tell ! expecting, in any case, that some- 
 thing out of the common might happen if she rested for 
 a moment. For she knew all that was in him as well 
 as if it had been printed on his face, and it was truly 
 sudden, you see. 
 
 She had to come to the stove at last to overlook some 
 of her cooking. Her short skirt swung against the leg 
 of his boot. The feel of it shot tingling right up into 
 his heart and on into his brain. It intoxicated him. 
 
 He could plunge through a thorn brake in those big 
 boots and feel nothing of it, but the touch of Katia 's 
 swinging skirt set his blood jumping. 
 
 If Natalie and Nadeja and Masha at home had gone 
 down on their knees and kissed his boot, he would have 
 felt nothing but pity for their foolishness. But the touch 
 of Katia 's unconscious skirt against it was enough to 
 thrill him through and through. Da, but it was odd. 
 He could not understand it. 
 
 Her face was bent absorb edly over the pot, as if her 
 60 
 
THE LONG ROAD 61 
 
 mind was intent on it and nothing else. But she knew 
 quite well what was in him, and the little hand that lifted 
 the lid trembled in spite of her, and she bit her lip to 
 keep it quiet. 
 
 He could not stand it. His heart felt as if it would 
 burst into a thousand pieces. He jumped up so sud- 
 denly that the lid of the pot fell with a clatter. 
 
 "Katia! Katia!" he cried, with both his hands 
 stretched eagerly towards her, almost touching her. " I 
 must tell you. My heart is crying out for you. It is 
 sick for you. I have thought of none but you for 
 all these years. Could you trust me? Could you 
 could you " and he choked with the very vehe- 
 mence of his feelings. 
 
 But his eyes, and his face, every quivering bit of him, 
 spoke more eloquently than all his words. 
 
 For a moment they looked deep into one another's 
 eyes, and Katia knew that she could trust this man to 
 the death, and that she had his whole heart. 
 
 And suddenly she was strong again. The trembling 
 had passed. She was uplifted, too. Her heart drew to 
 his. She clasped her hands in his. 
 
 "Yes," she said. "I can trust you." 
 
 And with a cry he drew her to him and kissed her to 
 his heart's content. 
 
 " Do you know what it means ?" he asked her at last, 
 gazing eagerly down into the sweet flushed face. 
 
 "Yes, I know. You will want me to go with you." 
 
62 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 "You are more to me than my father or my mother, 
 or life itself, my Katia. All my whole life shall be for 
 your happiness." 
 
 "I will go with you, Stepan Ivanovitch." 
 
 "Now, God be thanked for His goodness!" and he 
 kissed her again and again. 
 
 And while he was at it Mrs. Totsin came in. 
 
 "Ach, so!" said she heartily, and in no way sur- 
 prised. " So you have come together, you two. I knew 
 you must. It was surely ordered so." 
 
 "And you will not say us nay, Marya Feodorovna?" 
 asked Stepan, with his arm round Katia as if he would 
 never let her go again. 
 
 "Who shall say nay when God says yea?" said 
 Mrs. Totsin. "All the same, you will have to settle it 
 with Totsin." 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 "BozHE-Moi, but you have lost no time," grumbled 
 Vasili when he came in from his expedition after the 
 horses. 
 
 " I have none to spare, you see. Needs must when the 
 devil drives or Paschkin." 
 
 "You will take her with you?' 7 
 
 "Of a surety. I lost her for twelve years. We will 
 part no more this side death." 
 
 "And what are we to do without her?'' 
 
 " She must have married when the time came. Thank 
 God, it did not come before me ! My life would have 
 been but half a life." 
 
 " But to take her away to the other end of the world !" 
 
 "It is but five days to Irkutsk." 
 
 "It is the end of the world to some of us. First you 
 take my horses at half their proper price, and now you 
 would take my daughter." 
 
 "It was Paschkin sent me." 
 
 "Paschkin didn't send you for our Katia." 
 
 "Ay did he, without a doubt, though he did not know 
 it. And " with a happy laugh "his very last words 
 to me were, 'If any man refuse you anything you 
 need, I will hang him from his own lintel.' And I need 
 
 63 
 
64 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 Katia," at which Marya Feodorovna broke also into 
 hearty laughter. 
 
 "He is the Devil that Paschkin !" growled Totsin. 
 
 "Put away thy evil humour, Vasili Vasilievitch," said 
 his wife. "This was meant to be, as I told thee last, 
 night. The good God led him here without a doubt, 
 and we may not set ourselves against His will." 
 
 "Nu, then ! If you are all against me - 
 
 And that was how Stepan Iline won Katia Vasilievna 
 for his wife. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE days that followed were days of rare delight to 
 Stepan, and not less to Katia, and to all of them days 
 charged with affairs of the greatest moment. 
 
 For Katia must not leave her father's house unpro- 
 vided, and opportunities for shopping were limited. 
 
 By an undoubtedly heaven-sent chance, however, 
 there came jogging into the village an old Jew trader, 
 with his wagon load of goods such as the country women 
 loved. He called there in his regular round twice every 
 year, and his coming had always been one of the events 
 of Katia's life. For, even if one could not buy, one could 
 always see, and his packs were treasure-houses of de- 
 light to be thought about and talked about for weeks 
 after he had gone, and to be longed for till he came again. 
 And now either by instinct or by chance, or led 
 thereto by the same special providence which had 
 brought Stepan Iline straight to her door the old 
 Jew came just when he was wanted. 
 
 He gauged the situation in two minutes and advanced 
 his prices to meet it in one. This, he judged, would 
 hardly be a time even if the exigencies of the case had 
 permitted of it to haggle over kopeks, though, in the 
 
 ordinary course of things, that was a diversion in which 
 F 65 
 
66 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 Marya Feodorovna's soul delighted, and she was a 
 master hand at it. 
 
 But he might have known Mrs. Totsin after all these 
 years. Time indeed pressed, Katia'? hours at home 
 were numbered, and there was much to be done. But, 
 levying uncompromisingly on the purchase-money for 
 the blacks, which Stepan, under the circumstances, did 
 not hesitate to advance on her husband's account, 
 Marya Feodorovna raked over the Jew's packs with 
 an enjoyment she had not experienced since she was a 
 
 J Jilany the times she had hung over them with long- 
 ing eyes, restricting herself to the absolutely necessary, 
 and letting obvious bargains, for which she had no 
 present use, go by with a sigh. But here, for once, she 
 felt she might let herself go. Katia must be furnished. 
 And that wonderful providence which had brought both 
 Stepan Iline and old Peter Krop along just at the right 
 time had not failed also to provide her with means. 
 
 Totsin, indeed, attempted a remonstrance in favour 
 of his roubles, but she routed him with a wordo 
 
 And if old Peter Krop expected her eyes to be as full 
 of love mists as were pretty Katia's, he found himself, 
 for once, mistaken. 
 
 Marya Feodorovna prepared herself for battle. She 
 dangled her roubles before his eyes, belittled his judg- 
 ment as a buyer, made contemptuous hay of his stock 
 in general, and miscalled his choicest morsels. In the 
 
THE LONG ROAD 67 
 
 u 
 
 unusual position of a wholesale purchaser for cash, she 
 offered him prices that apparently made his flesh creep 
 and the perspiration run down his beard. The neigh- 
 bours gathered round to enjoy the fray, and it was only 
 behind closed doors in the seclusion of the house, and 
 after binding her to inviolable secrecy in the matter, 
 that Peter and she at last came to an understanding. 
 And she was so well pleased with herself that she in- 
 sisted on the Jew partaking of food with them, greatly 
 to the disgust of Vasili Vasilievitch, who saw himself 
 being plundered on all sides, horses, daughter, 
 roubles, and now food to a Jew, who, if he knew anything 
 about Jews, and he did, was without doubt making 
 a profit of fifty per cent at least on all they bought, no 
 matter what he said to the contrary. 
 
 And truly, in spite of his goose-flesh and his cold 
 sweats, Peter Krop went on his way chuckling. And 
 so all parties, except Vasili, were satisfied. 
 
 The neighbours, to a woman, threw up all but abso- 
 lutely necessary household matters and came in to help, 
 and for the next two days the Totsin house was a hive 
 of industry and a very parrot-house for chatter. The 
 big samovar was steaming from morning till night, and 
 there was tea enough drunk to float a small ship. And 
 Vasili Vasilievitch betook himself to the house where a 
 withered bush hung over the door, and met there all 
 the other deserted husbands, and came home each night 
 complacently bemused, shaking his head solemnly as 
 
63 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 if the problem of life were still beyond him, and then 
 lay down and went quietly to sleep. 
 
 And Katia went about among them with a red- rose 
 face and a conscious look, somewhat raised with all 
 this bustle of which she was the cause and centre, but 
 visibly happy, and looking forward with eagerness and 
 wonder to the larger life that had opened so suddenly 
 before her. 
 
 Stepan, for his part, lived those days in the clouds. 
 He fetched and carried for them all ; handed round tea 
 as if he were promoting a conflagration or helping to 
 quench one ; and kept Katia in sight as much as possi- 
 ble, lest any one should run away with her, or any other 
 untoward thing should come to her, and because the 
 very sight of her made him feel twice the man he was 
 at any other time. 
 
 So rich and full of the joy of life was he, that it lighted 
 his eyes, and shone in his face, and set every other girl 
 in the village envying Katia, and made the more ex- 
 perienced married ones think back to the times when 
 they too had seen a man's face like that and for them. 
 
 And some of them nodded knowingly and smiled as 
 they bit their threads, and some sighed quietly to them- 
 selves and said in their hearts : " Ay, ay, it's good to be 
 young. They've found their bit of heaven, but they'll 
 bump on the earth again as we have done." 
 
 And Varia, from her experience of a year of married 
 life, gave her sister copious matronly hints on the treat- 
 
THE LONG ROAD.. 69 
 
 ment of husbands, but acknowledged, somewhat for- 
 lornly, that this radiant young giant from the east was 
 different from her own absent Dmitri, who was kind 
 enough and good-humoured, but easy-going and indo- 
 lent, and not likely ever to cut a very deep streak in the 
 world. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 ON the fourth day they were married, in the little 
 white church with its green needle of a spire, and every 
 soul in the village came to the wedding. 
 
 It was a great occasion, and the old priest with his 
 long white hair and patriarchal beard gave them much 
 fatherly counsel, and finally pronounced them man and 
 wife, and Stepan gave his blushing wife the marital kiss 
 and thanked God with all his heart for the gift of her. 
 
 Totsin was there with as good a grace as his wife 
 had been able to instil into him; but it was Marya 
 Feodorovna herself who had seen to all the details, 
 the candles, the rings, the crowns, the carpet, the hot 
 wine and water, everything just as it should be, and 
 as it would have been in the old country. For her 
 big motherly heart had taken Stepan into it. She 
 liked him better every hour. Something within her, 
 which was all her true self, told her that he was the 
 right man, and she gave her daughter to him without 
 a moment's misgiving. 
 
 Then, as far as the house would hold, everybody 
 crowded in to the wedding feast, which Marya Feo- 
 dorovna and Katia and Varia and some of the neigh- 
 bours had been up till daylight preparing. 
 
 70 
 
THE LONG ROAD,* 71 
 
 And soon after midday the whole village was wav- 
 ing and shouting farewells and good wishes, and the 
 younger folks running after them for many last words, 
 as they drove away at a gallop with their merry bells 
 clashing and many a backward look and wave. And 
 Paschkin's mettlesome blacks, prancing white-eyed 
 in the rear, wondered, perchance, why the village folk 
 were so mighty glad to be rid of them. 
 
 "We will come again to see you all," was Stepan's 
 last word, as he shook the reins. And little any of 
 them thought how next they would come. 
 
 For they lived in the days of Paschkin. 
 
 It was only when the dust had settled, and the very 
 last far-away clash of the bells had died, that Katia's 
 mother turned away and went into a room by herself 
 and had a hearty cry, which did her a world of good. 
 For, bozhe-moi, one does not give away such a girl as 
 Katia every day, and, besides, she had been working 
 full stretch for many days on end, and she felt like a rag. 
 
 Stepan, looking round into his wife's face, found 
 tears on her long lashes, and with one glance ahead 
 to see that all was clear, he bent and kissed them away. 
 
 "Wilt find another mother over there, my Katia," 
 he said quickly. "And she will love thee as thine 
 own. She has been urging me to marry for long 
 enough, this girl and that, no matter which, 
 only she longed to see me married. And I had no 
 heart for any of them, and now I know why. It was 
 
72 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 all waiting for thee. Thou wilt have two mothers and 
 two fathers and a husband. Art rich, my little one. 
 And she is the best mother in the world, like thine own, 
 and her only wish will be to make thee happiest of 
 the happy. And for me, God has been so good to 
 me that I cannot but wonder what I have ever done 
 to deserve it all. He shall have of my best and thou, 
 also, core of my heart!" and he drove his three 
 with one strong hand, and slipped the other arm 
 round her and drew her close. 
 
 He had thought the woods wondrously beautiful 
 as he came, but now they blazed beyond all knowledge, 
 fiery crimson and flaming yellow, with matted under- 
 growths of dark unchanging green; and still, in the 
 hollows of the steppe and the swampy places of the 
 woods, the wild flowers lingered lovingly as though 
 waiting to see them pass. And when they reached their 
 stopping-place for the night, Katia was almost lost 
 among the blooms he had gathered and piled in her lap. 
 
 "Nu, then, hast done thine errand for Paschkin?" 
 said their host, looking from Katia to the blacks. 
 
 " Those are for Paschkin," said Stepan. "This 
 is my wife." 
 
 "Hast lost no time on the business." 
 
 "When one travels for Paschkin, you understand," 
 said Stepan, with a joyous laugh, and when he had led 
 Katia into the house, he saw to the safe bestowal of 
 Paschkin 's horses, which the man came along to admire 
 
THE LONG ROAIL 73 
 
 while his wife admired Katia inside and plied her with 
 many questions. 
 
 Day after day, with full hearts, they sped across the 
 steppe and threaded the hills. And now, among other 
 discoveries he found that Katia could sing like an angel, 
 and her clear, sweet voice chimed better with the bells 
 than his did ; but he must always sing, too, because he 
 could not help it. 
 
 And so, right joyously, they swept along towards 
 Irkutsk ; and never, sure, since time began, were hearts 
 more sweetly tuned to love, nor ever world more 
 beautiful. For is not all the world made all anew for 
 every pair of happy lovers? 
 
 It was all so new and delightful to her to be made 
 so much of, she who all her life had been ministering 
 to others. In everything to be his first and chief 
 concern; to be so carefully wrapped and folded 
 against the cold; to be half buried each day in the 
 only gifts he could find to give her, the flowers and 
 leaves which seemed to blaze the brighter for their 
 coming end. 
 
 "Art as careful of me as if I were a baby, or the six- 
 year Katenka of thy dreams," she laughed, at their 
 first hill, when he would have had her sit still while 
 he got out and walked. 
 
 "Art more to me than all the babies in the world, 
 and for me there is but one Katenka," he said, with a 
 look that let his heart through. 
 
74 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 But she sprang out of her wrappings like a hare out 
 of her forme, and took the road beside him. And they 
 went up the hill with his arm round her waist and hers 
 round his, and found it good, and vowed that all life's 
 hills they would climb in that same way. And all 
 their five horses watched them with rolling eyes and 
 craning necks, for never had they seen grown people 
 act like this before, and fine tales they had to tell 
 that night when they stood with the rest in their 
 stalls. 
 
 Without a doubt they would have been content to go 
 on like this for ever, wandering through a dreamland 
 of delight with all their wants provided for. But Pasch- 
 kin waited, and all roads end. 
 
 And when, on the seventh day, they struck the An- 
 gara, and saw Tunka's shining crown above the lower 
 hills, Katia grew sober and thoughtful. For the time 
 for new meetings was drawing near. She could not 
 but wonder how Stepan's mother and father would 
 greet their son's unknown and unexpected wife, and 
 she shrank somewhat from the ordeal. 
 
 Stepan saw it in her instantly and rallied her gaily, 
 enlarging so upon their goodness of heart and desire 
 for his marriage, that he succeeded in almost reassuring 
 her. 
 
 He had matters of his own to think of also, but he 
 would not let them cloud his high spirits. 
 
 He had succeeded in his errand, and Paschkin could 
 
THE LONG ROAD 75 
 
 not but be satisfied. The blacks were there, safe and 
 sound, and in excellent condition, and this was the 
 sixteenth day since he left home. 
 
 He must deliver the horses to Paschkin before he 
 went home or did any other thing. And that entailed 
 taking Katia to the Governor's house and possible 
 explanations. 
 
 Could Paschkin find fault with him on Katia 's 
 account ? 
 
 Hardly, he thought, since she had in no way jeopar- 
 dised the success of his journey. But then Paschkin 
 was Paschkin, and one never knew. 
 
 However, he would not harbour forebodings. He 
 had done his duty and Paschkin 's bidding and he 
 had got Katia. 
 
 They swung across the pendulum ferry, and every 
 man aboard the boat gathered round the blacks with 
 loud, admiring comments. 
 
 Then they were on the dusty road again, and at 
 last they drew up at the Governor's door. 
 
 Paschkin was away, had been away a week, with all 
 his available forces and such unwilling volunteers as he 
 could impress at short notice, giving a lesson in deport- 
 ment to a tribe of Mongols who had crossed the border 
 south of Baikal and raided his territory. 
 
 Stepan decided to keep the blacks in his own hands 
 until he could deliver them into Paschkin's, and drove 
 gaily home in great content. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 KATIA'S timid heart needed not to have wasted one 
 tiniest flutter in doubt of her welcome. And deepest 
 thought and most skilful of diplomacy could not have 
 paved her way to their hearts as did Stepan's ingenuous 
 introduction. 
 
 " Matushka," he cried, as he sprang out of the tarantas 
 and flung his arms about his mother's neck and kissed 
 her heartily, "here is one thou shouldst love," and he 
 helped the blushing Katia down and led her in. " Dost 
 remember the little Katenka who gave me her hot 
 supper-cake one black day on the road long ago?" 
 
 "Bozhe-moi'! Do I not?" said his mother, with 
 kindling eyes and face full of expectancy and admira- 
 tion. 
 
 "This is she, and we are wedded." 
 
 And Katia found herself in as loving an embrace as 
 her own mother could have given her. And when they 
 unlocked, the eyes of both were full of happy tears. 
 
 "Now I am glad. I am glad," said Marya Petrovna, 
 and her voice told it. "In all the world thou couldst 
 not have chosen one to please me better, my son." 
 
 "Hast often wondered why I waited and would none 
 
 of thy Irkutsk maids, little mother. 'Twas for this, 
 
 76 
 
THE LONG ROAD 77 
 
 without doubt, though I did not know it properly my- 
 self." 
 
 "It is a marvel," said his mother, glowing upon them. 
 
 And to Katia: "He never ceased to think of thee, 
 I know, for I have heard him whisper 'Katenka' in 
 his sleep and smile at thought of thee. I can see the 
 little Katenka in thy face" 
 
 "I saw it the moment my eyes lighted on her," said 
 Stepan, joyously. 
 
 And then his father came hurrying in from the forge, 
 and all the wonderful news had to be told over again, 
 and he gave her greeting as hearty as his wife had done, 
 if somewhat more restrained. 
 
 And Katia's heart was satisfied. She had left father 
 and mother and home for Stepan's sake. But here was 
 no loss, for she had found the new love no whit less 
 warm than the old. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 WHILE they housed the blacks with care, Iline gave 
 his son brief word of matters that had occurred in his 
 absence. 
 
 "He is rightly called the Devil, this Paschkin," he 
 said tersely. "But it is not right that such a man, or 
 any man, should have such powers. When he is 
 thwarted, he is no longer a man. He is a wild beast. 
 He is a devil. His council is a farce to make other men 
 bear the burden of his doings. Ostroff is on the way to 
 Yakutsk" 
 
 "To Yakutsk!" gasped Stepan. For Yakutsk was 
 the uttermost hell of exile, where men mouldered in the 
 icy cold of filthy native huts, sans friends, sans hope, 
 sans everything. And Ostroff had been their friend. 
 
 "And the little Nadeja?" 
 
 Iline shook his head. "God knows! and maybe 
 the devil, and without doubt Paschkin." 
 
 "And why?" 
 
 "It was in the matter of the tax. Ostroff stood 
 against the increase. He is on the road to Yakutsk, 
 and the tax is raised." 
 
 " Then, under Paschkin, one may not think." 
 
 "Only as Paschkin thinks." 
 78 
 
THE LONG ROAD 79 
 
 "And you?" 
 
 "I do not think out loud. I am too old for another 
 transplanting." 
 
 "Maybe he will come to an end among these Mon- 
 gols." 
 
 "Life would be the brighter, but " and he shook 
 his head unhopefully. "He has forced some to go with 
 him, Biritzef, and Pascal, and Anukof." 
 
 "And Anukof but newly married," jerked newly- 
 married Stepan. 
 
 "He is gone all the same. Paschkin's hand is heavy. 
 He wants us to feel it and lie quiet under his heel." 
 
 "He is the Devil, as they say. The fear of him is 
 abroad. I found it everywhere as I journeyed." 
 
 "The day you left he killed a Cossack with his own 
 hand. The man was insolent, he said. He struck 
 him with his fist just here, "on the temple, "and 
 he went down like an ox." 
 
 "Life will be none too easy while he lives," said 
 Stepan, with a gloomier face than he had worn for 
 years, for now he had a mighty stake in life. 
 
 "We must go warily and give him no occasion against 
 us," said his father, quietly. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 IT was another ten days before Paschkin returned 
 from his chastisement of the marauders. He did it so 
 effectually that there was no likelihood of incursion in 
 that direction for a generation at least. 
 
 As soon as Stepan heard he had come, he hastened to 
 rid himself of his weighty charge. 
 
 The blacks were in splendid condition, and looked 
 wondrously fine as he led them to the Governor's house. 
 
 Paschkin came out to see them at once. 
 
 "I was just about to send for thee, Iline," he growled. 
 "What hast been doing with my horses?" 
 
 "Keeping them safe against your Excellency's 
 return, so that you should be assured I had quitted 
 myself well." 
 
 "Hast ridden or driven them?" while his keen eye 
 roved over the jetty skins. 
 
 "They have neither been ridden nor driven since 
 they came into my hands, Excellency." 
 
 "And how long did you take?" 
 
 "I was back here on the sixteenth day, Excellency." 
 
 "You did better than you feared," said Paschkin, 
 with a growling laugh. "Who was the owner?" 
 
 "One Totsin, who deals in horses." 
 80 
 
THE LONG ROAD. 81 
 
 "And he took the price?" 
 
 "He vowed they were worth double, Excellency, 
 but he took the price," at which Paschkin's grim 
 laugh growled again. 
 
 "And hadst no difficulties on the road? None as- 
 piring to the noose?" 
 
 "None, Excellency. Your Excellency's name suf- 
 ficed." 
 
 And Paschkin regarded young Stepan favourably and 
 as one upon whom he could rely. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 KATIA found her new home all that Stepan had 
 pictured it, and more. 
 
 Over and above the great fact of Stepan himself and 
 his love for her, which, far from waning, seemed to grow 
 with the months, she found here greater comfort than 
 Selemsinsk had ever been able to afford her. 
 
 For Vasili Totsin was not the man to make any great 
 success of life. If at times he did well in his bargaining, 
 and managed to overreach some one of those with whom 
 he dealt, he himself was subject to similar treatment; 
 and if he had the freedom of the steppe for his horses, 
 he was also thereby open to strokes of ill luck from 
 prowlers on four legs and on two. And, finally, from the 
 very nature of his business, he was not accustomed to 
 the discipline of that hard and regular work which 
 braces a man mentally, morally, and bodily. 
 
 There is something, surely, in the clang of hammer on 
 anvil, in the wielding of the sledge, in the straight de- 
 livery of honest blows, which draws out and builds up 
 the best that is in a man. A smith is rarely a rogue. 
 
 And so Katia found a somewhat ampler atmosphere 
 in her new home, and bloomed in it as a flower trans- 
 planted to a richer soil. 
 
 82 
 
THE LONG ROAD., 83 
 
 Stepan's mother, Marya Petrovna, rejoiced in her 
 more and more, and made no concealment of it. The 
 desire of her life was like to be fulfilled, and she gave 
 her new daughter fullest entrance to the warmth of her 
 large, warm heart. She would not hear of them living 
 apart. The house was large enough for them all, 
 ay, and for children, too, she laughed happily, so they 
 lived together in great content, and Katia and Marya 
 Petrovna shared the household duties between them. 
 
 There was no happier home in all Irkutsk in those 
 days than that green-shuttered house by the busy forge. 
 Since his transplanting Ivan Iline had been more 
 given to thought and hard work than to speech. Since 
 his unwished-for appointment to Paschkin's council the 
 faculty of silence had grown upon him. 
 
 He gauged the position clearly. Paschkin was all 
 powerful. Opposition was futile. The utmost one 
 could hope for was to escape notice and be left in peace. 
 It was not perhaps heroic, but it was natural. He had 
 suffered one violent uprooting. He had no smallest 
 desire for another. 
 
 Honest and unremitting work had brought with it a 
 certain measure of prosperity. His son was happily 
 married. He delighted in Katia as much as his wife 
 did, though he showed it less. He was perfectly happy 
 and contented. But he knew that they, and all the rest, 
 lived in a tiger's cage, and that their happiness might 
 be shattered any moment by a stroke of the tiger's claw. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 IN the compassing of his own ends and the attainment 
 of his own objects in life, Paschkin knew no scruples. 
 
 He had crept upward until he could climb ; but once 
 his foot was on the ladder, and he had shown at Peters- 
 burg what he was made of, he had climbed rapidly, 
 and was now very near the top. 
 
 In Irkutsk he was absolute, and all men bent before 
 him almost. Wine of the richest, and in quantity 
 unlimited, was his to command. If he chanced upon 
 a horse that rivalled his own, he acquired it. Women 
 ah, there he had checks in Irkutsk such as he had not 
 met with elsewhere, and it was in that respect that his 
 absolutism suffered flaws. 
 
 In his tigerish, capricious, masterful way, he could 
 be almost winning, this conscienceless Paschkin. 
 To some women it had appealed to have their favours 
 sought by one before whom all men quailed for- 
 getting, or purposely closing their eyes to the undis- 
 putable fact that tiger is tiger still, though he sheathe 
 his claws and play and purr. 
 
 For a very long time Stepan, in common with many 
 another, went in fear lest Paschkin should cast eyes 
 on his wife and so bring trouble. For, in the last 
 
 8 4 
 
THE LONG ROAD ^ 85 
 
 extremity, he and many another would not hesi- 
 tate one moment to sacrifice everything for those they 
 loved. 
 
 And so Paschkin absolute as he was, and terri- 
 fying learned some lessons, though the cost was 
 heavy. 
 
 Their friend Anukof had been taken by Paschkin 
 to help chastise the Mongols. He had been left chaf- 
 ing on the frontier in a small command. Ill news flies 
 wide, however, One day Anukof came home, mud- 
 stained, wild-eyed, his post deserted. Home ! He 
 found his home broken up, his young wife gone. 
 
 Paschkin heard of his arrival, but he was no coward. 
 He went about as usual, but guarded, and on his guard. 
 Nevertheless, as he drove in his sledge one twilight, a 
 man flung himself in front of the horses, grasped the 
 shafter's nose till it reared and squealed, and in the 
 confusion another man dashed at Paschkin and drove 
 a long knife through his furs deep into his breast. 
 
 " Pound him to death," growled Paschkin to his 
 Cossacks, through the blood in his throat "and the 
 other!" 
 
 And when they passed on with the wounded man, two 
 bodies, battered out of all knowledge with the butts of 
 muskets, lay in the snow, Anukof and his wife's father. 
 
 That was lesson the first. But Paschkin was ill to 
 teach. 
 
 Twice again, with intervals given to recovery and 
 
86 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 subsequent backsliding, similar things happened. 
 Then Paschkin recognised the temper of the men of 
 Irkutsk, and learned a measure of outward prudence 
 in certain directions ; and those who died won a meas- 
 ure of immunity for the rest. 
 
 But the curbing of Paschkin in one direction, through 
 the imminence of death at the hand of outraged hus- 
 band or father or brother, had but the effect of stimu- 
 lating his vicious caprice in others. His absolutism 
 knew no bounds. Men's lives and liberties were of 
 no account with him. When the mood was on him, 
 and always when he was thwarted, or deemed himself 
 so, he dealt with men as a headstrong child with its 
 toys smashed them and flung them away. 
 
 The wonder was that he was permitted to live, either 
 by the men of Irkutsk or a just God. But live he did, 
 and prospered in his way, and spread himself like a 
 green bay tree. 
 
 In Petersburg he was esteemed a model governor. 
 His province was quiet, his contribution to the ever- 
 gaping treasury always prompt and satisfactory - 
 a vast improvement on the easy-going Dolgourof. 
 
 How Paschkin gathered the tribute what agonies 
 and sweatings of blood the tale of roubles might repre- 
 sent was nothing to them. Money was the life-blood 
 of the empire, as represented by the bureaucrats at 
 headquarters, and the empire must live, no matter 
 who died in the process. 
 
THE LONG ROAD^ 87 
 
 And custom inures men to any environment. The 
 men and by degrees and in time even the women 
 of Irkutsk came to regard Paschkin as a natural evil, 
 like the plague or the fever, to be suffered as best one 
 might. 
 
 Men live on the slopes of Etna and Vesuvius, and 
 eat and drink and are merry; and if the mountain 
 awake and spout fire and devour of their company, 
 the rest build anew on the same spot and live on as 
 before. So with the men of Irkutsk. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 IVAN ILINE suffered mightily in spirit by reason of 
 his appointment to Paschkin's council. 
 
 The instinctive respect of the moujik for those in 
 authority, however brutally misused, and still more 
 the bitter remembrance of his own previous uprooting, 
 inclined him to patient endurance. Resistance had 
 but one ending. His chilled blood was often on the 
 boil, but he thought of his wife, and of Stepan and 
 Katia, and kept a stolid face, though it was bitter hard 
 work at times. 
 
 His business prospered, but he would not have it 
 prosper unduly lest it become a mark for envy. They 
 lived very simply, but in all comfort and content, and 
 the house was a happy one, though it stood on the slope 
 of a volcano. 
 
 Within a year of Stepan's marriage, Marya Petrov- 
 na's cup was filled to overflowing by the arrival of a 
 daughter to the happy Katia. She was declared by 
 all to be the very image of what her mother must have 
 been at the same age, the same blue eyes and fair 
 hair, which would both grow darker, the very same 
 nose and mouth, the mothers declared, though Stepan 
 searched the crumpled rose leaf of a face hopefully in 
 
 83 
 
THE LONG ROAD 89 
 
 vain, and vowed they were right to please them, trust- 
 ing that time would add grace to his vision. 
 
 They named her Katia, of course, and called her 
 little Katenka, and she filled all their hearts. Her 
 grandmother, in particular, worshipped her, and vowed 
 there never had been such another since her own little 
 Stepan was born. Had not her heart hungered for 
 this for years? And now the long-pent love spent 
 itself unstintedly on the little one, and Katia would 
 laughingly declare that Marya Petrovna grudged her 
 the use of her own baby. And, truly, Marya was 
 only perfectly happy when it was in her arms or on 
 her knee. 
 
 Meanwhile the affairs of the State rolled ponderously 
 on, grinding some to powder and leaving empty places, 
 maiming others, spilling still others into outer darkness. 
 
 But so far calamity had passed Iline by. He almost 
 dared to hope at times that evil fortune was satisfied 
 with his former undoing and required no more of him. 
 Nevertheless he walked warily and suffered all things 
 in unmoved silence. 
 
 Paschkin, by reason of his silence and quiet endur- 
 ance of evil, had come to regard him as a man of pru- 
 dence and sagacity. Iline rarely spoke and never 
 thwarted him. What better councillor could an auto- 
 crat desire? 
 
 So, through the very qualities of self-restraint and 
 self-effacement which had commended him to the 
 
9 o THE LONG ROAD 
 
 Governor, that which he had thereby sought to escape 
 came upon him. 
 
 The largest single contribution to the Irkutsk tribute 
 came from the Verkinsk silver mines. It was an im- 
 portant item to the exchequer. 
 
 Under Dolgourof it had never failed to come sooner 
 or later; though at times the delay had been so great 
 that a further amount was due before the former one 
 was paid. 
 
 Verkinsk lay six hundred miles away to the north, 
 in a difficult mountainous country. Impassable roads, 
 and unrestrainable rivers, to say nothing of occasional 
 roving bands of natives, had palliated all delays, until 
 Paschkin came. 
 
 On the first default, Paschkin gave the authorities 
 in Verkinsk to understand clearly that he and Dol- 
 gourof were built on entirely different lines. He 
 threatened, if their laxity could find no other cure, to 
 hang one of their number for each day the convoy was 
 in arrears. 
 
 The second half-yearly amount arrived a week 
 before its time, and Paschkin chuckled grimly. The 
 next was now a week overdue and Paschkin was 
 furious. If it did not arrive in a day or two, there 
 would be no directors of mines left in Verkinsk. 
 
 But Paschkin was not of a waiting temper. He cast 
 round among his councillors for the best man for his 
 purpose, and each man shrank within himself, and 
 
THE LONG ROA*) 91 
 
 blessed his holy angels when the baleful eye passed 
 him by. 
 
 " You, Iline," he decided. " You are doer, not talker. 
 You shall be Paschkin at Verkinsk and hang whom 
 you will. Right man or wrong, it will smarten the rest. 
 You will start at once, within the hour. You will make 
 all speed to Verkinsk and inquire into the delay. The 
 convoy may have started. You may pass it on the road. 
 No matter. It is seven days behind time, and by my 
 word seven of them should hang and shall, if you 
 so decide. It will take you ten days to go and ten to 
 return. I give you ten days there. Whomsoever, 
 after inquiry, you hang will hang for five days as a 
 lesson to the rest, and you will bring back the heads 
 of those you hang, for my satisfaction." 
 
 A hideous errand and full of risks and those of the 
 road the smallest. But there was no escape from it. 
 Departure held chances. Refusal was tantamount to a 
 death-warrant. 
 
 So Ivan Iline went heavily home while Paschkin got 
 ready his papers. 
 
 "What is it, my man?" asked Marya Petrovna, 
 anxiously, at sight of her husband's face. 
 
 " Paschkin orders me to Verkinsk to inquire into the 
 delay in the convoy." 
 
 " Bozhe-mo'i Verkinsk ! " she cried aghast. " That 
 is a journey ! When ? " 
 
 "Now." 
 
92 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 And she and Katia, with little Katenka cooing in the 
 crook of her arm, began his instant preparations for 
 the road. 
 
 He went into the forge to speak to Stepan about the 
 work in his absence. 
 
 "Could I not go in your place?" asked Stepan in- 
 stantly when he heard. 
 
 "Nay, my son, Paschkin would not. Nor would I. 
 I go to hang men, by his orders " 
 
 "But you will not," said Stepan, incredulously. 
 
 "I am to bring back their heads as proof." 
 
 "He is a devil," said Stepan, fervently. "And we are 
 in his hands." 
 
 "And God's," said his father. 
 
 "God is in heaven and the Tzar is very far away. 
 Which horses do you take?" 
 
 " The bay and the roan. Paschkin 's name will pro- 
 cure me others." 
 
 "Without doubt," said Stepan, in the recollection of 
 his own travelling on Paschkin 's business. "But, all 
 the same, it's a terrible journey. I will at all events go 
 with you." 
 
 "Nay, they will need you here. If any ill comes to 
 me" 
 
 "God help us!" said Stepan, hotly. "If any ill 
 comes to you, I will " 
 
 "You will look after your mother and your wife and 
 the child," said his father, quietly. 
 
 And within the hour he was gone. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 THE days passed and they followed him in their 
 hearts. 
 
 They were anxious days, and their happiness was 
 clouded. For, though six hundred miles were of no 
 very great account in that land of illimitable distances 
 and unlimited time ; and though ten days' travel, under 
 reasonable conditions, would compass them easily, 
 the six hundred miles to Verkinsk bristled with dan- 
 gers, of the road, which in places was not ; of the 
 rivers, which were; and of the roving bands of half- 
 civilised Tunguses whose cupidity no indefinite fears 
 of possible punishment could restrain. 
 
 On the tenth day they said, "He should be about 
 there." 
 
 But each anxious heart whispered to itself, "If 
 no ill has befallen him." And Marya Petrovna's 
 thoughts wandered gloomily at times, even when her 
 arms rejoiced in the feel of little Katenka. 
 
 Stepan and Katia kept cheerful faces for her sake, 
 but there was a weight on their hearts which would not 
 lighten till Iline should appear in the doorway. 
 
 On the twelfth day the Verkinsk convoy arrived, and 
 their hearts beat hopefully at the thought that he might 
 have returned with it. 
 
 93 
 
94 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 Stepan hurried off to see. He found two of the leaders 
 dangling like horrible tassels from the projecting eaves 
 of the Governor's house. They had had nothing 
 whatever to do with the delay in the starting of the 
 convoy, but they were here, and the culprits were in Ver- 
 kinsk. They had fallen into the hand of Paschkin, 
 and the opportunity of impressing the rest with the 
 weight of it was not to be missed. The story would 
 reach Verkinsk. 
 
 The others were trembling in their boots and their 
 wits were troubled. Stepan questioned them anxiously, 
 one after another, but could get no word of his father. 
 There was choice of routes in places, some being judged 
 less precarious than others for the laden telegas. They 
 might have passed him on some such loop. He would 
 probably have chosen the quickest with his light taran- 
 tas. They spoke briefly of much water out, and snow 
 among the hills. 
 
 The snow might help him, Stepan thought, if only it 
 lay deep enough. He could change his tarantas for 
 a sledge and make better way. Nevertheless he would 
 have liked news, and it was all he could do to build a 
 hopeful report at home on so slight a foundation. 
 
 On the twentieth day they said, "He is starting for 
 home," and tried their best to believe it. But they 
 avoided looking into one another's eyes lest their own 
 should betray them, and Marya Petrovna's motherly 
 face grew somewhat pinched in spite of herself. 
 
THE LONG ROAP 95 
 
 Then time came when hope grew in them again, 
 and they said, "In two days he will be here." 
 
 Then: "He should be here to-day, but if he is not, 
 there is no need to be anxious. It is a long journey, 
 and the roads are bad." 
 
 But the day passed and they could do no work. They 
 could only look out for him, all day long, and wait, and 
 strive to keep their hearts from sinking and their faces 
 from betraying their fears. 
 
 They had a feast ready for him, to make good the 
 discrepancies of the road. But it was wasted. He did 
 not come, and they had no heart for it. 
 
 They went to bed saying: "He will come to-morrow. 
 It would have been really surprising if he had come 
 to-day." 
 
 But they none of them slept, not even little Katenka, 
 for she was cutting a tooth. 
 
 And when the next night came, and still no news 
 of the traveller, Marya Petrovna's face was gray and 
 drawn, and she had no words even for little Katenka. 
 If she had opened her mouth it was a sob that would 
 have come out, so she pinched her lips and kept it in 
 her heart. 
 
 And the next day passed, and the next, and now they 
 had only fears to brood upon. They had done their 
 best to keep alive their little sparks of hope, but their 
 lamps were empty and the last sparks died. 
 
 "I go to Paschkin," said Stepan, abruptly, on the fifth 
 
96 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 day, and he went, with set and sombre face. The 
 women looked at one another, and fell on one another's 
 necks and wept. For the truth was out and fear was 
 upon them. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 "An, Stepan Ivanovitch, it is thou ! What of thy 
 father?" growled Paschkin, when Stepan gained au- 
 dience of him at last. 
 
 "We are beginning to fear for him, Excellency." 
 
 "Fear? Fear what?" 
 
 "We know not, Excellency. But he has not come." 
 
 "He has overpassed his time. But the roads are bad 
 and the water is out, they say. We will give him two 
 more days." 
 
 "And if he does not come " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 "I would go seek him, Excellency." 
 
 "Seek him where?" 
 
 "Between here and Verkinsk." 
 
 " Da, it is a long road ! But thou art a great traveller. 
 Well, thou canst go." 
 
 "And your Excellency will give me authority for 
 the road?" 
 
 " Come in two days," growled Paschkin, and Stepan 
 went heavily home to make his preparations for the 
 journey. 
 
 "Must thou go, Stepan?" asked Katia, white-faced, 
 
 and shadowy about the eyes, when he told her that night. 
 H 97 
 
98 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 " What can I else, little Katenka ? " he said, smoothing 
 her hair as she clung to him as though she would not 
 let him go. "He may be lying sick at Verkinsk, or 
 somewhere on the road. Some ill has befallen him or 
 he would be here. To know even the worst will be 
 better than not to know." 
 
 "Yes, thou must go," she said, with desperate resig- 
 nation. "Thy mother's heart is eating itself with fore- 
 bodings. But thou wilt use every care, Stepan? If 
 thou should'st not return " and her voice broke in a 
 sob. 
 
 "I will use every care, little one, and thou must 
 cheer the mother while I am away." 
 
 "Little cheer will I have myself till I see thy face 
 again," she said forlornly. And he knew it must be 
 so, yet felt that his duty was to go. 
 
 The two days passed in added gloom, and on the 
 third Stepan started on his journey, with Paschkin's 
 authority for horses where they were to be had, and as 
 companion young Feodor Sabine out of the forge. 
 
 It left them very short-handed there, only three men 
 and old Paul who acted as foreman, where seven were 
 now none too many as a rule. But Feodor had grown 
 up with Stepan, and this was a journey on which one's 
 life, and the lives of those who were dearer than one's 
 own, might depend on the mettle of one's companion. 
 
 Katia clung to her husband at the last as though she 
 repented her submission to duty. He put her into his 
 
THE LONG ROAD u 99 
 
 mother's arms and kissed both their streaming faces 
 again and again, and the last thing he saw was little 
 Katenka merrily waving a pink-sucked thumb at him 
 over their bowed heads. 
 
 And when the sound of his bells had died away, the 
 sorrowful mothers knelt before the image in the corner, 
 and prayed brokenly for his safe return more they 
 scarcely dared to ask. And little Katenka pointed the 
 pink-sucked thumb over her mother's shoulder at the 
 holy image, and said, as she had been taught, "God !" 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 FOR seven days Stepan and his companion were able 
 to follow the trail from house to house where Iline had 
 changed his horses. 
 
 At the first stop they found the bay and the roan with 
 which he started, and took them on to the next stage. 
 But their progress was slow, for many times each day 
 they came on places where destruction lay in wait for 
 an unwary driver, or one bent on speed before all things. 
 And each such place they searched with care, and hearts 
 full of foreboding, only to find when they reached the 
 next house that he had arrived there safely, and had 
 gone on with fresh horses which had never been returned. 
 
 As they neared Verkinsk, Stepan's heart began to 
 rise somewhat, in the hope that they would find him at 
 the mines, lying sick maybe, or delayed through some 
 accident. It was certain he had never come back this 
 way. 
 
 But the end of the eighth day put an end to their 
 hopes. No such traveller had passed there. No 
 horses had been furnished. Somewhere between these 
 last two houses Ivan Iline had disappeared. 
 
 Till late into the night they discussed the matter with 
 their host. He had heard already of the summary 
 
 100 
 
THE LONG kOAt) ^ 101 
 
 hanging of the convoy leaders, and the dread of Pasch- 
 kin was upon him. He was entirely at their service and 
 an honest fellow to boot. 
 
 "It's a bad course at best, is this," he told them. 
 " Not nearly so bad now, though, with the snow so thick, 
 as it was a month ago when the water was out. They 
 take to runners two stages back before we do here, 
 because the snow lies up there, and here it's all water till 
 it freezes. When the water's out you go for miles with 
 it up to your horses' bellies, and if you don't know the 
 road, there are traps in plenty. Bozhe-moi, he may be 
 halfway to the sea by now!" which struck chill 
 on their hearts. 
 
 In the morning he turned out with them, and they 
 searched anxiously along the river banks for many 
 miles downwards. But the river was frozen for thirty 
 feet out from either bank, and the black water rolled 
 sluggishly between like an endless procession of the dead. 
 It crept on and on remorselessly. Those frozen shelves 
 and creeping black waters might hide the secrets of a 
 thousand lives and deaths throughout all time. 
 
 "Voi !" said the farmer at last. "It is all no good. 
 He is gone without doubt. You will see him no more. 
 Will you go on?" 
 
 "Yes, I will go, though there is no good in going. 
 I must be able to tell Paschkin that he never reached 
 Verkinsk," and they went on, making perfunctory 
 inquiry as they went, but learning nothing. 
 
102 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 Arrived at Verkinsk he went straight to the Governor, 
 and then to the chief of police, and received from both 
 the cold welcome of an intruder. They could only tell 
 him that his father had never reached Verkinsk. 
 
 The head men at the mines would hardly open their 
 mouths to him. The fear and hatred of Paschkin lay 
 heavy on them all. 
 
 It was only with very great difficulty that Stepan set 
 their suspicions at rest, and made them understand that 
 his reasons for detesting the Governor were fully as 
 great as their own. He gloomily confirmed their belief 
 in Paschkin's bedevilment, and heartily agreed with 
 them that his place was among the heathen, or better 
 still, as one of them growled, among the dead. 
 
 But they could give him no news of his father. They 
 had heard that one had been sent by Paschkin to punish 
 them for delay in the convoy, and they had been living 
 in fear ever since. But none such had come, and they 
 had begun to hope it was only a rumour. At sight of 
 Stepan they had taken him for the messenger of the 
 Iron Hand and treated him accordingly. 
 
 "I feared he might lay some such duty on me," 
 said Stepan, "and he is an ill man to counter. He did 
 not ; but if you will be advised by me you will see your 
 convoy well on its way before its time in future. If you 
 do, Paschkin will not trouble you. If you do not, he 
 will certainly take toll of your heads." 
 
 They began volubly to explain their difficulties. 
 
THE LONG ROAD - 103 
 
 "Paschkin hangs men first and hearkens to excuses 
 afterwards," he said, and they took it to heart. 
 
 He questioned them keenly and at odd times, for the 
 idea came into his head that they might have got wind 
 of his father's errand and waylaid him on the road. 
 But he found nothing to confirm so villainous a sug- 
 gestion, and the men themselves lent no colour to it. 
 And, satisfied at length that his father had come to 
 sudden calamity between the seventh and eighth stages, 
 he started on his return home. 
 
 At the seventh stage he paid the man for the horses 
 which had never been returned to him, and on the night 
 of the twenty-eighth day he and Feodor were back in 
 Irkutsk, having spent twenty- five days on the road and 
 three in Verkinsk. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 MARYA PETROVNA and Katia Vasilievna welcomed 
 Stepan as one returned from the dead. Their joy at 
 sight of him lessened indeed their grief at the news he 
 brought. 
 
 All the time he had been away their minds had been 
 numb with fear lest they should be equally widowed 
 and wholly bereft. They had grown almost accustomed 
 to the thought of Ivan Ivanovitch's death. But the fear 
 lest Stepan should follow him by the same road had 
 frozen their hearts. 
 
 And so, though there was sadness of loss among them, 
 there was also joy of recovery; and the happiness of 
 being safely together again after many perils exceeded 
 all else. 
 
 They sat long about the stove, that first night, and 
 Stepan told them all there was to tell of him who was 
 gone, which amounted to so very little, and that mostly 
 supposition, and of their journeying, of the wild 
 country they had passed through, and of Verkinsk and 
 its silver mines, and the chained men who toiled in 
 them. 
 
 Marya Petrovna sat silent and sad through it all, 
 
 and when he had ended she said quietly, "May God 
 
 104 
 
THE LONG ROALT 105 
 
 requite it all to Paschkin, for he sent my man to his 
 death." 
 
 On the morrow Stepan hastened to acquaint the 
 Governor with the ill result of his quest. 
 
 Paschkin's dark face was knitted in a frown when he 
 entered. The weak joint in the armour of the man who 
 rules by fear is that he suspects every man and can trust 
 none. Paschkin's mind, strong to brutality as it was, 
 had many perplexities. He scowled unrememberingly, 
 and Stepan saw that for the moment he had no recol- 
 lection of him and the errand on which he had 
 been. 
 
 "I am returned from Verkinsk, Excellency," he said 
 quietly. 
 
 " Ah the young Iline ! Well and your father? 
 You have brought him with you, and the heads of those 
 sluggards at Verkinsk?" 
 
 Stepan shook his head . " He never reached Verkinsk, 
 Excellency " 
 
 "Not? Bozhe-moi, where did he go?" 
 
 "To his death, Excellency. He changed horses at 
 the seventh stage. He never reached the eighth. The 
 waters were out and we found no trace of him." 
 
 "And the horses?" 
 
 "Nor of the horses, nor of the men who were with 
 him, Excellency. We searched, with the men of the 
 country, but we found nothing." 
 
 "So you came home." 
 
io6 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 "I went on to Verkinsk, Excellency, to make sure and 
 leave nothing undone 
 
 " Ah ! " with a savage gleam . " You have brought me 
 those heads " 
 
 "I had no such instructions, Excellency. I went to 
 seek my father " 
 
 "Fool!" stormed Paschkin. "To be there on the 
 spot and leave the work undone ! You knew your 
 father's business, and that he had failed to carry it out. 
 Could your thick head not stumble to the thought of 
 doing what he was to do, and what you knew I wanted 
 done?" 
 
 Stepan took grip of himself and kept a steady face 
 and his eyes on the ground. 
 
 "Away ! I gave thee credit for brains, but thou art 
 but a lout like the rest," and Stepan bowed, and got 
 out as quickly as he could, thankful for no worse a 
 reception, and in no wise troubled by Paschkin's 
 contempt of his abilities. For Paschkin's despisal 
 was more like to make for a quiet life than his appro- 
 bation. 
 
 And, thereafter, as the result of much consideration 
 of the matter, whenever they came in contact, Stepan 
 did his utmost to assume a stupidity which was not in 
 him, and for a time it answered well and saved him 
 many troubles. 
 
 For the dread of every man in Irkutsk was to be 
 chosen by the Governor for his council, and never was 
 
THE LONG ROAD 107 
 
 honour more strenuously avoided. For service meant 
 responsibility without power, bullyings and brow- 
 beatings without the possibility of reply, coercion 
 within the council, and obloquy without. But refusal 
 to serve entailed still more certain suffering, and so 
 men served Paschkin much as a flock of sheep 
 might assist at the deliberations of a wolf. 
 
 The unanimity of their agreement with his ideas 
 was wonderful, but, under the circumstances, not 
 surprising. The mere hint of a divergence of opinion 
 set the angry jaw working and the hot blood boiling 
 in the dark red face. Every proposition his Ex- 
 cellency made was carried, as a rule, without discussion 
 or a dissentient voice. A more homogeneous and 
 unanimous council never existed. 
 
 Stepan applied himself to his business quietly and 
 diligently, and cautiously avoided anything that might 
 bring him to the Governor's notice. 
 
 They lived simply but lacked nothing. The tragic 
 disappearance of her husband cast a shadow on Marya 
 Petrovna which only death would lift. She aged rap- 
 idly and brooded on her sorrow. Life had lost its 
 flavour for her. The only solace left her was the 
 loving solicitude of Stepan and Katia; her only joy 
 the little Katenka, who made her her confidante and 
 playfellow, and grew more like her mother every 
 day. 
 
 They did everything for the stricken one, and strove 
 
io8 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 their best to brighten her days. But the blow had 
 been a mortal one, and the long anxiety in which it 
 was wrapped had worn down her spirit. 
 
 She came through another winter, however, but the 
 short spring and sudden heat of the summer seemed 
 to sap her strength. 
 
 She was sitting in her armchair inside the room one 
 day while little Katenka played and prattled in and 
 out of the sunshine and the open door. 
 
 "Art thou cold, matushka?" babbled little Katenka, 
 looking up into the gray, lined face. She always used 
 the endearing "little mother" to her mother and grand- 
 mother alike, and her father was always "papasha." 
 
 "Yes, my darling cold." 
 
 "You should get up and run like me. I am never 
 cold because I run." 
 
 "Little feet, little feet, so cold, so cold," and the 
 worn hands chafed feebly against one another, as though 
 a pair of little ice-cold muddy feet were between them 
 needing to be warmed. 
 
 "See me run. I can run quick," and little Katenka's 
 fat little legs bustled her through the doorway so quickly 
 that they tangled up outside and she fell on her nose 
 and wailed aloud. 
 
 Her mother ran out of the inner room and picked 
 her up and soothed her. But nothing would satisfy 
 little Katenka but her grandmother's never-failing 
 kiss of consolation as well. 
 
THE LONG ROAD 109 
 
 So they went babbling to her chair. But for the 
 first and last time grannie did not respond. 
 
 Katia, with a quick look at the quiet face, and a 
 sudden paling of her own, picked up the child and 
 ran through into the forge for Stepan. 
 
 But there was nothing they could do. Marya 
 Petrovna had run farther and quicker than little 
 Katenka for once, and had clasped hands again with 
 her man who had gone on in front. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 BY the most rigid observance of every ordinance of 
 Paschkin, no matter how oppressive or unjust; by 
 payment but not too precipitately punctual pay- 
 ment of every increased tax, no matter how burden- 
 some; and by cautious abstinence from any action 
 which might bring him under the Governor's notice, 
 Stepan for a while lived in the peace of obscurity. 
 
 There could be no certain or lasting security, indeed, 
 for any man while Paschkin ruled in Irkutsk. And 
 many less able than Stepan to control their natural 
 repugnance at his brutalities, or less unremittingly 
 cautious in the plan of their lives, yet with no less at 
 stake than himself, suffered bitter things from the Iron 
 Hand. 
 
 The very recital of some of his doings made men's 
 teeth grind savagely, and set the blood boiling in their 
 heads, and filled their hearts with curses, even though 
 their faces were stolid and unmoved. And the wonder 
 the everlasting wonder was that Paschkin lived. 
 That he did so was due to no lack of effort on the part 
 of the wronged ones, and yet, in spite of all, the grip 
 of his hand grew ever tighter and the ruthlessness 
 of his caprice knew no bounds. 
 
 no 
 
THE LONG RO4D in 
 
 Polikof, the skin merchant, in the council one day, 
 most foolishly ventured to state that their Lake Baikal 
 had no communication with the Eastern Sea, as the 
 Governor had assumed, and that therefore it was use- 
 less attempting to push trade in that direction. 
 
 It was, perhaps, necessary that some one should 
 catch that particular bull by the horns, or worse might 
 come of it for all concerned. Or, better still, it had 
 been subtler wisdom on their part to let their bull run 
 a space, even at some loss to themselves, until he found 
 out his mistake and, of course, laid the blame of failure 
 on their collective shoulders. In any case, some one 
 of them less burdened as to family than Polikof might 
 have undertaken the duty. For Polikof had eight 
 children and had lost his wife. 
 
 "Ah! Thou thinkest thou knowest Baikal," thun- 
 dered Paschkin. "Thou shalt learn it to thy heart's 
 content. On Baikal shalt thou live henceforth, and 
 if I find so much as one of thy feet on shore it shall be 
 cut off." 
 
 That was Paschkin to the life. To fit the punish- 
 ment to what he deemed the crime was ever keen enjoy- 
 ment to him. 
 
 The rest of the council sat frozen into silence for 
 horror of it. Polikof, meekest of men, but now outcast 
 of hope and desperate in his extremity, faced the tyrant 
 amazingly, as outraged meekness will at times. 
 
 "For giving thee the truth, thou sendest me to death. 
 
ii2 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 Thou art a devil as men say," quoth the meek one, 
 boldly. 
 
 "Say they so?" stormed Paschkin. "I would I 
 had their backs in one beneath my lash. But I have 
 thine and it shall pay for the rest." 
 
 And the following day, Polikof, with his back in 
 ribbons from the knout, started for Baikal in a telega 
 heaped with straw, lest he should die on the road, 
 which would have left him in much better case. 
 
 And Volnof, the trader, who was by nature of a full 
 and rotund body, having grumbled outside that, if 
 the taxes went on mounting up in this fashion, they 
 would all have to live on bread and water before long, 
 was haled before the Governor, whose long ears had 
 caught the growl. 
 
 "So thou fearest to be brought to bread and water, 
 thou pot-bellied lump !" snarled Paschkin, while the 
 wretched Volnof quivered before him like a stricken 
 jelly-bag. "The fear is often greater than the fact. 
 We will relieve thy mind. A month of bread and 
 water will bring thee to the proper shape of a man, and 
 if it fail, then thou shalt have two months !" 
 
 And he clapped the burly one behind the bars, and 
 fed him naught but bread and water till his spirit and 
 his body were alike broken, and he died six months 
 later. 
 
 By such freakish deviltries, as by a process of detri- 
 tion, the Governor's council was constantly being worn 
 
THE LONG ROAD 113 
 
 down. He would have dispensed with it entirely 
 but for the laws such as they were of the realm, 
 which called for a council, and a council he must have. 
 And so, whenever his brutalities had winnowed it too 
 fine, he looked about him and pounced on this one 
 and that, and conferred his undesired appointments 
 from which there was no possibility of escape. 
 
 Men dreaded them as they did the plague, and re- 
 sorted to all manner of shifts and manoeuvres to avoid 
 them; but though they might lie low and escape for 
 the time, sooner or later the wide net had them. 
 
 It was not, perhaps, heroic, and might indeed suggest 
 a lack of public spirit. But the men of Irkutsk were 
 but very ordinary men, struggling hard to provide for 
 their wives and families, of no great knowledge or 
 understanding, and desirous only of being left alone 
 to live in peace and quietness. And Paschkin was all- 
 powerful, fearing neither God nor man, and he simply 
 used them as his puppets and broke them at his pleasure. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 Ir Paschkin ever thought of Stepan Iline it was only 
 as a wooden-head who lacked understanding suffi- 
 cient to take advantage of his opportunities. But 
 Irkutsk was even then a city of size, with many thou- 
 sands of inhabitants, and it is possible he had dropped 
 for the time being out of the busy Governor's mind. 
 And, however the Irkutsk men might grovel before 
 Paschkin, they held by one another, and no man ever 
 gave another away. 
 
 Moreover, Stepan lived so quietly, and made so little 
 mark outside, that he attracted no notice even from the 
 police. And he, and every other man in Irkutsk, 
 lived in the hope that Paschkin might die naturally 
 or by violence mattered not, so long as he died and 
 ceased to trouble them. They would have rejoiced 
 with him most unfeignedly if he had been appointed 
 to some higher post anything to have been rid of 
 him, for it seemed barely possible that the world could 
 hold two Paschkins, and any change could not but be 
 for the better. 
 
 But such luck as Stepan Iline's was too good to last, 
 and the inevitable happened. And it came as the 
 
 result of an accident. 
 
 114 
 
THE LONG ROAD 115 
 
 Paschkin, by dint of long searching, had possessed 
 himself of another black horse to complete his troika, 
 and with these three he whirled like a hurricane about 
 his command. With their tails and manes flying, the 
 whites of their eyes gleaming viciously, their nostrils 
 aflame, the foam flecks dappling their black skins, and 
 their pace always a wild gallop; with a wild -haired 
 Cossack in black as driver; and the grim dark face 
 scowling out of the tarantas or sledge behind Pasch- 
 kin's excursions were things to be avoided by old and 
 young. At sight of him men slunk out of sight, or, 
 if they were driving, drew well off the road, and the 
 children fled screaming to their mothers. 
 
 One day, as he drove, his shafter cast a shoe. Pasch- 
 kin's quick ear caught the clink of a forge not far away. 
 He followed the sound and came to Stepan Iline's 
 door, and, before Stepan was aware of him, he heard the 
 master rating one of his men for a piece of ill-done work. 
 
 "Now see, Mikhail Alexandrovitch, such work will 
 not do here. We give of our best, and nothing less will 
 answer. Thou art new to our ways, but thou must 
 come to them at once, or out thou goest neck and crop. 
 And understand this I tell no man twice ! Break 
 that up and do it again as it should be done." 
 
 "A man after my own heart," said Paschkin to 
 himself, and stepped into the forge. 
 
 At sight of him Stepan's face assumed its stolid 
 mask. But it was too late. Paschkin had heard. 
 
n6 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 "A shoe for the shafter's hind leg," he said. "And 
 do it thyself." And Stepan knew that his time had 
 come. 
 
 "And where hast thou been hiding all this time, 
 Iline?" asked Paschkin, as he watched. 
 
 "I have been here at my work, Excellency," and the 
 sparks flew broadcast from the shoe under his hammer. 
 
 "Dost remember this fellow?" 
 
 "He is one of the pair from Selemsinsk." 
 
 "Ay, an excellent bargain. Almost worth coming 
 to Irkutsk for. Thy business prospers?" 
 
 " By hard work we make both ends meet, Excellency." 
 
 "I want some of thy time, however. My council 
 needs fresh blood at times, and needs it badly now. 
 They are pig-heads all. I name thee to it. Thou 
 wilt come to-morrow." 
 
 And when he went into the house, after work, 
 Katia's clear vision plumbed the matter before ever 
 he opened his lips. She had seen the hated team at 
 the forge, and fear and Paschkin went together. 
 
 "Ah!" she cried. "He has got thee at last," and 
 there was foreboding in her voice and face. 
 
 "He has called me to the council," said Stepan, 
 gloomily, while little Katenka climbed on his knee and 
 tried to coax the usual smiles with her kisses. "And 
 I had as lief he had not. It is not a post for any 
 honest man." 
 
 "Thou wilt be very discreet," said Katia, soothingly, 
 
THE LONG ROAtf Iiy 
 
 though her heart was heavy at sight of his face so 
 downcasted. 
 
 "Ay, truly," he said very soberly. "For thy sake 
 and the little one's I will be as quiet as a dog under its 
 master's foot. But it is not a part that suits me." 
 
 "Every night and every morning I pray for Pasch- 
 kin's death or removal," cried Katia, passionately. 
 "And now I will pray harder than ever. Thou wilt 
 suffer his insolences, Stepan, and bite thy tongue, 
 but give him no occasion against thee." 
 
 "Truly will I. But thou wilt have a tongueless man 
 within a week, I fear. 'Tis no easy matter to sit still 
 and silent while the Devil harries thy neighbour to 
 death." 
 
 "Thou wilt think ever of the little one and me. No 
 good can come of opposing Paschkin. Perhaps the 
 good God will hear our prayers and take him from 
 us." 
 
 "Would that he might!" said Stepan, fervently, 
 and not a man or a woman in Irkutsk who prayed but 
 prayed the same thing. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 THE position of councillor under Paschkin was, as 
 Stepan said, no easy one. 
 
 Stiffen one's face, and bite one's tongue, and steel 
 one's heart as one might, it was well nigh impossible 
 to sit quiet and so be made party to doings which filled 
 one's soul with loathing and with self-contempt. Yet 
 a word, nay, even a look at times, and the thunder 
 was loosed and the lightning flashed, and life home, 
 wife, children, and all that had made life bearable, 
 all were gone in a moment at the word of a man whose 
 word was law, and who, to all intents and purposes, 
 acknowledged no higher power than himself. God 
 was in heaven and the Tzar was very far away. 
 
 For men with red blood in their veins, and hearts 
 above a sheep's, the position was a painful and a hateful 
 one. Still more painful ones, however, were thrust, 
 red and raw, upon their notice from time to time, and 
 Paschkin met with no more opposition than sufficed 
 to keep his mind pleasantly occupied in devising pun- 
 ishments befitting these offences against his preroga- 
 tive. 
 
 Even Ivan Iline, who had deemed his past sufferings 
 
 sufficient condonation for any present pusillanimity, 
 
 118 
 
THE LONG ROAtf 119 
 
 had not escaped, though his end had not come by any 
 active provocation of the tyrant. 
 
 And Stepan was younger, and his blood had not been 
 chilled for life by the rigours of the long road and the 
 black injustice of his transplanting. And so Stepan 
 will as he might, with all that was in him, and ever 
 present thought of consequences to Katia and little 
 Katenka found it almost beyond him at times to 
 sit there acquiescent while the Governor wrung the 
 withers of his fellows and ground them small beneath 
 his heel. 
 
 He sank low in his own estimation, he suffered much, 
 he writhed at his self-imposed impotence. But he 
 said to himself that it was for Katia and little Katenka, 
 and sometimes, when he returned from the council, 
 he would go into the forge and hammer Paschkin into 
 and out of bars of white-hot metal, till the whole place 
 rang with the sound of it, and the fiery sparks were like 
 visible curses. 
 
 Vicariously Paschkin suffered much punishment 
 and many deaths at many hands, but in actual fact he 
 went his way exulting, and cared for neither God 
 nor man, and 'still less for suffering women and 
 children. 
 
 And Katia, the while, lived in perpetual dread of 
 some outbreak on Stepan's part, or some untoward 
 and unprovoked happening, which would break their 
 lives and end their happiness for ever. And she never 
 
120 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 ceased to urge her husband to prudence for their sakes, 
 though the degradation of it troubled her as it did 
 him. 
 
 He would tell her, now and again, of things that 
 happened in the council, and others she heard outside. 
 She knew quite enough of the matter to make her heart 
 sore for him who had to bear the active brunt of it. 
 She did her best, by her quick sympathy and loving 
 comradeship, to salve his wounds and make him feel 
 himself again, at home at all events. 
 
 So, for twelve bitter months, Stepan lay in the mire 
 of his own manhood under the heel of Paschkin, and 
 then, in the most natural way and without any active 
 invitation on his part, the storm loosed upon him and 
 swept him into the outer darkness. 
 
 Paschkin was capricious as a tiger. If one moment, 
 replete with the satisfaction of one or other of his 
 indulgences, he seemed to purr harmlessly, his teeth 
 hidden and his claws sheathed, the next he was on 
 his feet scratching and biting at anything that offered, 
 and with but one thought, to rend and tear. 
 
 At times the capricious twist in him would invite 
 and when that failed, command discussion of his 
 projects. And at such times his councillors sat warily, 
 became even more stupid and stolid than was cus- 
 tomary with them, and behind their masks tried hard 
 to see which way the cat required them to jump. If 
 they sat mum, he would call upon them in turn for an 
 
THE LONG ROAD 121 
 
 opinion, and their opinions were as a rule extraordi- 
 narily alike and all akin to his own. 
 
 Once or twice, when so called upon, Stepan's true 
 self had peeped out in spite of his self-schooling, and 
 Paschkin had apparently found his ideas worthy of 
 consideration and had taken no umbrage. 
 
 Where all rigidly label themselves blockheads, the 
 faintest gleam of sense shines brightly. Stepan's 
 inadvertent lapses caused the Governor to regard him 
 as a man of acute intelligence, and so, possibly, a 
 danger if he should develop any signs of self-will. His 
 immunity from consequences caused his fellow-coun- 
 cillors to regard him somewhat suspiciously as a favour- 
 ite. 
 
 "You take risks, Stepan Ivanovitch," said old Sa- 
 bine, father of his friend Feodor, one day. 
 
 "Before God, Feodor Feodorovitch, I do my best to 
 look a fool, but when he asks one must answer." 
 
 "The only safe answer is the one he wants. It is 
 not safe to tell him anything he does not know. Polikof 
 knew more than Paschkin, and he is dying in a boat on 
 Baikal." 
 
 "I will bite my tongue still harder, and try my best 
 to look still more a fool," said Stepan. 
 
 "It is the safest way, when one lives in the tiger's 
 mouth," said old Sabine. 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 FOR the first time since Ivan Iline's death since 
 Paschkin hanged the leaders of the delayed convoy 
 since Stepan Iline gave the men of Verkinsk sound 
 advice as to their future conduct if they valued their 
 skins the silver convoy was a week beyond its time, 
 and from the very first day Paschkin's wrath had been 
 accumulating. 
 
 Each day his wretched council had looked for it to 
 boil over, and had wondered who would be scorched 
 out of existence, and each man had done his best to 
 edge himself as far away from the wrath to come as 
 possible. If they could all have taken to their beds 
 with deadly sickness, they would have rejoiced. But it 
 was no good trying that. 
 
 The previous winter, Dmitri Gros, over seventy years 
 of age, had fallen suddenly sick. Paschkin missed him 
 from the council room, asked where he was, was told. 
 
 "Sick!" he shouted. "I have given him no per- 
 mission to be sick," as though in this, as in most 
 mundane matters, the greater included the less, and his 
 powers of life and death included the minor ones of 
 sickness and health. 
 
 Then he summoned his chief of police. 
 
 122 
 
THE LONG ROAD 123 
 
 " Dmitri Gros has not come to the council. Go and 
 fetch him. You understand !" 
 
 The chief of police understood, and presently re- 
 appeared, two of his men behind him carrying Dmitri 
 Gros wrapped up in blankets, his head hanging limply, 
 his face pinched and blue with the cold. He was not 
 much use at the council that day, unless as a warning, 
 and the next day he died. 
 
 So even a genuine sick bed was no refuge for reluc- 
 tant councillors, and the dangers of those days of wrath 
 had to be faced. 
 
 On the day upon which the storm broke, Paschkin 
 came to the council in one of his blackest moods. He 
 had drunk overmuch the previous night, and his cook 
 had taken advantage of the opportunity to do likewise. 
 Breakfast, in consequence, had been a failure on both 
 sides, and Paschkin's wrath which dared not vent 
 itself on the cook, who was utterly irreplaceable and a 
 jewel of a man, except when he was drunk ravened 
 within him. On such small hinges a dish over or 
 under cooked, a flavour not quite to the taste do 
 men's lives and fortunes turn when absolute power is 
 in the hands of one man. 
 
 If Paschkin had been in no blacker humour than 
 usual that day, Stepan Iline's life might have run on 
 less monstrous lines. 
 
 "The convoy has it come?" growled Paschkin. 
 
 There was no news of the convoy. 
 
124 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 His eye roved balefully over his submissive flock, 
 and every member of it broke into a cold sweat of terror 
 as it rested on him, and each man's breathing stopped 
 till the black glance had passed, and then he let out 
 his breath very gently lest the sound of it should pro- 
 voke the danger back. 
 
 Stepan's heart jerked furiously as Paschkin's eye 
 came along towards him, stopped as it rested on him, 
 jerked again for a second as it passed on, and swept 
 rapidly over the rest. 
 
 From the first moment he knew it would settle finally 
 on him. It was inevitable. It was fate, and there was 
 no escape. The connection between himself and Ver- 
 kinsk could not but recur to Paschkin's mind. 
 
 He had been there already. He was acquainted 
 with the road and with the men of Verkinsk. His 
 father, also, had been sent on this very same errand. 
 His father, indeed, had never returned as he might 
 never return. But Paschkin would send him all the 
 same. He knew it in his bones, and Paschkin .might 
 just as well have saved himself the trouble of curdling 
 the blood of the others. But then he liked to see them 
 squirm. 
 
 "You, Iline!" the black eyes, smouldering with 
 wrath and the effect of the previous night's entertain- 
 ment, had shot back at him "you know the way. 
 You will start at once for Verkinsk, find out why the 
 convoy is not here, and punish those who are to blame. 
 
THE LONG ROABT I2S 
 
 If the delay has been there, you will bring me their 
 heads. If you meet the convoy, you will go on all 
 the same. I will hold the leaders till you return." 
 
 Stepan had risen to meet his fate. There was no 
 escape. His face was set rigidly to go through with it, 
 hideous errand though it was. 
 
 He had done the journey once. He might do it 
 again and come back alive, though his father had not 
 had that good fortune. But Paschkin had not 
 done. 
 
 "You will start at once. Ten days to go. Ten 
 days to return. Five days there. You will be back 
 here in five-and-twenty days, or " and the bull head 
 nodded pregnantly. 
 
 The business was bad enough, but this fixing of 
 impossible limits was too much. He must have a fair 
 chance. Paschkin did not understand what he was 
 asking. It was as much as a man's life was worth to 
 oppose him, but it was an even question which was 
 worse, to go with a rope round one's neck, or to 
 speak out, and there was but a moment to decide. 
 
 "With respect, Excellency," said Stepan, and noth- 
 ing could have been more respectful than his tone and 
 his bent head, but the others all held their breath and 
 awaited the explosion, "ten days is not enough for 
 the journey at this season. The waters will be out and 
 the snow is not now deep enough for runners." 
 
 "You will take two Cossacks, and you will be back 
 
126 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 here in twenty-five days or your skin will pay for it," 
 thundered Paschkin, with his devil in his eyes. 
 
 "I will do my utmost, Excellency. No man can do 
 more. But ten days " 
 
 "At once ! I will send your papers within the hour," 
 bellowed Paschkin, and Stepan went. 
 
 And the council had a rough day of it, and each 
 man, when he reached home, thanked the saints that 
 he was not Stepan Iline, and that his own head was still 
 safe on his shoulders, even if he did feel morally bruised 
 and broken. 
 
 Stepan went away home grinding his teeth to get his 
 face straight before he met Katia. 
 
 In the space of five minutes his outlook on life had 
 changed from gray like this wintry sky, but shot 
 with rosy gleams which were Katia, and little Ka- 
 tenka, and home to densest black, through which he 
 could not see his way. 
 
 For a moment he was stunned and his faculties 
 numbed. He had committed the unpardonable sin. 
 He had countered Paschkin, he after all his well- 
 considered resolves and Katia's prayers! 
 
 He could not see the end of it, but neither could he 
 see what else he could have done. The journey could 
 not be done in ten days, nor the business in five-and- 
 twenty. It was humanly impossible, but then Paschkin 
 was the Devil and humanity did not enter into his 
 composition or consideration. 
 
i 
 
 THE LONG ROAD 127 
 
 Before he reached home, however, his brain was ac- 
 tively at work again, and his face was straight enough. 
 Too straight, set like a rock, and Katia perceived 
 it instantly. 
 
 " Oh, Stepan ! What is it ?" she cried, with the fear 
 in her eyes that was common to the women of Irkutsk 
 in those days, and commonest of all to those whose 
 husbands had the misfortune to sit in the council. 
 
 "The convoy is behind again, as I told you, dushenka, 
 and Paschkin wants me to go and seek it." 
 
 He wished to break the full of the ill news to her as 
 gently as might be, but Katia's active mind and natural 
 forebodings covered all the ground between and leaped 
 at once to the end. 
 
 "Dear God!" she wailed. "And you will go like 
 your father and never return. It is the end." 
 
 So he dropped all attempt at disguise, and told her 
 plainly and quickly the thoughts that had strained 
 through the turmoil of his heart and brain as he came 
 home. 
 
 "It may be the end unless we look to ourselves, 
 Katia, and that we will do. I start within the hour 
 on this madness and it may be I shall never return. 
 It is bitterness to give it all up, but as well cut my 
 throat at once and spare his Excellency the trouble. 
 And we will manage better than that. Here is what 
 you will do, dear one. You will collect all the money 
 it is possible to get in. Some we shall never get, and 
 
128 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 you must go about it very quietly. Say to each that 
 I had to start for Paschkin at a moment's notice and 
 you need the money. If I do not get back on the 
 twenty-fifth day, then you will dispose of everything 
 we have here at the best price you can get. Simon 
 Rapin, the Jew, will buy at a price. He will beat 
 you down, but he is an honest man and his money is 
 good. Then you will send all the money, except what 
 you will need for yourself and our little Katenka, to 
 your father at Selemsinsk. Simon will do that for us. 
 Then if I do not come back, and I have no hope of 
 that, you will go to your father also. You under- 
 stand? Better perhaps that you should know nothing 
 of my plans. I will send you word, and you will join 
 me where I am, out of reach of Paschkin." 
 
 Katia had followed every word with wide, under- 
 standing eyes. It was a crisis in their life, perhaps the 
 breaking of it. Every nerve and every sense within her 
 was on the strain. She would have liked to lie down 
 on the ground and weep. But this was no time for 
 weeping. Time enough for that later on. Now she 
 must act. She must play the man though her woman's 
 heart was breaking. 
 
 Within somewhat narrow bounds, and subject always 
 to such sudden disaster as threatens those who live on 
 a volcano, they had been happy. And now the earth 
 was rocking under their feet and their happiness was 
 in peril. 
 
THE LONG ROAJ) 129 
 
 "I understand," she said quietly. "I will do all 
 just as you say, Stepan," and she set to work to make 
 provision for his journey, food, clothing packed in 
 woollen bags which he could sit on in the tarantas, 
 things he would never have thought of himself, but 
 which would recall her to his grateful mind a thou- 
 sand times before he reached his journey's end. 
 
 He drew from its hiding-place his small store of 
 money and divided it with her. It was not much, for 
 money grows outside the stocking, not inside it, and 
 he was a business man. 
 
 They went together into the next room, and he kissed 
 the fair-haired little Katenka, fast asleep in her bed, 
 for she was only three years old and still retained the 
 faculty of waking when others were very sound asleep, 
 and of sleeping when others were very wide awake. 
 
 Then they closed all the doors and sat in silence, 
 seeking a blessing on this woful journey. 
 
 And then a rude knocking on the outer door told 
 them that the time was come. 
 
 One final embrace, long and close, and they parted. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 THE old Adam in a man hates with a very vehement 
 and natural hatred the man that wrongs him. It is 
 curious that he hates equally, if not even more bitterly, 
 the man he wrongs. For the wronged one is a perpetual 
 accusation, an incarnate conscience, to be thrust out, 
 stifled, done away with, by any means that offer. 
 
 Stepan Iline hated Paschkin for the brutal caprice 
 which made, almost inevitably, for the breaking of his 
 life. Paschkin conceived an equal detestation of his 
 victim. The thought of him twisted in his brain like 
 an evil maggot and gave him no peace. 
 
 He recalled now innumerable minute evidences of 
 revolt on Iline's part, veiled looks which no stolid 
 mask had been able wholly to hide; glances of dis- 
 gust which escaped him unawares ; a restlessness under 
 others' harryings which no self-steeling to endurance 
 had been able absolutely to control. 
 
 Without a doubt the fellow was contumacious and 
 needed a lesson. The others also. For one such in 
 the council was bound to infect the rest. And he 
 always found that after the chastisement of one of their 
 number the others were more amenable than ever. 
 
 There had always been something stiff-necked and 
 130 
 
THE LONG ROAft 131 
 
 strait-laced about this young Iline, he remembered 
 now a kind of aloofness, an arrogant bending under 
 compulsion which undoubtedly testified to an inde- 
 pendence of spirit which only needed opportunity to 
 develop into a danger. 
 
 When a maggot such as that gets into the hotbed of 
 an evil brain, inflamed with wine and all indulgence, 
 it grows and breeds in most amazing fashion. 
 
 Before Stepan had started on his journey, Paschkin 
 had succeeded in convincing himself beyond all doubt 
 that he was a danger to himself, a menace to the State, 
 an artful and insidious plotter. A fellow evidently 
 to be got rid of without delay on account of the clever- 
 ness which had enabled him to impress himself upon 
 them all as nothing more than an upright, simple, hard- 
 working man. 
 
 But he, Paschkin, had had experience of that kind 
 of man. Ample ! He knew just how to treat him, 
 and that was to put down his foot and squash him so 
 that he could make no more trouble. 
 
 But there are more ways than one of putting one's 
 foot on a man and squashing him. And here was where 
 Paschkin's special faculty came into play. Punish- 
 ment to be effective, and to fulfil its ultimate object, 
 should be in such form as to act as a deterrent to other 
 evil doers, and Paschkin was notorious for his punitive 
 freaks. 
 
 After the council that day, the taste of Stepan Iline 
 
i 3 2 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 had grown so nauseous in the Governor's mouth that 
 he could not get rid of it even with much wine. 
 
 Just as night fell the belated convoy from Verkinsk 
 trooped in, wayworn and apprehensive. It had started 
 late, they asserted, and they had had to take long de- 
 tours among the hills to avoid the floods below. They 
 had seen nothing of Iline. He must have passed them 
 as they circled among the hills. Paschkin flung the 
 leaders into one of his black holes to await his pleasure, 
 and thought pleasantly of Iline ploughing over the flooded 
 roads toward Verkinsk. He had evidently risked the 
 lower route in hopes of saving time. 
 
 From the accounts of the convoy he would never be 
 nble to accomplish the journey in ten days, and unless 
 they were lying, which they probably were, in hopes of 
 saving their skins he would find his work cut out 
 for him at Verkinsk. He would exceed his time, and 
 must suffer punishment. What form that punishment 
 should take would be subject for pleasant consideration. 
 Meanwhile, the devil in Paschkin chuckled grimly 
 at the humour of the situation, the convoy safely 
 arrived; Iline breaking his heart in his haste to fetch 
 it, and arriving home, after all his labours, only to serve 
 as an example to such as might at any future time be 
 inclined to question the Governor's orders and fail 
 in carrying them out. Without doubt it was a droll 
 position, and Paschkin's devil was mightily tickled 
 by it. 
 
THE LONG ROAD 133 
 
 So to more wine and such warped musing as wine 
 may generate on the subject of Stepan Iline as an 
 example to the rest. 
 
 It came to him in the middle of the night, when he 
 awoke with a throat like a lime-kiln, and a head that 
 ached savagely with hard thinking, and other things. 
 
 "Ten days to go ! Ten days to return ! Ten days ! 
 Ten days!" and the idea which his muddled brain 
 had been rooting after while he slept, dawned upon 
 him, and he laughed hoarsely into the darkness, that 
 grim laugh that set men's flesh creeping with thoughts 
 of briny knouts and grisly deaths. 
 
 " That's it ! That's it ! Ten days ! Ten days !" 
 and he was so pleased with himself that he rolled over 
 and went to sleep and, having shed his burden, slept 
 quite soundly. 
 
 When the convoy arrived, the previous day, the others 
 had asked, "Shall we send after Stepan Iline, Excel- 
 lency?" 
 
 And he had growled: "I will see to Iline. The jour- 
 ney will cool his blood." 
 
 When he got up in the morning, he busied himself 
 with the preparation of certain documents which af- 
 forded him such enjoyment that he came to his break- 
 fast still chuckling, and even overlooked several trifling 
 delinquencies on the part of the cook, who carried his 
 liquor less manfully than his master. 
 
 And after breakfast he sent for the hardest rider 
 
i 3 4 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 among his Cossacks, and said to him, "You will take 
 these papers to Verkinsk and deliver them to the chief 
 of police there. Iline has taken the lower road. You 
 will take the higher. It is longer, but you travel alone, 
 and he carries three. You should get there before him. 
 If you should come across him, you will say nothing 
 of the arrival of the convoy. You understand?" 
 
 "I understand, Excellency." 
 
 "Make no mistake, or your hide will pay for it. 
 Now go, and travel quickly!" 
 
 And Taras, the Cossack, with his hide in pawn, 
 travelled so quickly that he reached Verkinsk on the 
 eleventh day, half a day ahead of Stepan Iline. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 THE thoughts that surged in Stepan Iline's brain 
 throughout that grim journey to Verkinsk were hard 
 and bitter ones. 
 
 At first his heart was so bruised and torn with this 
 sudden break in his life, and the parting from Katia 
 and little Katenka, that he could think of nothing else. 
 For he did not attempt to deceive himself. He had, 
 without any intention that way, fallen foul of Paschkin, 
 and he knew too well the fate that awaited the man 
 who did that. 
 
 Then bitter hatred of Paschkin got the better even 
 of his soreness, and ran riot in him for a time. The 
 fire of it held within it something of healing for his 
 wounds, or at all events of numbing and deadening. 
 Before the fire burnt he had felt bruised and broken. 
 While it burnt he felt himself a man again. He knew 
 that this new man was kin to the Devil and Pasch- 
 kin, and yet, for the time, he let it burn. 
 
 Dimly, through the smoke of his wrath, he perceived 
 the cause of the wrongs under which he and his kind 
 suffered. Why should any one man have powers so 
 great that he could break his fellows with a word? 
 It always had been so. He supposed it always would 
 
136 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 be so. But it was not right, and he knew too little of 
 happier lands to know that this wrong too, like all other 
 wrongs under which men suffer, was capable of righting, 
 if only men knew how and were ready to suffer deaths 
 for their convictions. 
 
 It might be possible to kill Paschkin, for, after all, 
 he was only a man like other men, and all men die, 
 though so far he had escaped. But his understanding 
 was not so undeveloped as not to perceive that Pasch- 
 kin was only a part of an evil system. If Paschkin 
 was killed, another would come in his place. And the 
 next corner might be as bad, though he could hardly 
 be worse. 
 
 If he got the chance, he would certainly like to kill 
 Paschkin. Not that it would do any good, but there 
 would be a mighty satisfaction in it. He would like 
 to kill him slowly, bit by bit, making him suffer as he 
 had made others suffer. 
 
 But in time the fire burnt down, and all his mind 
 was bent on his own concerns, how to escape from 
 the hand of Paschkin, how to get Katia and little 
 Katenka to him again, where to go, and how best to 
 get there. 
 
 He must go first to Verkinsk, for he could not be rid 
 of his two Cossacks till he got there. Besides, Verkinsk 
 lay toward the border beyond which he hoped Pasch- 
 kin's power would not extend. 
 
 From Verkinsk he would manage to steal away some- 
 
THE LONG ROAQ 137 
 
 how. Then he would work round toward Selemsinsk, 
 where Katia and little Katenka would be waiting for 
 him. And with the money saved from the wreckage 
 in Irkutsk he would start life again, no matter on 
 how small a scale, so long as it was not shadowed by 
 Paschkin. 
 
 There would be difficulties, of course. One needed 
 papers to travel with, even in Siberia. But he would 
 avoid towns and the police until he got far beyond the 
 limits of Paschkin, and then he would assume some 
 other name and concoct some story which would have 
 to carry him through. 
 
 It was a hazard, for paperless men were outcast. 
 But it was the only course open to him. And there 
 must be many places where a skilled workman would 
 be welcome and perhaps not too many questions asked, 
 and he would find one of them. 
 
 He would work the flesh off his hands, if need be, 
 to make a living for Katia and the little one. Black 
 bread without the fear of Paschkin would be sweeter 
 far than the amplest faring Irkutsk could afford. 
 
 There was very little speech among them. The 
 roads, such as they were, were in terrible condition, 
 sinks of mud with huge boulders at the bottom. The 
 only safety for teeth and tongue was to keep them locked 
 in silence. 
 
 And at night, when they found lodging in any hut 
 or farmhouse they came across, they were too weary 
 
138 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 and battered with the day's toil to care for aught but 
 food and sleep. 
 
 They had, moreover, very little in common, save the 
 equal capacity for bruises, weariness, and disgust. If 
 Stepan's ideas on misgovernment were embryonic, his 
 companions' had not even begun to sprout. They 
 were simply Cossacks, and did what they were told, 
 without wasting any of their animal strength on 
 thinking. 
 
 With the one idea of getting to the end as soon as 
 possible, and therefore to the new beginning and Katia 
 and little Katenka, Stepan pressed his horses to the 
 utmost, and for the same reason chose the lower and 
 shorter road in hopes that the waters would, by this 
 time, have got back into their proper channels. 
 
 In places they had, but even there the roads they had 
 left were frightful, and where they had not they had to 
 make long detours. And so the travellers proved once 
 more the truth of the saying, that short cuts make long 
 roads. 
 
 It was a nightmare of a journey. For eleven nights 
 they never took off more than their big boots. For it 
 was always late when they arrived, and all they wanted 
 then was to eat and fall asleep, and they were off again 
 at daybreak. 
 
 On the evening of the twelfth day they stumbled into 
 Verkinsk more dead than alive, more mud than men 
 to look at. And there, having left their papers with 
 
THE LONG ROAD 139 
 
 the police, according to rule, they kicked off clothes 
 and boots, and fell on the first beds that offered, careless 
 of governors, or convoys, or documents, or any mortal 
 thing save that rest or death must be theirs, and they 
 did not much care which. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII 
 
 WHEN he had slept off the worst effects of his journey, 
 Stepan went to the Governor to inquire about the silver 
 convoy. 
 
 "It reached Irkutsk the day you started," said the 
 Governor. 
 
 "It had not arrived when we left." 
 
 "Paschkin has sent a messenger who got here yes- 
 terday. He took the higher road, as the convoy did. 
 You made a mistake in taking the lower." 
 
 " I knew the lower was shorter and I hoped the waters 
 would be in again. I was to inquire into the delay, 
 and Paschkin gave me orders as to punishment." 
 
 " There was no delay here. The convoy started two 
 days before its usual time. But it tried the lower road 
 and had to come back." 
 
 "Then there is no one to be punished, and I have no 
 heads to take back to Paschkin, for which I am glad. 
 I will rest here two days. The travelling was very 
 rough. Every bone in my body is sore." 
 
 " You had better see the chief of police. He has some 
 papers for you," said the Governor, tersely. 
 
 "For me? From Irkutsk?" 
 
 "From Irkutsk !" and Stepan went off to the police 
 
 office. 
 
 140 
 
THE LONG ROAD 141 
 
 "You have papers for me?" he said to the chief, 
 a stout, red-bearded man, smoking a large pipe. 
 
 "Yes," and he handed to Iline a bundle of official 
 documents, and gazed stolidly at him while he read 
 them. 
 
 After his first quick glance to gather an idea of the 
 meaning of the papers, Stepan straightened up suddenly 
 and looked dazedly at the chief, but saw only a dense 
 cloud of smoke and a grim official face, and a pair of 
 heavy eyes looking dimly out at him through it. 
 
 He bent to the papers again, but the letters danced 
 before his eyes. It took two slow perusals to assure 
 him he had read aright. 
 
 The first document stated with brutal curtness that 
 Stepan Ivanovitch Iline, being guilty of contumacy, 
 and having shown evidence of a desire to resist the lawful 
 commands of the Governor, was condemned to perpetual 
 exile from the province of Irkutsk. Blow below the 
 belt No. i ! 
 
 The other documents were his papers, without which 
 circulation anywhere within the empire was next to 
 impossible, a new set of papers, in place of those he 
 had left there the previous night, and the indorsement 
 on them was that high stroke of genius which had pro- 
 voked the Governor's own hoarse eulogistic laughter 
 in the dark. 
 
 "It is decreed that the within-named, Stepan Ivano- 
 vitch Iline, may travel where he will within the bounds 
 
i 4 2 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 of Siberia, save within the province of Irkutsk, but that 
 he shall not be allowed to remain or reside in any one 
 place for a longer period than ten days upon any con- 
 dition whatsoever. It is enjoined upon the police to 
 execute this decree with the utmost stringency." 
 
 He read it again, slowly and carefully. His thoughts 
 grew heavy and confused as the full meaning of it beat 
 slowly in upon his dulled brain. 
 
 It was not the flagrant injustice of it that hit him 
 hardest. Life under the rod inures one to injustice. 
 It was not the decree of exile, the breaking up of his 
 home, the ruin of his prospects. These things were 
 too common to excite surprise. Siberia was wide. 
 Paschkin ruled only in Irkutsk. All governors were 
 surely not Paschkins. And it had already been in his 
 mind to get as far away from him as possible. 
 
 But this bedevilment of his papers ! What did it 
 mean? How was any man to live under such cir- 
 cumstances ? 
 
 Very slowly a dull comprehension of it all oozed 
 through the tangle of his thoughts. 
 
 Homeless henceforth until he died! A perpetual 
 wanderer ! Summer and winter, well or ill, living or 
 dying, he must be always on the road. 
 
 Friendless, too ! For how could any man, so -driven, 
 make friends? 
 
 And what of Katia and the little Katenka? His 
 heart died within him at thought of them. 
 
THE LONG ROAD 143 
 
 Before God, it was too much that any man should 
 live to break his fellows like this ! 
 
 He looked up at the chief of police, and his eyes were 
 strained and dim and confused, and full of impotent 
 fury, like those of a newly-trapped beast. 
 
 The chief of police looked back at him and smoked 
 stolidly. He had seen worse things than this, worse to 
 look at anyway, and he concerned himself only with 
 the outsides of things. 
 
 As chief of police he could neither affect nor afford 
 any shreds of emotion or the finer feelings. But the 
 smoke-cloud in which he sat, and which lips and pipe 
 added to at automatic intervals, redeemed the stern 
 official front somewhat. He looked at Iline in a two- 
 fold capacity. 
 
 "It is too much. It is infamous," groaned Stepan, 
 through his teeth. 
 
 "Might be worse," growled the smoker. 
 
 "Worse ? There is no worse. May God's curse " 
 
 "Better only think it," suggested the official. "His 
 Excellency's ears are long and plentiful. And it cer- 
 tainly might be worse," added the smoker. "He 
 might have ordered you the knout every tenth day as 
 he did the wretched Voronin. It did not take many 
 ten days, I assure you, in his case. I think it was only 
 the third no, the fourth, no, it was the third on 
 which he died. Oh, yes, decidedly it might be worse. 
 All you've got to do is just to keep jogging along." 
 
144 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 That was all. Just to keep jogging along summer 
 and winter, well or ill, living or dying till he could 
 jog along no longer. 
 
 "I must go home and think," said Iline, looking 
 vaguely at him. 
 
 " That's right! Go home and think, Stepan Ivano- 
 vitch, but don't think too much and do not think out 
 loud. Remember his Excellency's ears. And when 
 will you go into Yeniseisk?" 
 
 " Yeniseisk?" said Iline, vaguely. 
 
 "Well, you don't want to go to Yakutsk, I suppose, 
 and Irkutsk is shut against you. How soon will you 
 go?" 
 
 Iline looked at him numbly but said nothing. 
 
 "Well, we'll say to-morrow. Now, you'd better go 
 home and think. And don't think out loud !" 
 
 And Iline went back to the house where he was 
 staying, and lay down on his bed like a wounded 
 animal. 
 
 He felt suddenly old and worn and stupid. He 
 could not think connectedly or to any purpose. The 
 one great black fact blocked the way of his thoughts, 
 as a sudden blow stops the current of a man's life. 
 
 It held him like a monstrous cold hand all through 
 the night as he lay there, neither sleeping nor waking, 
 and growing wearier every hour. When he got up in 
 the morning he felt twenty years older, for hope is life, 
 and he had nothing left in life to hope for. 
 
THE LONG ROAD 145 
 
 "You are going. That is right!" said the chief of 
 police, cheerfully, when he went for his papers. "It 
 might have been worse, oh, yes, I assure you it might 
 have been very much worse. Which way do you go?" 
 
 "To Yeniseisk," said Iline, sombrely. 
 
 "That is right. It is better than Yakutsk." 
 
 "It is all the same." 
 
 "Nay, it is better than Yakutsk. Yakutsk is hell. 
 Well, God with you ! They will be expecting you 
 over there, you know." 
 
 "Who?" said Iline, drearily. 
 
 "The police. Paschkin will have sent them word." 
 
 And at that, the dim idea Stepan had been nursing 
 of changing his name and beginning life again 
 died. Without doubt Paschkin was the Devil. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV 
 
 HE bought food for several days, and a stout staff, 
 and set off on foot on the journey that was to have no 
 end. Later on, he said to himself in a dull, hopeless 
 way, if it was worth while, and if it was possible, he 
 might buy himself a telega and a horse, if he could get 
 them cheap. 
 
 He had not much money, and he must husband it 
 with care until until he hardly knew what. Per- 
 haps he could get some more from Katia at Selemsinsk. 
 Perhaps he could earn some on the road, though that 
 was not very likely. How could a man earn anything 
 when he might not stop longer than ten days in any 
 one place ? He ground his teeth again at the malignant 
 prescience of Devil Paschkin. 
 
 For the present he would walk. Weariness of body 
 might lighten heaviness of soul. To sit in a wagon 
 and think would drive him crazy. Besides, Verkinsk 
 was in any case no place to buy either horse or wagon, 
 which reflection showed that his brain was still not 
 entirely incapable of work. 
 
 He struck due west across the hills and found the ad- 
 vantage of being tied to no road. He plodded steadily 
 
 on all that day, eating when he was hungry, drinking 
 
 146 
 
THE LONG ROAD 147 
 
 from the mountain streams. No rough hillside was 
 too rough or too steep for him. The grinding of his 
 feet on rock and shingle gave him relief. It was some- 
 thing trampled on and overcome. He wished to God 
 it had been Paschkin's body. How he would have 
 rejoiced in the trampling ! 
 
 It was early summer, but the season had been late 
 and the waters were still out on every side, tinkling 
 among the rocks and rushing down the valleys. The 
 weather was mild and open, and he heard the cuckoo 
 calling in the woods. 
 
 At night he sought cover among the pines and firs, 
 and built himself a fire for the sake of its cheer, and sat 
 brooding over it till it died. And sometimes he would 
 sit and curse Paschkin. And sometimes he thought of 
 none but Katia and his little Katenka, and he would lie 
 prone on his face, murmuring their names in agony of 
 craving. But, sooner or later, he would make himself 
 a bed of green-tipped twigs on. last year's needles, and 
 lie down and sleep as Governor Paschkin never slept, 
 and would rise refreshed. 
 
 And on the third day, having seen no man since he 
 left Verkinsk, his life began to lift its head again, for 
 hope dies hard in a man, and a tiny seedling sprang up 
 in his heart, and put out its little white shoots. 
 
 The idea gradually grew in him that Katia and little 
 Katenka might possibly just possibly be recover- 
 able from the wreckage after all. In his utter desola- 
 
148 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 tion, in these vast silences and solitudes, face to face 
 with Nature only and whatever might be behind her, 
 his heart craved for them till at times he cried their 
 names aloud to still the pain that wrung him. For the 
 very sound of their names made him feel a little less 
 lonely. 
 
 Nothing else mattered. Business, home, future 
 prospects, those taken and those left, all these 
 came to be very little things in his eyes. The loss of 
 everything had hit him hard at first. The blank misery 
 of the future had beaten him down. But as his heart 
 recovered itself it found these things as nothing com- 
 pared with those others. He had got down to the 
 essentials. If only he could have Katia, and the little 
 Katenka, and himself all the rest might go. 
 
 If Katia had gone to her father at Selemsinsk, as he 
 had bidden her, there might be reasonable ground for 
 hope, he thought. Selemsinsk was indeed in Irkutsk, 
 and Irkutsk was closed to him. But it was five hun- 
 dred miles from Irkutsk city and less than fifty from 
 the border. He would travel down the border line till 
 he came to the nearest point to Selemsinsk and then 
 
 The penalty of failure would of course be death. 
 But better to die striving for that which was dearer 
 than life than live alone for fifty years and die alone 
 by the roadside at last. 
 
 He did not close his eyes to the fact that it would be 
 a terribly trying life for his wife and child, ever moving 
 
THE LONG ROAD 149 
 
 on, moving on, in summer and winter, in sickness and 
 health, till Death said, "Stop !" 
 
 But he knew Katia, and he knew that no ease and 
 comfort of home and friends would satisfy her without 
 him. No, he had no fears as to what Katia would do 
 if only the chance offered. 
 
 Nor did he close his eyes to the fact that the diffi- 
 culties ahead of him were well-nigh insuperable. For 
 even if he recovered Katia and the child, how was he 
 to hold them ? 
 
 Would the police grant Katia her papers? If not, 
 they might be stopped at the first town they came to. 
 
 Would Paschkin's senseless venom pursue her as it 
 had himself, or would it be satisfied with the ruin it 
 had already wrought? That he would learn at Selem- 
 sinsk. Till then he would hope. 
 
 So for thirty days he tramped, crossing hills and 
 rivers, and the long fertile plains which would soon be 
 all ablaze with their full summer glory. He met very 
 few travellers, and those mostly downcast men like 
 himself, who regarded him with suspicion and seemed 
 desirous to escape observation. Some watched him 
 furtively with speculative eyes, from shelter of rock or 
 bush, but let him pass in peace when they saw that he 
 looked no better off than themselves. These were such 
 as had answered the call of the cuckoo and broken 
 bounds at risk of life for the brief freedom of the 
 summer. 
 
150 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 Now and again he stopped the night at a peasant's 
 house, and found first suspicious, then sympathetic, 
 hosts, for all knew Paschkin and his ways. And these 
 would take no money for the little they could give, but 
 joined fervently in his comminations of the Governor, 
 and pressed their scanty food upon him to help him on 
 his way. 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 AT last he found himself beyond the borders of Ir- 
 kutsk, and turned his face at once to the south in the 
 direction of his hopes. He plodded on till he learned 
 that Selemsinsk lay to the east across the border. 
 Then, taking his life in his hands and four days' pro- 
 visions in his wallet, he crossed the forbidden line 
 again and pressed forward toward his heart's desire. 
 
 Villages he avoided by instinct, and he went near no 
 house, and on the third day he saw in the distance the 
 pointed spire and long line of straggling roofs which 
 were Selemsinsk. 
 
 He waited till all the lights were out, then crept like 
 a thief to the back of the house where Vasili Totsin 
 lived. He had no difficulty in reaching it unobserved, 
 for all the houses faced the single street and their backs 
 lay open to the country, and Vasili's house was the first 
 you came to on the road from Yeniseisk. 
 
 He tapped on a shutter and waited. He heard a stir 
 inside and a murmur of surprise. It required many 
 tappings, however, before the voice of one who had 
 been listening for some time behind the shutter asked 
 cautiously, " Who is it?" 
 
 "Open, Vasili Vasilievitch ! It is I, Stepan Iline," 
 in a whisper. 
 
152 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 Another surprised murmur, and presently the door 
 was quietly unbolted, and he slipped stealthily in, and 
 stood before Totsin and Marya Feodorovna, whose 
 faces were twisted with anxious surprise. 
 
 By the glimmer of a shaded lamp they eyed him 
 doubtfully and with some fear. The manner of his 
 coming implied trouble. He looked back at them with 
 equal surprise, and asked quickly: "Katia? Is she 
 not here, and the little Katenka?" 
 
 "Here? No. Why should she be here, Stepan 
 Ivanovitch ? And why do you come like a thief in the 
 night?" asked Totsin. 
 
 " Katia not here? Then you have not heard? I 
 hoped to find her here." And he quickly told them the 
 whole matter. 
 
 "It has taken her longer to settle our affairs than I 
 expected," he said stoutly. "I must come again, and 
 then we will go away together." 
 
 " Ach !" said the mother, with an anxious face. "It 
 will be a sore life for Katia and the little one, Stepan 
 Ivanovitch." 
 
 "Not what I would choose, matushka, and none of 
 my choosing. But maybe we can smooth it. I have 
 been thinking much as I walked, and I have been 
 walking for two months." 
 
 "And what have you been thinking?" asked Totsin, 
 whose little eyes had been winking vigorously, to keep 
 his thoughts from peeping out. 
 
THE LONG ROAD 15^ 
 
 "Katia should bring three or four thousand roubles," 
 at which the crafty little eyes of Katia's father 
 snapped more vigorously than ever, "or they may 
 come to you through Simon Rapin. With them, I 
 have been thinking, I could set up as travelling trader. 
 Travel I must may Paschkin's soul dwell in torment 
 for ever ! and trade I can. I will build a house on 
 a telega for Katia and the little one, and we will travel 
 together." 
 
 "It will be weary work at times," said the mother. 
 
 " It will be for Katia to decide," said Stepan. "If 
 she would sooner stop here well ! But I think she 
 will come with me." 
 
 Vasili Vasilievitch in his own mind decided that, 
 under the circumstances, a daughter's proper place 
 was in her father's house, especially a daughter with 
 three or four thousand roubles. Bozhe-moi, with three 
 of four thousand roubles one could 
 
 "Yes, yes, Katia must decide," said he, blinking 
 like an owl. "You don't think his Excellency would 
 put any hindrance in the way of her coming, Stepan 
 Ivanovitch?" 
 
 It was the one fear that had been in Stepan' s own 
 mind all along. He answered the more brusquely. 
 
 " Why should he ? He had no grounds for complaint 
 against me. What has Katia done ? " 
 
 "Nothing! But then, neither had you, and she is 
 your wife, and he is Paschkin." 
 
154 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 Stepan nodded gloomily. "That is true, and 
 Paschkin is the Devil." 
 
 "Will you stop the night with us, Stepan Ivano- 
 vitch?" asked Marya Feodorovna, nervously. 
 
 "I must get back to the hills before it is light, ma- 
 tushka. But I will eat, and you will give me food to 
 take with me. I will come again in thirty days." 
 
 "It is dangerous," said Totsin. "If you were 
 caught " 
 
 "I shall not be caught." And after eating, he stole 
 away as quietly as he had come. 
 
 And as he pushed through the dark toward the hills, 
 he could not rid himself of the recollection of his father- 
 in-law's blinking eyes, and the crafty look that had come 
 into his face at mention of the money. 
 
 "He will do his best to keep Katia," said Stepan 
 to himself. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI 
 
 THREE separate times, at intervals of a month, 
 Stepan ventured in again at risk of his life, brimming 
 each time as he neared the house with the hope of 
 clasping his wife and child in his arms once more. 
 God ! how he ached for them ! At times the gnawing 
 heart hunger so overcame him that he would lie down 
 in the woods, and claw his fingers deep into the bed of 
 pine needles, and bite them with his teeth and beat the 
 ground with his feet. And each time he went, and 
 found them still not come, his heart was wrung with 
 new fears. 
 
 The times between his visits he spent in aimless 
 wanderings along the border, avoiding towns and vil- 
 lages -as much as possible, stopping a day or two with 
 stray peasants, living sometimes for days together in 
 the open, fearful all the time lest his haunting of the 
 border should set the police on the track of his hopes, 
 and racked with anxieties for his wife and child. 
 
 His money was running low; for though he spent 
 little, it was still all outgoing and nothing coming in. 
 The prospect of sooner or later having to beg his bread 
 was staring him in the face, when a slice of luck fell 
 to him, and opened new doors to his failing heart, 
 and helped him to his feet again. 
 
156 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 He was plodding along the lower slopes of the Altais 
 one day, when, turning a corner, he came on a des- 
 perately unequal struggle going on in the road in front. 
 
 A dejected horse, harnessed to a laden telega, hung 
 its head forlornly in the middle of the road and took no 
 interest in the fight of which it was one of the objects. 
 
 Three rough tramps, armed with sticks, were doing 
 their best to make an end of the owner of the telega, a 
 gray-haired man with a long beard. And he, armed 
 only with another stick, and his back against his prop- 
 erty, was striving frantically to beat them off, but with 
 little chance against such odds. 
 
 One of the ruffians had slipped round to the other 
 side of the cart, and was just about to bring down his 
 cudgel on the gray head, when Iline ran in with a shout 
 and bowled him over with a cracked skull, and then ran 
 round and set to with hearty goodwill on the others. 
 
 They faced him for a moment, but only for a moment. 
 The open-air life had braced and strengthened him 
 mightily, and he was a big man before. He looked 
 objectionably capable of beating them into pulp. 
 Then, too, he was in one of his desperate moods con- 
 cerning Katia and little Katenka. All day he had been 
 aching for something to rend and tear Paschkin 
 from choice, but anything would do. And here was 
 his chance. 
 
 The raiders saw it in his eyes, and turned and bolted. 
 
 The gray-haired man seated himself in the middle 
 
THE LONG ROAD 157 
 
 of the road and rested his hands on the ground, and sat 
 there panting and looking at Stepan, and Stepan saw 
 that he was a Jew. 
 
 " You came in the nick of time," panted the old 
 man . ' ' Another minute ' ' 
 
 "And you would have had a sore head," said Stepan. 
 "Have a drink and you will feel better," and he got him 
 water from a stream that brawled across the road, and 
 took a long pull himself and mopped his forehead with 
 his sleeve. 
 
 As the old man struggled to his feet and felt his 
 bruises, he caught sight of the body on the other side 
 of the wagon and went round and bent over it. 
 
 " It is well," he said quietly. " May the lesson serve ! " 
 
 "What shall we do with him?" 
 
 "Let him lie. You struck hard, but his head is 
 harder, and without doubt his heart is harder still. 
 He would have killed me." 
 
 Then he fixed a pair of keen black eyes on Stepan, 
 and regarded him carefully, and said: "I am Peter 
 Krop. Who are you?" 
 
 "I am Stepan Iline." 
 
 "Iline!" said the old man, musingly, and continued 
 to weigh him with his glance ; and presently he seemed 
 satisfied, for he said: "If your way lies with mine, 
 Stepan Iline, I will give you a lift," and they both got 
 on to the wagon, and the old horse went on as if nothing 
 had happened. 
 
158 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 " Whence do you come and where do you go, Stepan 
 Iline?" asked the Jew. 
 
 "I wander to and fro," said Stepan. 
 
 "Like the Devil. It is not a profitable calling for a 
 man." 
 
 "It is not my choice," said Stepan, shortly. 
 
 "Then why do it?" 
 
 "Because Paschkin says so." 
 
 "Ah ! Paschkin ! Son of Satan ! I, too, have felt 
 Paschkin. He robbed me and whipped me. Tell me 
 how it was," and as they bumped slowly along Stepan 
 told him. 
 
 "Paschkin is the Devil," was the old man's comment 
 when he had done, and he mused upon it for a long 
 time. 
 
 "You have money, you say," he said at last. 
 
 "I had, money and home and business and wife 
 and child. Now I have this stick and I do not know 
 if I have anything else," said Stepan, bitterly. 
 
 "If you are from Irkutsk, you should know Simon 
 Rapin." 
 
 "I did business with him. He is an honest man." 
 
 "He is down with the fever at Krasnoiarsk. He has 
 lain there this two months." 
 
 "Ah! Then that is what has kept Katia," said 
 Stepan, grasping gladly at any valid reason for her delay. 
 "I told her to deal with Simon. She is waiting for 
 him." 
 
THE LONG ROAD 159 
 
 "He is a hard man at a bargain, but he is honest," 
 and they jogged on, each full of his own thoughts. 
 
 They drew near to a village at last, and the old man 
 said: "You will stop the night with me at the inn. It 
 is a poor inn, but it is better than none. I would talk 
 with you. You served me, perhaps I can serve you." 
 
 And the upshot of it all was that when Peter Krop had 
 done his business in the village, and they had had supper, 
 he made that proposal to Stepan which opened new doors 
 in his life, and gave him new interests, and helped to 
 keep his heart alive. 
 
 "I believe you are an honest man, Stepan Iline," 
 said old Peter, "and you saved my life and my goods. 
 I make you a proposal. By order of Paschkin may 
 his soul rest in everlasting torment ! you must be 
 ever on the road. We will turn it to account. You 
 shall turn trader again, and, as you are an honest man, 
 the curse shall turn into a blessing. I will fit you out 
 with goods and horse and wagon, and the profits we 
 will divide as we may agree. What do you say?" 
 
 "I say yes, Peter Krop, and I am grateful to you with 
 all my heart." 
 
 "So ! The adventure will pay me first ten per cent 
 for my outlay, and of the rest I will take three shares and 
 you will take one, until such time as you can save or 
 get money of your own. Then we can rearrange." 
 
 "It is agreed and you may trust me, Peter Krop." 
 
 "I trust you or I should not have proposed it. I do 
 
160 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 not trust people as a rule, because they are mostly 
 knaves or fools, and I am neither one nor the other." 
 
 "There is one thing, however, " said Stepan, thought- 
 fully. " My wife may reach her father's house at Selem- 
 sinsk any day. I shall want to go in each month to 
 see if she has come." 
 
 "It is dangerous," said the old man, with equal 
 thought. "If Paschkin hears of it, you will never come 
 out," which fact was so obvious that Stepan replied 
 only with a nod. 
 
 "And your wife's father is " asked Peter. 
 
 "Vasili Totsin." 
 
 "Ah !" and the word held a world of meaning, and 
 he fell thoughtful for a space. 
 
 "I remember you now. It was in my mind that we 
 had met. And I knew Katia Vasilievna and Marya 
 Feodorovna. She is a shrewd hand at a bargain." 
 
 " Do you know what Vasili Totsin will do ? " he asked, 
 after further pondering. 
 
 "He will try to keep Katia and the money. But 
 Katia will follow me. It is Katia and my little Katenka 
 that I want. Do you think, Peter Krop, that Paschkin 
 has prevented them coming?" 
 
 "Paschkin is capable of anything. God torment 
 him ! He robbed me of four thousand roubles and well- 
 nigh flayed me into the bargain. Tatukof, the governor 
 here, is bad enough and a grasping man. But he is an 
 angel compared with Paschkin, and he is not a mad- 
 
THE LONG ROAD 161 
 
 man. Perhaps I can get you news of your wife, Stepan 
 Ivanovitch. Better not go to Selemsinsk again till 
 you know that she is there." 
 
 "Get me news and I shall be grateful," said Stepan. 
 "It crushes my heart to hear no word of them." 
 
 "You saved my life and my goods. I will do what 
 I can," said Peter Krop. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVII 
 
 So a new life began for Stepan, and if only his heart 
 had not been away in Irkutsk city, while his body 
 perambulated the bad roads of Yeniseisk, he might still 
 have been happy in spite of all Paschkin's decrees. 
 For where a man's treasure is his heart is, and the one 
 sole desire of Stepan Iline's heart was for his wife Katia 
 and the little Katenka. 
 
 Still, Peter Krop had said he would get news of them, 
 and the Jews were marvellous people, if sometimes 
 rapacious beyond nature. It would take time, doubtless, 
 for traffic between Yeniseisk and Irkutsk was not too 
 well regulated, and Peter Krop's inquiries could only 
 be made as opportunity served; and, like himself, 
 Peter was ever on the move. 
 
 So he bore himself stoutly and proved himself a 
 satisfactory trader, and that which had seemed like to 
 break his life sat lightly upon him and in itself troubled 
 him little. Never once had he transgressed the de- 
 cree, nor had he felt as yet the desire to do so. That 
 time was to come. 
 
 With money accumulating in his pockets, he need 
 never lack such comforts as the villages afforded. He 
 
 made many friends, too, among the cottagers who 
 
 162 
 
THE LONG ROAD 163 
 
 were his customers, and even among the wilder 
 nomads of the upper valleys and the steppes. His 
 grave, quiet manners, the perfect fairness of all his 
 dealings, and the harsh treatment of which he was 
 the subject enlisted their sympathies. One and all, 
 they were exposed to similar usage at any time, and 
 a fellow-feeling made them kind. 
 
 He had at first feared friction with the police on ac- 
 count of his traversing the country more than once. 
 Peter Krop, however, made that all right with Governor 
 Tatukof, by means best and only known to himself 
 and the Governor, but which would not perhaps be 
 difficult to guess at the first attempt. 
 
 For the first few months old Peter so arranged their 
 journeys that they met at intervals, squared accounts, 
 rearranged their stocks, and then went on their various 
 ways. But Peter Krop had not lived sixty-five years 
 in a cunning world without learning men, and he 
 trusted this man completely. And so, by degrees, the 
 range of their travel was extended, and they met less 
 frequently, for Peter knew that whenever they did 
 meet, his ten per cent and his seventy-five per cent of 
 the profits would be ready for him, and he went on his 
 way with a mind at ease. 
 
 But all the time Stepan's heart was in Irkutsk city, 
 and the hunger grew and grew, and bit him hard at 
 times, and to ease it, and to occupy his spare time, he 
 set to building that house on wheels of which he had 
 
164 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 spoken to his mother-in-law, as a travelling shelter for 
 his wife and child. 
 
 During the midday halts, and in the long winter 
 evenings when the journeys were short, he wrought out 
 his ideas bit by bit, sawing and planing, and shaping 
 and fitting, with careful hand and cunning device, work- 
 ing all his heart's hunger into the little structure, and 
 withal many a loving thought of those he hoped to see 
 occupying it before long. It took much planning, and 
 many months of steady, hard work, before he had all 
 the parts complete and ready to be put together. And 
 then he went on one of his journeys as far as Krasnoiarsk 
 and stopped there his whole ten days, while Ivan 
 Narasof, the famous builder of tarantases, finished the 
 work according to his carefully thought-out ideas. 
 
 It was the most wonderful contrivance that country 
 had ever seen, and Ivan and his men scratched their 
 heads nearly bald, and gaped to danger point, at the 
 strange things they were called upon to compass by 
 Stepan's directions. 
 
 And when it was finished the people came from far 
 and near to see it, and to gape and scratch their heads 
 also. The general impression prevailed that it was a 
 travelling church, or a carriage for the conveyance of 
 holy images. And so, in sooth, it was, but not of the 
 kind they thought, for what holier images may any 
 man carry with him than his wife and child ? 
 
 It was built on a broad, wooden platform, and the 
 
THE LONG ROAD 165 
 
 superstructure was light, but strong and roomy. It 
 contained a table, and seats against the walls, and cup- 
 boards and shelves. And smoother bed than the floor 
 no one need wish, when its asperities were softened by 
 hay-filled mattresses. 
 
 A window of thin-shaved horn at the back gave a 
 certain light, but the front door above the horses' backs 
 would give both light and air, and a knee-high barrier 
 there would furnish both a seat for the driver and a 
 safe place of observation for a pair of merry blue eyes 
 below a sun of yellow curls and a cotton skull cap. 
 
 The wheels were broad and strong to combat rock 
 and mud, and when the snows came they could be un- 
 shipped and replaced by runners. Oh, it was all most 
 marvellously contrived, and no wonder it excited as- 
 tonishment in Narasof and his men. They built the 
 best tarantases in all Siberia, but they built with hand 
 and brain, and very much more than those common 
 things went to the making of Stepan's travelling 
 church. 
 
 And still no news came of Katia and the child, and 
 his heart was full of anxieties, and he began to fear 
 that Peter Krop had forgotten, or had failed, or had 
 perhaps come to grief, for he was making a long journey 
 through Omsk and Tomsk, and the road always held 
 possibilities of disaster. 
 
 It was eleven months since he parted from Katia 
 and the little Katenka in Irkutsk city, and so very 
 
i66 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 much might happen in eleven months, or in one short 
 hour, for that matter. He hardly dared to think of it 
 all, for fear made his heart sick, and his face grew 
 careworn and haggard. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 THEN one day when he was journeying south, and 
 had compelled himself with difficulty past the point 
 nearest to Selemsinsk, he and Peter Krop met face to 
 face, not very far from the place where they fell across 
 one another that first time. And old Peter sat down 
 on the roadside at sight of the wonderful house on 
 wheels, and in the ensuing settlement of accounts he 
 watched warily to see if any of it had come out of his 
 share. But even now, before he was quite satisfied 
 that it had not, he could not but admire it greatly. 
 
 "You travel like a prince, Stepan Ivanovitch," said 
 he. 
 
 "I built for my wife and child and with my own 
 money," said Stepan, knowing his man. "Have you 
 any news for me, Peter Krop?" 
 
 "They should be at Selemsinsk by this time." 
 
 "God be thanked for that !" said Stepan, fervently, 
 and turned his horse round to start at once for Selem- 
 sinsk. The old man hitched his horse behind the 
 house on wheels and climbed up into the front seat, 
 and stuck his head in through the door, and marvelled 
 at all he saw, the Tatar rugs on the walls, the dressed 
 
 skins on the floor, and all the numberless little con- 
 
 167 
 
i68 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 trivances for comfort which Stepan's heart had 
 devised. 
 
 "I, too, will travel like a prince for once, since it costs 
 nothing," he said. 
 
 "Now tell me your news, Peter Krop," said Stepan, 
 and whipped up his horses and started to follow his 
 heart, which was already in Selemsinsk. "What has 
 kept them so long?" 
 
 "Paschkin " 
 
 "May his soul rest in torment !" 
 
 "God grant it ! There have been other things. But 
 chiefly Paschkin. He would not permit your wife to 
 leave Irkutsk city. Then she had difficulties in settling 
 up your affairs." 
 
 "They would all take advantage of my misfortune, 
 of course." 
 
 "And Simon Rapin being ill he could not help her. 
 But now he is better and has done what he could. Yet 
 it is doubtful if he could have got her away but for the 
 raiding over beyond the Tchilka, which took Paschkin 
 down that way, and she seized the opportunity. You 
 see, Simon could not afford to help her openly. It 
 might have meant ruin to him. However, she was 
 leaving Irkutsk city a month ago, and she should be at 
 Selemsinsk by this." 
 
 " God be thanked ! I will go and fetch her." 
 
 "It will be better for me to go. You run great risk. 
 But I must go first to Minusinsk. I agreed to meet a 
 
THE LONG ROAD 169 
 
 man there, and if we do not meet now, we shall not 
 meet for a year." 
 
 "I will go for them," said Stepan. 
 
 "It is a great risk. Ten days, twelve at the most, 
 and I will go in for them." 
 
 "My heart eats itself till I have them in my arms, 
 Peter Krop. I will go for them myself. The risk is 
 nothing." 
 
 The old man shook his head doubtfully, but he saw 
 that argument would be worse than useless unless he 
 gave up Minusinsk, and that his business instincts cried 
 out against. And when the time came for them to 
 part, he to strike off to the west while Stepan went on 
 due north, the old man stood by his wagon in the road, 
 still shaking his head doubtfully, and the house on 
 wheels bumped stoutly on the way that had been 
 appointed for it before ever it was built. 
 
 Stepan left it with a peasant, one Gnut, a half-breed 
 Soyot, with whom he had stayed more than once and 
 whom he could trust. He was a simple fellow, with 
 too few wits to be dishonest, who lived all by himself 
 in a hut on a branch of the Yenisei, and supported him- 
 self by fishing and trapping. His quiet, incurious dis- 
 position had commended itself to Stepan's sick humour, 
 and they had become such good friends that they could 
 sit before the fire by the hour without ever passing a 
 word. 
 
 Then, without the loss of a moment, he struck off 
 
1 7 o THE LONG ROAD 
 
 across the hills to Selemsinsk. He foresaw all the diffi- 
 culties, and it was borne in upon him, with each step 
 he took, that Peter Krop's plan would have been the 
 better one, for Peter was free to do what he chose, and 
 his own hands were tied. 
 
 But he said to himself that he could not possibly 
 have sat idly, with Katia and little Katenka so near 
 at hand. His heart felt like bursting as it was. To 
 have waited over there, while old Peter did his business 
 in Minusinsk and journeyed slowly down to Selemsinsk 
 and brought them out bozhe-moi, that was quite 
 too much to expect of a man ! He had waited stoutly 
 for eleven months, but those few days would have been 
 altogether too much for him. 
 
 If Katia would come away with him at once, he 
 would carry little Katenka and all their belongings on 
 his back, the joyfullest load ever man carried since the 
 world began. If she feared to make the journey in 
 such fashion, then he would at all events have the joy 
 of seeing them and holding them in his arms once more, 
 and he must arrange with her for Peter Krop to come 
 in and bring them out in his own way. 
 
 He saw just how to do it if it had to come to that, 
 and he shortened his journey by planning it all out to 
 the smallest detail. 
 
 Peter would hire a fast three-horse tarantas and drive 
 through Selemsinsk, calling at Vasili Totsin's house as 
 he went, and giving Katia her directions. The follow- 
 
THE LONG ROAE 171 
 
 ing day he would return. Katia and Katenka, with 
 such few things as were necessary, would be out along 
 the road this side of the village, as far along it as possi- 
 ble. Peter Krop would drive up, in they would jump, 
 and away at speed to the waiting heart and the house 
 on wheels across the border. And then away they 
 would go for a four months' journey into the Altais, 
 and if the police in Yeniseisk raised any questions, 
 Peter Krop would deal with them in his own peculiarly 
 convincing way. Oh, yes, all would be well when once 
 he had Katia and Katenka by his side again. And he 
 went on merrily. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 HE lay in the hills till nightfall, till all the lights 
 were out, till the village slept, and then stole quietly 
 down to that house which he could have found blind- 
 fold, that blessed little temple of rough-trimmed wood 
 which held for him more than all the rest of the world. 
 
 He tapped on the shutter and waited. There was 
 the usual murmur of surprise, waxing into a buzz of 
 low talk, then a light showed with less precaution than 
 usual, and he pinched his lips together in the dark at 
 sight of it. Then came the usual questioning, and a 
 quite unnecessarily long delay, and a quite unnecessary 
 amount of noise in opening the door, as it seemed to 
 him. 
 
 His heart was leaping wildly in his throat. She was 
 there inside. He was sure of it. 
 
 Would that accursed door never open? Heavens 
 and earth, he could have broken it down in half the 
 time ! 
 
 But it opened cautiously at last, and he slipped in 
 like a shadow. 
 
 "Katia!" 
 
 "Stepan ! My man, my man !" and she was in his 
 
 arms, laughing, and weeping, and clinging as though 
 
 172 
 
THE LONG ROAD 173 
 
 she would never let him go again, while Vasili Totsin 
 stood by and watched them, blinking those little eyes 
 of his more rapidly than ever, and Marya Feodo- 
 rovna and Varia beamed joyfully in the happiness 
 that radiated from them. 
 
 And then they held one another at arm's length and 
 noted the changes eleven months had made, and then 
 they were in one another's arms again. 
 
 "She is more beautiful than ever," thought Stepan, 
 as his hungry eyes devoured her. 
 
 "He has suffered for want of me," thought Katia, 
 "and now we are together, and we will not part again." 
 
 Then she slipped out of his clinging embrace and 
 away into the back room, while the mother and Varia 
 began hastily laying out food. 
 
 Katia came back in a moment, bearing on one arm 
 a rosy-faced little maid whose little fists were still 
 knuckling the sleep out of her astonished eyes, and on 
 the other arm wonder of wonders ! and no wonder 
 Stepan caught his breath at the sight a chubby- 
 faced boy of three months, too sound asleep even to 
 welcome the father he had never set eyes on. 
 
 " Our little Stepan," said Katia, with mighty motherly 
 pride. 
 
 " Now, God be praised ! I am richer than I thought," 
 choked Stepan, in his great astonishment. 
 
 The little Katenka stretched two welcoming arms 
 to him, and he caught her to him and buried her in his 
 
174 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 beard, and looked over her at his namesake with misty 
 eyes. 
 
 And then there came a sudden peremptory knock on 
 the outer door, and, in the chill silence that fell upon 
 them, a harsh voice sounded outside demanding en- 
 trance in the name of the law. 
 
 The eyes of the women, sparkling like stars one 
 minute, filled the next with amazed fears, and their 
 faces fell, drawn and white. Vasili Totsin's eyes blinked 
 furiously and he took a step toward the door. Stepan 
 Iline laid Katenka quickly in her mother's arms, kissed 
 Katia over the children, whispered a word in her ear, 
 and blew out the light, as the hilt of a sword beat again 
 on the outer door. 
 
 Totsin, decent, law-abiding man, was already 
 fumbling at the bolts, and presently succeeded in open- 
 ing it, and a police officer and half-a-dozen men came 
 in and closed the door behind them. 
 
 "Now what is this, Vasili Vasilievitch ? What was 
 a light doing in your house at this time of night when 
 honest folks are all asleep? Light that lamp, and let 
 us see what is toward." 
 
 The lamp flickered out at last, on the faces of the 
 trembling women, and on Totsin gaping and blinking 
 like a night-bird roused suddenly from sleep. 
 
 The chief glanced quickly round and strode to the 
 inner room. He poked in dark corners with his sword 
 and swore briskly, but came back empty-handed. 
 
THE LONG ROAD^ i 75 
 
 "Well, are you all dumb?" he shouted, and the 
 children began to cry. 
 
 "It was the children, Excellency," murmured Marya 
 Feodorovna, recovering her wits. "They were crying 
 so that we feared they were ill. We were going to 
 warm some " 
 
 "Search the house," to his men, and they turned it 
 upside down, while the women stood trembling, and 
 the children wailed, and the officer looked sourly at 
 Totsin and wondered whether he was most knave or 
 fool. And Vasili blinked deprecatingly back at him, 
 and shifted from one bare foot to the other, and said 
 nothing. 
 
 And out in the night a man was speeding silently 
 toward the hills, sobbing with fury till he choked again, 
 and cursing that treacherous blinker in the house, 
 for he knew that he had betrayed him for sake of the 
 money Katia had brought with her. 
 
 By a miracle he had escaped the snare. In a flash, 
 as the light went out, he saw the one bare chance of 
 escape, and took it. He slipped to the side of the open- 
 ing door, and as the last of the police came in, he slipped 
 out. 
 
 But the treachery was there all the same, and it bit 
 into his soul, and he loathed the very thought of Vasili 
 Totsin save as a subject for most vehement cursing. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 ILINE pushed on without a halt all through the night, 
 possessed by the fury that was in him. Had he met a 
 man with blinking eyes, resembling Vasili Totsin ever 
 so remotely, it would have gone hard with him. At 
 times the recollection of Katia's starry eyes, and the 
 rosy little Katenka, and that new, little, round-faced 
 wonder came upon him, and he sobbed between joy 
 and disappointment, and alternately thanked God 
 and cursed Vasili Totsin. He was like a man dying 
 of hunger, to whom a full plate is offered and then 
 capriciously snatched away. 
 
 He went on all through the day, drinking now and 
 again from the mountain streams, but loathing thought 
 of food, and so came, the next night, to Gnut's cottage, 
 and fell on Gnut's bed and slept for twenty-four hours, 
 and woke himself and very hungry. 
 
 He ate like a January wolf, harnessed his horses, 
 made Gnut happy with a bright new axe and a knife, 
 and set off to find Peter Krop. 
 
 On the fourth day toward Minusinsk he came upon 
 Peter, hurrying to meet him and vastly relieved at 
 sight of him. 
 
 " I was full of fears for you, Stepan Ivanovitch," 
 176 
 
THE LONG ROAI) 177 
 
 said Peter, looking at the house on wheels for sight of 
 Katia. "I am right glad to see you. How have you 
 fared?" 
 
 Stepan told him. 
 
 "I never did trust Vasili Totsin," was all Peter's 
 comment, and then they laid their heads together for 
 the enlargement of Katia and the children. 
 
 Three days later Vasili Totsin received a message, 
 early in the morning, from a man with whom he had 
 been endeavouring to negotiate a loan, and who lived 
 at Tertsaya, some eight miles away on the Irkutsk 
 road. He set off at speed and in very good spirits, and 
 did not get back till nightfall, very puzzled, very angry, 
 and no better off than when he started. 
 
 He had not been gone an hour when Peter Krop's 
 wagon, emptied of everything but some sacks half 
 filled with hay, and drawn by three horses yoked abreast, 
 drew lightly up to Totsin's house, and old Peter asked 
 for Vasili. Mrs. Totsin came to the door, no longer 
 hearty and cheerful, but red-eyed and worried- looking, 
 and told him that Vasili was away. 
 
 "I know it, Marya Feodorovna," said old Peter, 
 softly. "It was I that sent him. I come from Stepan 
 Ivanovitch for Katia Vasilievna and the children." 
 
 "Ah!" and Marya 's usual motherly face began to 
 show through the gloom. 
 
 "Listen now!" said Peter, impressively. "Two 
 hours from now I shall be passing here again. If you 
 
178 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 have any small parcels you wish me to take, I can stop 
 for half a minute at your door and you can throw them 
 in. If Katia and the children should be by the road- 
 side as far out of the village as possible why, they 
 might like a ride. You understand?" 
 
 "I understand. God be good to you, Peter Krop ! 
 You take a load off my heart. Never will I beat down 
 your prices again as long as I live. At least 
 
 "In two hours," and Peter drove on through the vil- 
 lage, first for a friendly chat with the chief of police, 
 for it was an essential part of his business policy to keep 
 on the right side of all who could make themselves un- 
 pleasant but were open to reason, then out beyond it, 
 till he could see Vasili Totsin's figure in the distance as 
 he plodded hopefully along the hill road to Tertsaya to 
 negotiate a loan with a man who would not have lent 
 him a kopek to save his life. 
 
 There was just the shadow of a smile in Peter Krop's 
 deep eyes as he watched him. Then he got down and 
 took the bits out his horses' mouths and gave them some 
 oats and some hay out of one of the sacks, and when 
 two hours had passed he drove quietly back through 
 Selemsinsk, stopped for scarce a moment at Totsin's 
 house just long enough for Marya Feodorovna to 
 fling two or three small bundles into the wagon and a 
 meaning nod to himself, and then he went on along 
 the highroad. 
 
 At last he saw a moving figure on in front, and as he 
 
THE LONG ROAD 179 
 
 watched it a smaller figure ran out from it and crossed 
 the road, and he had found what he had come for. 
 
 Only a young woman with a bright, anxious face, and 
 a laughing child, and a sleeping baby, but all heaven 
 and earth to the hungry heart that counted the slow 
 hours up in Yeniseisk, and said to itself: "Now he 
 should be there. Now they should have started. 
 Now they should be coming. Why don't they come? 
 It is time. It is time," and then, at last, the merry 
 beat of the galloping hoofs, loud and soft, on rock and 
 mud, oh, the cheer of the rushing feet which 
 brought him the good news before he could see them ! 
 And so at last, at last, with a sob from an overstrained 
 heart, "Now, God be praised, they are here!" 
 
 Of that meeting how shall any man properly tell? 
 How they laughed and how they cried. How they clung 
 to one another as though defying any earthly power to 
 part them again for ever. How they kissed one an- 
 other as though kisses alone, and in very great quantity, 
 could wipe out the bitter memories of eleven long 
 months of heart-starvation. How little Katenka danced 
 round and round them like a chubby, distraught elf, 
 laughing and crying because they did, and clutching 
 wildly first at one and then at the other. How even 
 Peter Krop's keen eyes swam a little in their deep 
 caverns as he watched them patriarchally, and held 
 little Stepan in his arms, in gingerly and unaccustomed 
 fashion, to give them freer play. Perhaps the thought 
 
i8o THE LONG ROAD 
 
 of other men-children he had held in his arms long ago, 
 and none since, proved too much for him. For, of a 
 sudden, he became a man of business again. He laid 
 Stepan Stepanovitch in his mother's arms, and set to 
 work shifting the goods and the horses. 
 
 And presently he stood in the road by his wagdn and 
 watched the house on wheels bumping away toward 
 the Altais as fast as two horses could carry it, and he 
 felt himself strangely alone. 
 
 And Stepan carried in his breast, where he had stuffed 
 it, a paper which Peter had handed to him, saying, 
 "That is on account of my debt to you, Stepan Ivano- 
 vitch." 
 
 And Stepan, thinking at first that it was material 
 payment of some kind, had been for refusing it. 
 
 "You have this day repaid me ten times over, Peter 
 Petrovitch," he said. And then he glanced at the paper 
 and stuffed it into his breast, and said : "God be good to 
 you, Peter Krop. A Jew shall be my friend wherever 
 I meet him from this day for your sake." 
 
 Great was the power of money, and almost as great 
 was Governor Tatukof's constant need of it. The 
 paper was Tatukof's permission for Katia Vasilievna 
 to travel with her husband, Stepan Iline, within the 
 province of Yeniseisk. It had cost Peter Krop a 
 thousand roubles, and for once he did not regret the 
 paying out of money, even to Tatukof. 
 
CHAPTER XLI 
 
 THE Altai Mountains are very beautiful at that time 
 of year, but had they been the starkest desolation they 
 would still have been heaven to these newly- wedded 
 souls, for we make our own heavens and carry them with 
 us where we will. 
 
 Governor Paschkin's decree hung lightly upon the 
 travellers and gave them as yet no cause for concern. 
 Life, as though to make up for the breaks and shal- 
 lows of the past, flowed smooth and deep, and their love 
 touched heights it had never known before. 
 
 Day after day they wound slowly up among the hills, 
 a little wandering microcosm of pure distilled happiness. 
 They had all they wanted, and more than ever they 
 had dared to hope for a.gain. The storm had broken 
 over them, but now, for a season, the sun shone out warm 
 and bright, and by contrast seemed to them even brighter 
 than before. 
 
 Stepan marched at his horses' heads, for their en- 
 couragement on the long up-grades, and talked and 
 laughed out of % the fulness of his heart to them and to 
 Katenka and to Katia, and even to little Stepan, who 
 could not understand a word, but nevertheless replied 
 
 in kind. 
 
 181 
 
182 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 To please Katenka, he fitted the high wooden arch 
 over the neck of his shaft horse with bells, not just 
 common bells such as any horse might wear, but bells 
 chosen with very great care, a deep-toned " crimson" 
 in the middle, and sweet, silvery tinklers at the sides, so 
 that the sound of their going was a sound of sweet 
 music, which chimed along the hillsides and floated 
 down the valleys and was very good to hear. 
 
 And little Katenka was happy as the day was long. 
 She flitted like a humming-bird from patch to patch of 
 brilliant colour along the hillsides, and came speeding 
 back with mighty treasure of fruit and flower, wild 
 raspberries and strawberries, gentians, pinks, forget- 
 me-nots, roses, and full of merry chatter over her 
 discoveries, till the house on wheels looked like a travel- 
 ling garden and sounded like a cage of twittering love- 
 birds. 
 
 And Katia sat in the doorway of the house with little 
 Stepan in her arms, and watched all that passed with 
 eyes of deep content and a heart brimming with gratitude 
 and hope. And sometimes she sang softly to herself 
 and Baby Stepan, and then the very horses trod lightly 
 and put back their ears, and seemed to slacken their 
 speed so that they might listen, and Stepan said to him- 
 self that the good angels in heaven could sing no sweeter 
 than that, and perhaps he was right. 
 
 And, bit by bit, Katia told Stepan of all her troubles 
 and anxieties after he left Irkutsk city. How the men 
 
THE LONG ROAD 183 
 
 who owed them money took advantage of his absence 
 to dispute with her, and to get off payment altogether 
 when they could. So that it was only when Simon 
 Rapin recovered from his illness that she was able to 
 make any headway. And finally, in despair, she was 
 glad to sell everything, stock and debts and business and 
 furniture, to Simon for a round sum of two thousand 
 roubles and an undertaking to see her and the money 
 and the children safely conveyed to Selemsinsk. 
 
 Then came the birth of little Stepan and Paschkin's 
 interference with her going and more delays, till she 
 lost heart at times and doubted if ever she would see 
 her husband again. 
 
 She told him, too, how her mother had penetrated her 
 father's treachery, and of the trouble it had made in the 
 home. 
 
 "She will never forgive him, Stepan, and he knows 
 it," said Katia. " She is an honest woman, is my mother, 
 and ones does not forget a thing like that." 
 
 " Since you are here, my Katenka, I forgive every- 
 body, even Paschkin," said Stepan, forcefully; "and as 
 to the money, the sight of your face up there is more to 
 me than all the money in all the world. There are some 
 things you can't buy with money, and, God be thanked, 
 I've got them!" 
 
 Nevertheless the money was useful, since it enabled 
 him to buy his own goods, and quadrupled his profits, 
 and set him fairly on his own feet. 
 
i8 4 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 At sunset each day, they would choose some quiet 
 place off the road, and there Stepan turned the horses 
 loose to nibble where they would, and lighted a fire of 
 the sticks he had been gathering as he walked; and 
 Baby Stepan lay on Grandmother Earth and kicked 
 and squealed in the ecstasy of living ; and little Katenka 
 mothered him with responsible gravity; and Katia got 
 ready their simple meal. 
 
 They had camped so one evening, in a sheltered nook 
 of the forest, and Stepan, when he had lighted his fire 
 of sticks, had gone off after a supply of dry wood for 
 the night, as the trees near at hand were sturdy oaks in 
 full growth. 
 
 When he came back dragging a bundle of dead 
 branches, the sight of the cheerful little encampment 
 stayed him in the edge of the wood, with a grateful lump 
 in his throat, and a sudden mist in his eyes, and a swell- 
 ing about the heart that was, in very truth, a thankful 
 prayer, though it had no words. 
 
 The horses, in their hobbles, were rooting greedily 
 among the withered grasses for the tender shoots be- 
 low. Baby Stepan lay on a skin rug, kicking his sturdy 
 legs in joyous freedom, and goo-gooing at the dancing 
 flames and at little Katenka, who sat on the ground 
 beside him and sprinkled the kicking legs with her 
 day's harvest of flowers, and babbled to her mother, who 
 was busy over the big black pot. 
 
 As happy a sight as a man might see, and, for one who 
 
THE LONG ROAD 185 
 
 had feared his life's happiness passed for ever, a sight, 
 indeed, to bring a choking lump into the throat and a 
 mist to the eyes and a swelling inside the chest. 
 
 The dark wood behind him was like the black time 
 of waiting, when his life seemed broken in pieces, and 
 he doubted if he would ever see happiness again. But 
 he had come out of the darkness, and here he stood look- 
 ing out into the light, and the future seemed as bright 
 as the dancing flames and the happiness they shone upon. 
 
 He stood so long, silent and motionless, watching 
 through the leaves, and half afraid to move lest it should 
 all vanish and leave him heart empty and starving, 
 that another tiny observer lost its fear of him, and came 
 tripping noiselessly along a branch almost under his 
 hand, and lay staring with tense little brown body 
 and astonished little beads of eyes at the fire and all the 
 very unusual goings-on about it. 
 
 And Stepan, thinking always of what would give 
 pleasure to his little Katenka, dropped his hand on the 
 little brown body, which wriggled and bit and squeaked, 
 and went forward to the fire with it in one hand and 
 dragging his dry branches with the other. 
 
 "See, then, dushenka," he said to little Katenka. 
 "Here's for you to play with a little brown brother 
 of the woods." 
 
 "Is it alive, little father?" asked Katenka, with 
 wide round eyes of wonder, as the little brown bundle 
 lay quite still for a moment. 
 
i86 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 "Oh, yes, it's alive," and he held it by the bushy tail 
 while it tried frantically to bite him into letting it go. 
 
 "Its little nose is frightened and its eyes. Will it 
 bite, little father?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, it bftes. See, it has made my finger 
 bleed." 
 
 "But you will not kill it, little father, although it has 
 made you bleed." 
 
 "Kill it, my little Katenka? No, I will not kill it. 
 It's teeth are sharp, but it only bites for freedom. No, 
 I will not kill it." 
 
 " Pretty, pretty !" said Katenka, proffering friendship 
 with a doubtful finger, but withdrawing it hastily before 
 the menacing little teeth. " Can I keep it, little father? 
 How can I keep it?" 
 
 "It is for you, dushenka. I will make it a cage." 
 
 "Nay, but my Katenka," said Katia, looking piti- 
 fully on the struggling little captive, "maybe it has a 
 little Katenka and a Baby Stepan, and a longing Katia 
 up there in the branches, and they will die if it does not 
 go back to them." 
 
 And little Katenka looked up at the face above her, 
 with quivering lip and a great tenderness in the dark 
 blue eyes, and said quickly : " Let it go, little father, let 
 it go ! We will not be like the evil Paschkin and keep 
 it from its little Katenka and its Baby Stepan, or their 
 little mother's eyes will be red with weeping. Let it 
 go, little father 1" 
 
THE LONG ROAD 187 
 
 And Stepan set it down on the ground, and it lay for a 
 second and then vanished like a shadow. And little 
 Katenka clapped her hands gleefully. 
 
 "It has gone back to its little Katenka and its Baby 
 Stepan and their little mother," she cried. "And the 
 little mother's eyes will no longer be red with weeping." 
 
 And many times thereafter he caught for her tiny 
 wood-doves with eyes like bright beads, swelling, flut- 
 tering little bundles of gleaming feathers, and timid, 
 startled-eyed furry things, all with quivering noses, 
 and some with bushy tails, and some with nothing but 
 little white patches where tails ought properly to have 
 been. 
 
 And little Katenka was always full of wonder and 
 delight in them. 
 
 But Katia always said: "Let them go, Stepan! It 
 pains my heart to see them, for I know what it is to 
 be caged." 
 
 And then little Katenka would say, " Yes, let them go, 
 little father, let them go, for there is a little Katenka 
 and a Baby Stepan and a little mother waiting for them 
 up there in the branches." 
 
 And Stepan would laugh and let them go, and would 
 say, "Yes, I will let them go, for I have the prettiest 
 birds of all, and them I will never let go." 
 
 To please the little one without troubling their tender 
 hearts, he took to fashioning rude toys for her out of fit 
 pieces of wood which he cut out of the branches as they 
 
i88 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 passed along. And, ever eager for the merry laugh and 
 sparkling eyes which greeted any unusual effort, he 
 grew in time quite skilful at the business. 
 
 And Katia, sitting in the doorway, with Baby Stepan 
 in her arms, would smile to herself at the concentra- 
 tion of his knitted face as he cut and carved as he walked 
 along, while little Katenka at her knee would keep 
 crying eagerly: "Is it finished, little father? Is it 
 finished? Oh, what is it this time? Is it a man, or is 
 it a little beast, or is it the evil Paschkin?" 
 
 And it was wonderful the things he made for her out 
 of fir cones and acorns and bits of crooked wood, and 
 she treasured them and played with them by the hour, 
 and when they were broken, she passed them on to 
 Baby Stepan, who knew no better and found them past 
 his understanding. 
 
 And at times her father gave her joggling rides on 
 the shafter's back, in delightful proximity to the swing- 
 ing bells, and never did the bells sing so sweetly as 
 when little Katenka sat in joyful trepidation beside 
 them, with hands clapping and eyes sparkling, and fair 
 curls blowing in the wind. 
 
 After that long heart-starving and agony of doubt, 
 now that the joy of his dear ones had been given to him 
 again, it seemed as though he could not do enough for 
 them. There was room for but one thought in him at 
 that time, and that was how to fill their lives with happi- 
 ness to the very brim. And for that no trouble was too 
 
THE LONG ROAD 189 
 
 great. Trouble ! for Katia and little Katenka and 
 Baby Stepan ! Trouble ! Everything he did for them 
 was highest delight and joy unspeakable. 
 
 Now and again they shared their evening meal with 
 some solitary prowler, whose longing eyes were all- 
 sufficient passport to the charmed circle; and such, 
 knowing nothing of what had gone before, went on their 
 way wondering why to some men came so much of 
 happiness and to some so much of trouble. 
 
 And more than once they fell in with bands of wan- 
 derers from over the border, strange beings with 
 round, flat faces and uncouth garments and incompre- 
 hensible speech, but not ill-disposed, and all alike 
 compact of curiosity and diffidence. 
 
 And never once did they suffer molestation either at 
 the hands of their own or the stranger people. For the 
 latter knew that behind the white people of the northern 
 land were bands of ruthless soldiers who could wipe 
 the steppes bare. 
 
 And for the others, if temptation ever assailed them at 
 sight of happiness so much greater than ever could be 
 theirs, Stepan's stalwart figure and determined face, 
 and the sharp axe in his belt, and the long gun which 
 lay to his hand in the door of his house were all- 
 sufficient deterrents. Besides, except to casual wan- 
 derers, whose tastes or whose fears inclined them to 
 solitude rather than to the society of their fellows, his 
 story had become known, and few but felt for him, 
 
190 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 since his burden might be theirs any day, and not one 
 would have added to it. 
 
 That his cross had become a crown, and his burden 
 had turned his life into a joyous pilgrimage, few under- 
 stood, and the rest would hardly have believed. 
 
CHAPTER XLII 
 
 THAT was a summer of high delight to the occupants 
 of the house on wheels, and all things prospered with 
 them. 
 
 They met old Peter Krop whenever their orbits 
 permitted, even at the sacrifice of business and a few 
 days' extra travelling to some appointed place. And, 
 whenever they did meet, the welcome they gave him 
 warmed the old man's heart and sent him on his way 
 lonelier than before, yet rejoicing in spite of his loneli- 
 ness. 
 
 Stepan and he discussed their business, past and 
 future, and exchanged profitable ideas as to routes and 
 goods. Katia and the children knocked thirty years of! 
 his age, and carried him back to the times that had been 
 and could never be again. And, when they had parted 
 once more, though he felt his loneliness the greater, 
 yet he rejoiced in their great happiness and in the hand 
 he had had in bringing it all about. 
 
 And everywhere, along the line of their journeying, 
 they carried with them such an atmosphere of cheerful 
 contentment with a hard lot, and even of happiness, 
 that the stolid country folk, though they could not 
 
 understand if, were always glad to see them. 
 
 191 
 
192 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 They came running out of their houses to meet the 
 house on wheels whenever they heard its bells, and the 
 full, round voice of the deep -toned crimson and the 
 merry peal of the silvery tinklers were known and wel- 
 comed over all the lonely plains of Yeniseisk. "Nu, 
 then, but aren't you crowded in there?" the frowsy 
 housewives of the steppe would say to Katia, as they 
 gazed in wonder at her bright face. 
 
 "Come and see," she would laugh, and they would 
 climb up and peep in, and she would show them all 
 Stepan's clever devices for their comfort, and they would 
 gape and admire and never cease to talk of it. 
 
 " Da, now ! If our men were like that !" they would 
 say, and they would envy her her clever man, not 
 knowing all the heartbreak and bitterness which had 
 gone to the making of the house on wheels and the 
 happiness it held. 
 
 They were fully and absolutely happy, as they had 
 never hoped to be again ; happier, indeed, than they 
 had been in Irkutsk, or ever could have been under 
 the perpetual shadow of Paschkin. And when they 
 spoke of the black days, it was with regret for those 
 who had still to live in that great darkness, and 
 with mighty thankfulness at their own strange deliv- 
 erance. 
 
 At first Stepan had watched Katia anxiously for any 
 sign of discontent with their restless life. But his heart 
 was soon at rest. 
 
THE LONG ROAD 193 
 
 "Art certain thou art content, little one?" he would 
 ask her, time and again. 
 
 "What does my face tell thee?" she would laugh. 
 "I would sooner tramp the bad roads of Yeniseisk on 
 foot, with thee and the little ones, than live in the 
 biggest house in Irkutsk while Paschkin rules there. 
 And this nest thou hast made for us is like heaven." 
 
 "Ay, they thought it was a travelling church I built," 
 he told her. 
 
 "And so it was," said she, with a touch of prescience. 
 "And we are thy holy images." 
 
 "It is true," he said solemnly. "When I see thee 
 sitting up there, with the little one on thy knee, I think 
 of the Holy Mother and The Child, and I think she 
 must have been like thee," and it harmed neither of 
 them so to think. 
 

 CHAPTER XLIII 
 
 THEIR summer waxed and waned, and they travelled 
 through a crisper air. The hilltops began to be pow- 
 dered with snow. The poplars turned crimson, and the 
 white-stemmed birches flamed like burning bushes 
 among the dark evergreens. The grasses had all been 
 burnt down by the sun into a carpet of russet gold, 
 except in the swampy bottoms where there were still 
 green patches, and even flowers might still be had for 
 the seeking. The skies became gray and heavy, and 
 Stepan turned his horses' heads toward the plains and 
 began to think of runners instead of wheels. 
 
 He had wanted Katia and the children to stop in 
 some small town or village for the winter, but Katia 
 would not hear of it. 
 
 "We will part no more, Stepan," she said. "The 
 last time nearly killed me." 
 
 "It is cold on the road when the snow lies deep, 
 Katia; how will you and the little ones stand it?" 
 
 "We can stand anything so long as we are together. 
 We can make the house as comfortable as any village 
 house." 
 
 "We may be snowed up at times." 
 
 "It is delightful to be snowed up when all you love 
 
 is snowed up with you." 
 
 194 
 
THE LONG ROAD 195 
 
 Stepan was doubtful, but decided that if they found 
 it too much for them, it would always be possible to 
 make a change. 
 
 Old Peter Krop, too, when he heard about it, strongly 
 urged Katia to consent to being left behind. He had 
 travelled those roads for thirty years; but always, in 
 the winter after the first year or two he knocked 
 off for a time, because he considered the risk and the 
 hardship too great. 
 
 But he could not move Katia, and so he tried to induce 
 Stepan to go west into Omsk and Tomsk, and there 
 keep down to the south. But Stepan did not think 
 well of the idea. Governor Tatukof was complaisant 
 and had never interfered with him. In Omsk and 
 Tomsk he did not know in whose hands he might be. 
 He would stop where he knew he was safe, and where 
 no one was likely to come between him and Katia. 
 
 And so they went stoutly into the winter, and Katia, 
 at all events, had no doubt but that the warmth of love 
 inside the little house would be sufficient to keep out all 
 the cold the season could bring against them. 
 
 Stepan bought more skins for the floor and more 
 rugs for the walls, and from a trader, whose business 
 took him far north down the Yenisei, he bought a large 
 lamp such as the natives there use for both lighting 
 and heating and cooking. 
 
 They made but slow time indeed, when the snow 
 came and the wheels gave place to the runners. But 
 
196 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 time was of little consequence to them; so long as 
 they fulfilled the requirements of Paschkin's decree 
 and kept moving on, there was none to find fault with 
 them. 
 
 At times they stopped in wayside village or alongside 
 some lonely peasant hut for days at a time, but Katia 
 always preferred her own house to any other. 
 
 Far from complaining, she would never even admit 
 any want of room or of anything else. On the contrary, 
 she went about her work with happy face and cheerful 
 songs, and planned and contrived so admirably that 
 everybody had room enough, and everybody was com- 
 fortable and happy. 
 
 And to little Katenka the world was as joyous, all 
 glistening in the snow, as it had been in the days of 
 sunshine and flowers. 
 
 She would sit on the seat in front, muffled in a sheep- 
 skin so that nothing of her could be seen but her rosy 
 face in its little cloth capote, and a fair curl streaming 
 out here and there like a winter sunbeam. And they 
 could not keep her inside. 
 
 She would sit there by the hour, singing merrily to the 
 falling flakes, and nodding gay welcomes to them with 
 her bright little head. 
 
 And when they fell on her face so thickly that she 
 could not see, she would root out a little mittened hand 
 and brush them gently away, as though the soft white 
 flakes had feelings which she was loath to wound ; but 
 
THE LONG ROAD 197 
 
 really, if they didn't much mind, she wanted to see out of 
 her own eyes, you know. 
 
 And to Stepan, tramping sturdily by his horses' 
 heads, and clearing their faces of the snow when it 
 troubled them, she was ever a rare delight. No matter 
 how cold the wind, how thick the snow, the sight of 
 little Katenka, sitting up there singing to the falling 
 flakes as they fluttered by her rosy face, set a cheerful 
 fire in his heart and brightened all the way. Just so, 
 long ago, to a little mud -boy on the long road, the 
 thought of another little Katenka 's rosy face had been 
 warmth and food and new life, and' a wondrous easing 
 of an infinitely gloomier way. 
 
 Katenka wondered sometimes why he would suddenly 
 look up at her and laugh joyfully. 
 
 "Why do you laugh at me, little father, why do you 
 laugh?" she would pipe down through the falling flakes. 
 
 "Because your face is brighter than the sun to me, 
 little Katenka, and it always sets me thinking of that 
 hot cake you gave me when I was a little mud -boy, 
 sixteen, seventeen oh, ever so many years ago, 
 before you were born." 
 
 " Da ! You are a funny little father ! How could 
 I before I was born?" 
 
 " Nu, then ! Ask your mother to tell you the story 
 of the dirty mud -boy and little Katenka's hot cake." 
 
 And the story was told many, many times, and little 
 Katenka never tired of hearing it. And in time she 
 
198 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 got to know it so well that, if her mother inadvertently 
 dropped one word, Katenka would insist upon its im- 
 mediate replacement before the story could be allowed 
 to continue. 
 
 And sometimes, as a crowning effect, the little mother 
 would bake them hot cakes, just the same as the one 
 she had given to the little mud-boy, and little Katenka 
 would look anxiously about to see if there was any 
 starving little mud -boy upon whom she might bestow 
 hers, but she never found one. But the sight of her 
 father's face, as he ate his cake, crumb by crumb, al- 
 ways filled her with merry laughter and her mother 
 with great delight, for he always asserted that even the 
 original cake given to the mud-boy was not equal to 
 these cakes. And in that, I suppose, he was right. 
 
 At times they crept through the winding hill passes, 
 where the firs and pines stood like endless phalanxes 
 of white-coated soldiers, silently saluting their merry 
 chimes. And then down into the long white solitudes 
 of the plains, which sparkled under the sun as though 
 strewn with dust of diamonds. And sometimes they 
 passed long lines of laden sledges, and sometimes they 
 went for days without seeing any living thing. 
 
 But always when he could, Stepan drew in for the 
 night to hut or village, where the horses could get under 
 cover and his mind could be at ease. And then, in- 
 deed, the little house glowed like the cosy nest of some 
 strange birds, and the peasants came out into the snow 
 
THE LONG ROAD 199 
 
 to peep in at the furs and rugs and the warmth and 
 neatness of it all, and sat and talked with Stepan and 
 Katia, as many as could get in ; and crept back to their 
 own cheerless dwellings the better for what they had 
 seen, and envious in some cases almost to the point of 
 emulation. But after a time, and taught by lively ex- 
 perience, Katia had to put a stop to so much hospi- 
 tality; for she was the soul of cleanliness herself, and 
 many of their visitors left active memories of their 
 visits behind them. 
 
 When no house could be reached, Stepan sought 
 the most sheltered spot he could find and camped out. 
 His stabling arrangements then were simple enough. 
 They took time to carry out, but the horses found them 
 satisfactory and made no complaint. 
 
 He drew over the roof of the house a great piece of 
 canvas and fastened the ends to the ground or to the 
 snow, so making a small lean-to tent on each side. 
 The ends were closed with shaped pieces of canvas, 
 and when the snow was shovelled out, and piled in a 
 wall round the outside, and the ground was covered 
 with fir branches, the stable was complete, and the 
 horses would sleep more soundly than their master. 
 For he would lie awake most of the night dreading each 
 moment to hear the distant howling of wolves, and if 
 by chance he fell asleep, he woke with a start, sure that 
 he heard them coming. 
 
 But they suffered little actual trouble from wolves, 
 
200 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 except in Stepan's dreams, until the great snowstorm 
 which caught them on the road from Chernsk to Drem 
 the greatest storm they had had in Yeniseisk for very 
 many years. 
 
CHAPTER XLIV 
 
 IT was a clear sky and no signs of any unusual visita- 
 tion when they started out from Chernsk, and Drem 
 was four days away across a frozen, swampy steppe on 
 the other side of the hills. They had stayed their full 
 ten days at Chernsk, waiting for snow to level the ways, 
 and, for the first time since Paschkin started them on 
 the road, the police had had to intimate to Stepan that 
 his time was up and he must go. 
 
 He had wondered sometimes if they would actually 
 enforce Paschkin 's arbitrary decree in Yeniseisk. Ta- 
 tukof winked at Katia's presence with him. Stepan 
 thought it possible he might equally wink at the other 
 matter also, and had more than once so discussed the 
 matter at his meetings with Peter Krop. 
 
 But Peter advised him to the contrary. He said he 
 had done his utmost to get the Governor's other eye 
 to close, but Tatukof was too wary and would take no 
 risks. As regards Katia he had received no communica- 
 tion from the All-Powerful-One, who was occupied with 
 other matters at the time of her escape. If at any time 
 instructions came concerning her, he would have to 
 enforce them. He had, of course, long since spent his 
 thousand roubles when he made this acknowledgment. 
 
 201 
 
202 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 But as regarded the indorsement of Stepan Iline's 
 papers, it was a matter beyond him. Every police 
 officer with whom those papers were lodged at each 
 village was conversant with them, and was bound to act 
 on them or take the consequences, and he, Tatukof, 
 was not quite such a fool as to meddle with the written 
 decrees of Paschkin. So that it was really the Ubiq- 
 uitous and All-Powerful-One who drove them into 
 the great snowstorm, and brought them into mighty 
 peril, and worse. 
 
 Captain of Cossacks Danof, head of police at 
 Chernsk, was an autocratic respecter of laws and ordi- 
 nances, a person devoid of sentiment or imagination, a 
 hard man of few but fixed ideas, chief of which was 
 that superior orders must be carried out to the very 
 last letter, no matter what happened. This made him 
 a good chief of police but an extremely unpleasant 
 person to deal with. He was a man of ambitions, also, 
 and not open even to the reasoning of the rouble. He 
 had seen the danger of that, and had made up his mind 
 that until he occupied a position which would command 
 commensurate remuneration, honesty was his best 
 policy. He would have nothing to do with bribes of 
 any kind until they should be on such a scale that con- 
 sequences would be of comparatively small importance. 
 
 He was the first who had had to enforce against 
 Stepan the indorsement on his papers. On the tenth 
 day of their stay in Chernsk, a message arrived from him 
 
THE LONG ROAD 203 
 
 to the effect that the term of their residence expired that 
 night, and Stepan forthwith harnessed his horses and 
 went. 
 
 They had crossed the frozen swamp and were crawling 
 up the pass, when the snow began falling in slow, heavy 
 flakes out of a low, gray sky. The sky darkened over 
 the hills, and presently the wind came bellowing through 
 the funnel of the pass, blinding the horses, plastering 
 the house inches deep with snow, and piling up drifts 
 at every turning, which soon made progress impossible. 
 
 Stepan remembered a corner down below which had 
 been somewhat sheltered. He got the horses round, to 
 their great satisfaction, and they struggled back to the 
 corner. Then he had a stiff wrestle with the intractable 
 canvas, which, under the influence of the gale, became 
 possessed of a devil such as had never entered into it 
 before. After a couple of hours' hard work, however, 
 he got the horses under shelter and was satisfied. 
 Then he crept to cover himself, and lay all night listen- 
 ing to the howling of the wind through the pass, till at 
 last it dulled on his ears and he slept. 
 
 Everything was very quiet when he woke in the morn- 
 ing, and he said to himself that the storm was over and 
 they would go on. But when he tried to open the 
 front door he met resistance, and forcing it an inch or two 
 found the snow piled heavily against it. 
 
 He scraped away with his hands through the narrow 
 opening till he could creep out, burrowed on till his 
 
204 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 head broke through the upper crust, and there he 
 found the storm still raging, and the snow piling higher 
 and higher round his corner even as he watched. 
 
 He looked anxiously over his canvas stables and found 
 them so far intact. The outer one was sagged down 
 with a covering of snow a foot or more deep. The 
 inner one, sheltered by the house and the side of the 
 pass, was less weighted. So far the stout canvas had 
 stood the strain, but he set to work at once to lighten 
 it by pushing down the snow with a pole. He bur- 
 rowed down to the inside stable and crept under the 
 house to the other, and found both horses all right and 
 fairly warm. He gave them hay from the provision 
 under the house and climbed up again. 
 
 "We are snowed in, Katia," he said to his wife, 
 "and the storm still rages." 
 
 "We might be worse off, Stepan. There is plenty 
 of food and plenty of oil, and before long the storm 
 will cease, and we can go on." 
 
 "Pretty, pretty!" said little Katenka, clapping her 
 hands at sight of the snow-wall outside the door, glit- 
 tering in the lamplight. 
 
 But the storm raged all that day, and the next, and 
 for many days after that. Flakes as big as one's hand 
 went whirling down the pass, banking in great ridges 
 at the turnings, and piling higher and higher round the 
 little camp in the corner. And Stepan was kept busy, 
 raking it off the roofs of the house and the stables when 
 
THE LONG ROAD 205 
 
 it packed too heavily, lest they should be overwhelmed, 
 and keeping open his funnel lest they should be smoth- 
 ered. 
 
 He carried the big cooking lamp down into the 
 stable for a time each day, and so tightly were they 
 covered in that very little of the heat escaped, and they 
 had no great cold to complain of. 
 
 "But," he said to himself, as he looked out over the 
 piling drifts, "it will take days and days to get clear, 
 even when the snow ceases," and he began to worry 
 about the provisioning for themselves and the horses. 
 The latter he put on short rations at once as a matter 
 of precaution, but as yet said nothing to Katia. 
 
 For himself he ate just as little as possible without 
 exciting her observation, and, as the days went on, 
 the habit grew upon him of getting up while eating, 
 and going out with the food in his hand, to clear the 
 snow off the stable roof, which he could have done just 
 as well at any other time. 
 
 As the days passed, and the snow still fell, Katia's 
 gentle face began to wear an anxious look also, when 
 she was alone. For the food was nearly done, and 
 what was to happen when they had eaten the last 
 mouthful she dared not think. But she always plucked 
 up heart, and said to herself that there could not be 
 much more snow left to come down, and that soon it 
 would be all right, and they would go on again. 
 
 She was very much astonished, too, at the way the 
 
206 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 food lasted. Positively it seemed to her sometimes that 
 there was more there in the morning than there had been 
 at night. She herself ate very sparingly, and would 
 have denied herself still more but that she had little 
 Stepan to feed as well as herself, and his masterful 
 demands had to be complied with, no matter who went 
 short. She could not altogether keep the growing 
 anxiety out of her face at last, and Stepan noticed it, 
 and that her cheeks had lost somewhat of their round- 
 ness, and he insisted on her eating more. 
 
 Then she would say, "If you will eat, I will eat." 
 And he had to humour her, and God knows except 
 for fears of the future it was not hard work for him 
 to eat when his stomach was almost clapping its insides 
 with hunger. 
 
 "How much longer can it last, Stepan?" she would 
 ask, and he would reply: "God knows, little one. But 
 I really think the sky is lighter to-day." 
 
 When she saw that the oil was nearly done she cooked 
 all the meat they had, and made all their flour into 
 cakes, against the time when they could cook no more. 
 And Stepan, as he dealt out single stalks of hay to his 
 famished horses, and shrank from the hungry reproach 
 of their straining eyes, found himself wondering if the 
 time had not come for him to kill one of them for 
 sake of the little flesh that was on its bones. They 
 had long since eaten up all their bedding, to the last 
 shred of bark, and there was not a scrap of anything 
 
THE LONG ROAD 207 
 
 left, except the stalks of hay which he dealt out so 
 sparingly. 
 
 Little Katenka grew fretful with the long confine- 
 ment, the pretty snow had long since lost its charm, 
 and even little Stepan wailed discontentedly at times 
 in spite of all his mother could do for him. 
 
 Stepan blamed himself bitterly for not having in- 
 sisted on their stopping for the winter in some village, 
 and starved himself contritely. And Katia suffered 
 much, and did her very best to look as if she were not 
 suffering at all, but strength soon saps when two have 
 to live on a fraction of what would support one. 
 
 Then at last one day, when he burst through the new 
 crust of snow that had covered his breathing hole in 
 the night, he found the sun shining brightly and the 
 storm over. The pass was blocked at every turning, 
 and it would be many days before they could get out. 
 But he hastily cleft a larger way through the snow, 
 and brought Katia and Katenka and Baby Stepan out 
 to breathe the fresh air and stretch themselves, to their 
 great content. 
 
 Katenka began at once to complain of hunger, and 
 Stepan, with sudden resolution, but feeling how reduced 
 his strength was, climbed the nearest drift to see if he 
 could spy any trees. He saw some firs sticking up 
 through the snow, and plunged away toward them, and 
 began wildly tearing branches down and dragging them 
 toward the house. 
 
208 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 He set Katia and Katenka to strip off the leaves, and 
 then quickly, for he hated the job, he slipped down into 
 the stable, crept under the house, and with shaking 
 hand and eyes that hardly saw, drew his knife across 
 the throat of the horse that lay there. 
 
 The poor beast shivered and half raised its head to 
 look up at him, kicked feebly once or twice with its 
 hind legs, and lay still. And the other horse, with its 
 muzzle down to the opening below the house, snuffled 
 affrightedly and asked what was the matter. When 
 Stepan came out from under the house with red meat in 
 his hand, it turned and looked reproachfully after him. 
 
 Katia went white when she saw the meat, but little 
 Katenka clapped her hands with joy and danced briefly 
 in the snow. Meat had come, that was enough. She 
 never asked where it came from. 
 
 Stepan trod down a patch of snow into a hard cake, 
 piled his wood, and lit a fire, and set the meat to grill, 
 and then carefully carried down to the live horse the 
 twigs and leaves from the fir branches. 
 
 The meat was not to their taste, not even to little 
 Katenka's, and Katia forced herself to swallow it only 
 for the boy's sake. It was coarse and stringy, and of 
 a strange flavour, still there was some nourishment in 
 it, and when Katia stewed some and mixed her dried 
 herbs with it, they found it better. 
 
 They had been eighteen days under the snow, and 
 
THE LONG ROAD 209 
 
 it was ten days more before they could make passage 
 through the drifts. 
 
 Said Stepan with a brief smile, "There are powers 
 greater even than Paschkin's." 
 
CHAPTER XLV 
 
 IT was then, almost at the end of their long imprison- 
 ment, when they had barely escaped death by starva- 
 tion, that they came still nearer to it in still more grisly 
 fashion. 
 
 Stepan had decided that they might venture down 
 the pass on the morrow. They were busily packing 
 such necessaries as they required into small bundles, 
 for the house would have to wait where it was for the 
 present. The snow was piled high about it, and to 
 enter it they had to pass through a narrow passage 
 twenty feet long which Stepan had cut through the 
 drift. He had been working all day at another passage 
 by which the horse would come up to daylight again 
 in the morning. For sake of the warmth, however, 
 he had not yet broken it completely through, but a 
 short half-hour's work would finish it. 
 
 Suddenly he raised his head and sat listening intently, 
 with a quick chill at the heart. Katia was busy with 
 little Stepan and did not notice. The horse in the 
 stable alongside gave a terrified snort. He heard it, 
 too. 
 
 It was the sound Stepan had heard so often in his 
 dreams, the distant howling of wolves. He reached 
 
 210 
 
THE LONG ROAD 211 
 
 for the long knife with which he had cut the horse's 
 throat, and lashed it firmly to the pole he used for 
 beating the snow off the stable roof. He felt for his 
 axe. His gun was in the corner. Then he sat and 
 listened. 
 
 He heard it again, and nearer. It was not the long, 
 dolorous howl of the hungry prowler, but the short, 
 eager yelp of the pack hot on the scent. 
 
 Katia heard it now, and her thin white face went 
 whiter still, and involuntarily she clasped little Stepan 
 tighter to her breast. The horse alongside was on its 
 feet. They could hear it shifting uneasily, and snorting 
 with fear. Little Katenka heard it, and began to cry 
 with her hands to her ears. 
 
 For the first time in his life her father spoke roughly 
 to her. 
 
 "Be quiet, Katenka. If you cry, the wolves will 
 hear you," and Katenka drew a skin round her head 
 and lay wriggling in a corner. 
 
 "They cannot get in, Katia," he said positively. 
 "But I am afraid for the horse. I shall stand outside 
 in the passage. If they come here, and I have to shoot, 
 you must reload the gun for me. There is the powder. 
 Here is the shot. There are wads," and he stepped 
 through into the snow passage, carrying gun and spear 
 and axe. Katenka gave a quiver of fear as the door 
 opened and the blood-curdling yelping sounded louder 
 still and nearer. 
 
212 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 There was a cold bright moon like a silver shield, 
 and Stepan could see to the next turn of the pass. The 
 yelping swelled clearer, drew nearer, and now he heard 
 also the quick thud of a horse's hoofs going at a fran- 
 tic gallop. He must see. If the chase kept up, they 
 might be passed unscented, though if they were, it 
 would be by the mercy of God, for, good sooth, the 
 scent of them was strong enough. 
 
 He stole to the end of the passage. The night was 
 very still, and now he could hear the sobbing breath of 
 the horse as it gasped its heart out in the death race. 
 The quick thud of the hoofs came, now sharp on wind- 
 swept rock, now dull on drifted snow, then lost as it 
 plunged through a drift. There was the clank of swing- 
 ing steel, and above and behind it all the marrow- 
 freezing gasps and yelps of the bloody fangs. 
 
 Nearer, nearer, and in a moment they tore past him, 
 a saddled horse, mad terror in every bristling gray hair 
 of him, a score of bounding shadows at his heels. 
 
 " Please God he keep up !" breathed Stepan. Then 
 "God help us, he's down !" a short-cut, curdling 
 scream, a chorus of triumphant yells, then silence, 
 broken by snarlings and snappings, and rendings and 
 tearings, and sudden angry yelps as the starveling crew 
 fell foul of one another in their greed. 
 
 Stepan fell back down the passage and cocked his 
 gun. He rested his spear against the snow wall and 
 loosened the axe in his belt. The house behind him 
 
THE LONG ROAD 213 
 
 was silent. The horse snuffled and shifted on its feet, 
 and Stepan strained his ears into the night. 
 
 They were still busy down there, rending and tearing, 
 but there was more of snarling and yelping. They 
 were not of one mind as to the division of the spoil, he 
 said to himself. God ! If only the gray had kept it 
 up for another mile. It was the sharp turns of the road 
 that had done him. 
 
 Ah ! a snuffling down the pass, the soft pad of feet, 
 a flitting shadow on the snow, and a wolf stood in the 
 entrance of the passage and gazed at him with surprise. 
 Then it bristled and snarled till he saw the long, yellow 
 fangs, then it tossed up its red muzzle and yelped, and 
 in a moment a dozen more were leaping about the 
 opening like grisly nightmares. 
 
 They were very gaunt and thin, he noticed. They 
 licked their red muzzles hopefully as they leaped, and 
 never for a second ceased their yelping and snarl- 
 ing. They were very hungry, and here was more 
 food. They made a rush into the passage and 
 climbed on top of one another in their eagerness to get 
 at it. 
 
 Stepan fired. The distance was too small for the 
 heavy shot to scatter much, but two went down and the 
 rest howled madly and came scrambling on. He put 
 the gun behind him against the door and thrust at them 
 with his spear, at red, snarling mouths, and gnash- 
 ing teeth, and gleaming eyes, and bristling, bloody fronts ; 
 
214 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 and the knife was sharp and strong and bit quick and 
 deep. 
 
 They were very terrifying. The very sound and sight 
 of them was enough to make any man quail, and 
 Stepan's heart was going like a pump. They were like 
 lost fiends out of hell, ravening to tear him to pieces. 
 But all his heaven lay behind him and he did not flinch. 
 
 Half-a-dozen bodies blocked the narrow passage, the 
 others scrambled on top of them and came tumbling 
 over. The gun was suddenly thrust under his left arm 
 from behind. He clinched it to his side and dropped 
 his hand till it found the stock. Then he thrust his 
 spear deep into an oncoming body and loosed it and 
 fired into the crowd behind. They gave back time 
 enough for him to drop the gun and grip the spear again, 
 and then, growing bolder with his success, he drew his 
 axe and hacked madly at every bristling head which 
 showed above the dead barrier. 
 
 A wounded beast at his feet gnashed its evil mouth 
 at him. With one blow he cleft its skull and shouted 
 aloud at the feel of it. The rage of slaughter took hold 
 of him. He no longer knew what fear might feel like, 
 and weakness was not in him. These clean, sharp blows 
 of the axe sent a new hot strength through all his veins. 
 He laughed aloud and shore through snarling muzzles 
 and bloody fronts, and laughed louder still, and still 
 more loudly, as the snow walls became spattered with 
 red, and the trampled floor was all red mud, and every- 
 
THE LONG ROAD 215 
 
 thing was red wherever he looked, and the maimed 
 brutes went off howling dismally, some less a paw, and 
 some less a jaw, and some with gaping holes in their 
 heads, but none whom the axe had bit with any stomach 
 left for fighting. 
 
 Again the gun was thrust under his arm. Katia 
 had picked it from under his feet and come out with it. 
 
 "They are dogs, Katia," he cried, with a wild laugh, 
 "dogs to be whipped. Come on, come on, you curs !" 
 
 But the curs who still had whole skins, because they 
 were the least valiant, or because they had had the fuller 
 meal down below, lay panting outside. This was very 
 different business from pulling down a frightened horse. 
 The smell, indeed, was good ; but, dead, you neither 
 smell nor eat. Maybe there are still some overlooked 
 scraps of horse left down there. And they began to 
 sneak off. Stepan scrambled over the heap in the pas- 
 sage and emptied his gun into the last loping brute 
 before it could get round the corner. 
 
 Then he waved his red axe at the placid moon with a 
 laugh of triumph, and staggered back over the heap into 
 the passage, and went into the house and shut the door. 
 
 He set the gun in a corner and dropped the red axe 
 and spear on the floor, and sat down himself so heavily 
 that the house shook. Little Katenka sat up at the 
 sound and cried out, and little Stepan wailed in com- 
 pany. 
 
 "Be quiet, you two!" said Stepan, angrily. "You 
 
2 i6 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 are as bad as the beasts outside. Be quiet, I tell 
 you!" and he raised his hand as though to strike 
 Katenka, a thing he had never done in his life. 
 
 Katia was very wise. She understood. She hushed 
 little Stepan to her breast, and sat down on the floor 
 by Katenka, and soothed her into silence with the other 
 hand. 
 
 "I have killed wolves this night," maundered Stepan, 
 very loudly. The hot blood was racing in his head yet. 
 He saw things dimly. " I have drunk blood. Wolves ? 
 Dogs ! Curs ! They thought to eat us up as they 
 ate the gray horse. But they met their master. They 
 are dead. I tell you they are dead, Katia. They lie 
 there in heaps. Come and see them. Heaps, and I 
 killed them," and he made as though to get up. 
 
 "I saw you, Stepan. I saw them lie in heaps," 
 said Katia, quietly. 
 
 "They thought to beat me me, Stepan Ivano- 
 vitch Iline. Me Stepan Ivano vitch " Then 
 he rolled over on the floor and slept like a drunken 
 man till the morning. 
 
 And when he woke he was no longer Stepan Ivano- 
 vitch Iline, the slayer of wolves, but the Stepan they 
 knew and loved. But little Katenka looked timidly 
 at him at first, and was still somewhat afraid of him, 
 till he caught her up and kissed her as he was in the 
 habit of doing, and tickled little Stepan till he screamed 
 with delight. 
 
THE LONG ROAD 217 
 
 When he had eaten, he went out and stood for a 
 moment looking at the blood-bespattered passage in 
 the snow, and a brief recollection came over him of 
 his feelings of the previous night. Then he quietly 
 dragged the dead wolves into the open, and shaved 
 down the red sides of the passage on to the floor, so 
 that all was clean and white again. 
 
 He counted his wolves out of curiosity. Many had 
 been tentatively gnawed, but evidently found unpalatable. 
 Then he went down the pass to look at the gray horse. 
 
 Nothing remained of it but its bones and hoofs and 
 hair and the steel of its gear. The very saddle was 
 ragged and worried. The stirrup leathers were chewed 
 to strings. He picked up the remains of the saddle 
 and carried it up to the house. It would come in use- 
 ful for Katia. 
 
 Then he set to work, breaking a way for the horse 
 out of its stable, and led it up, stiff and staggering, from 
 its long confinement, and left it to find its legs. 
 
 And after they had fed, he tied the torn saddle on 
 to the horse, and hung their small bundles from it, and 
 they set off. Little Katenka he carried on his back 
 till they should reach more level ground, for the horse 
 was still somewhat doubtful as to its feet, and Katia 
 carried Baby Stepan in her arms. So with his gun and 
 spear under one arm, and his axe in his belt, and Katenka 
 on his back, Stepan led the horse carefully by the head 
 down the long slope toward Chernsk. 
 
CHAPTER XLVI 
 
 LITTLE Katenka hid her face in her father's neck 
 at sight of the dead wolves, and Katia shivered and 
 thanked God for their own safety as they passed the 
 raw bones of the gray horse. But the snow was hard, 
 and the sun shone brightly, and it was good to breathe 
 the fresh air again even though it was keen as a knife. 
 
 They were weak from want of food, but the strong 
 air braced both them and the horse, and presently 
 they were able to rest the children on it, and to help 
 themselves by laying hold of its gear, and so they came 
 into Chernsk before the lights were out. 
 
 From his knowledge of Danof, Stepan deemed it well 
 to go at once and report himself at police headquarters, 
 and they arrived there escorted by a small crowd of 
 villagers whom their passage had drawn out of the 
 houses. 
 
 "What is this?" said Danof, at sight of them. "You 
 have no right to be here." 
 
 "We could not help ourselves, Excellency." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "We have been snowed up in the hills for twenty- 
 eight days," and the bystanders buzzed with surprise. 
 
 "Twenty-eight days ! And your permit says ten " 
 218 
 
THE LONG ROAD 219 
 
 The letter of the law and a narrow mind are 
 capable of infinite mischief and rarely fail to accom- 
 plish it. 
 
 " There are powers stronger even than his Excel- 
 lency's, Excellency " began Stepan. 
 
 "We do not admit it," said Danof, sourly. 
 
 "But we were snowed up and could not move." 
 
 " You had no right to allow yourself to be snowed up, 
 and you should have moved." 
 
 "Last night," said Stepan, by way of diversion, "we 
 were attacked by wolves. I killed sixteen of them. 
 They are up there by our house." 
 
 "Da!" said a bystander. "Sixteen wolves! That 
 is eighty roubles," for at that time they were paid 
 five roubles for every wolf's head. 
 
 "Well, you cannot stop here," said Danof. "You 
 must move on." 
 
 Stepan looked at him in amazement. 
 
 "To-night, Excellency?" 
 
 "At once. You have been here ten days already, 
 and your papers say you must not stop more than ten 
 days in any one place on any condition whatever." 
 
 "But I have moved on since I was here last, Excel- 
 lency." 
 
 "If you stop to-night, you will have stopped here 
 eleven days. Is it not so?" 
 
 "Not eleven days together, Excellency." 
 
 "Eleven days is eleven days." 
 
220 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 "With respect, Excellency, none other has so inter- 
 preted the order." 
 
 "I have nothing to do with the others. If they like 
 to put their heads in the noose, it is nothing to me. 
 You must move on." 
 
 "My wife and the children I will leave at the inn, 
 then. We have all been starving up there." 
 
 "We go with you, Stepan," said Katia, valiantly, 
 but she looked very frail and white in the lamplight, and 
 very weary with her long tramp, after the wasting of 
 those twenty-eight days under the snow. 
 
 He was about to argue the matter with her and 
 insist upon her stopping, when matters took another 
 turn. 
 
 "That is Ivan Tsilka's saddle you have on your 
 horse," said the old Cossack sergeant who had been 
 looking at it carefully. "Ivan Tsilka of Drem. I 
 know it by the mountings." 
 
 "How came you by that?" asked Captain Danof, 
 scenting possible crime. 
 
 Stepan explained how he came by it. 
 
 "We must look into the matter," said Danof. "I 
 must keep you here till we have done so." 
 
 "As you please, Excellency. It is all just as I have 
 told you." 
 
 Then it suddenly struck his Excellency that if he 
 kept him there he would himself be infringing Paschkin's 
 ordinances, which was a serious thing to do, and the 
 
THE LONG ROAD 221 
 
 thought of that set him scowling and inwardly cursing 
 the cause of his annoyance. 
 
 However, after much thinking, he got over the diffi- 
 culty by sending Stepan to be locked up in the next 
 village, five miles away, and Katia determinedly went 
 with him. Danof, however, permitted him, since there 
 was no injunction against it, to arrange with one of 
 the villagers to convey them there in his sledge. And 
 another one got them some food while the sledge was 
 getting ready, and refused the payment Stepan would 
 have made him; and with this man he arranged for 
 the care of his surviving horse, and also for the re- 
 covery of the house on wheels as soon as the snow 
 permitted, in case he should not himself be able to 
 attend to it. 
 
 And though he slept that night under bolt and bar, 
 he slept in more content than for many a long night 
 before it. For Katia and the children were safely 
 lodged in a house close by and had plenty of money 
 to pay their way; and as for himself, he had eaten 
 enough almost to make up for past deficiencies, and his 
 mind was at ease since he had done no wrong. 
 
 His jailer, for a consideration, permitted him to see 
 Katia and the children each day, and allowed them to 
 bring him food ; and the quiet, restful time did them all 
 good. 
 
 At the end of ten days, however, Danof, careful soul 
 and literal interpreter of ordinances, sent a couple of 
 
222 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 Cossacks to remove him to another village, and Katia 
 and the children went with him. And again, when 
 those ten days were up, he was removed in the same 
 way to still a third place of detention. Such was the 
 fear and the power of Paschkin throughout Siberia. 
 
 But at the end of thirty days Danof sent orders to 
 release him, having received instructions to that effect 
 from Tatukof, and having found nothing against him 
 in respect of Ivan Tsilka of Drem, who was alive and 
 well, though minus a gray horse. He also sent a 
 formal reminder that, since he had been ten days in 
 prison in that village, it was time he moved on at once, 
 which injunction Stepan obeyed with cheerful alacrity. 
 
 They had money to live on and to spare. Spring 
 was but a few weeks ahead, then they would set the 
 house on its wheels again and once more enjoy the 
 good times on the road. And when the next winter 
 came, Stepan had made up his mind that Katia and the 
 children should take no such risks again, but should 
 stop in some town where he could visit them from 
 time to time, and his mind would be at ease on their 
 account. 
 
 Katia had brought him word that the decent men of 
 Chernsk had succeeded in bringing the caravan into 
 the town and were holding it there for him, and he 
 set off at once to take possession. 
 
CHAPTER XL VII 
 
 BUT the hard times in the snow, and her anxiety on 
 Stepan's account, had told heavily on Katia herself, 
 and the very day they reached Chernsk she fell sick, 
 and before night was in a high fever. The sickness 
 had been working in her for many days, but her valiant 
 heart had kept down all outward appearance of it, and 
 now she had to pay. When at last she did break down, 
 the collapse was complete and terrifying. 
 
 It was when they were driving in a hired telega to 
 Chernsk, and were within sight of the town, that she 
 gripped Stepan's arm with a suddenness that startled 
 him nearly off his seat on the side of the bumping 
 wagon. 
 
 " The wolves ! " she said in a hoarse whisper. " Don't 
 you hear them, Stepan? They are coming. Yes, 
 they are coming, Stepan. They will catch us, and 
 tear us as they did the gray horse." 
 
 He looked down at her in amazement, and saw the 
 white cheeks burning and the blue eyes blazing. 
 
 "There are no wolves, dushenka," he said soothingly 
 but in great fear of heart, for he had never seen her 
 this way before. 
 
 "I hear them. They are coming. They will catch 
 223 
 
224 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 us, Stepan," and she sank back on to the bundles in 
 the bottom of the telega, and threw an arm round 
 Katenka, who began to cry with fear, and clasped 
 little Stepan tight to her breast. 
 
 "If they come, I will kill them as I did before," he 
 said, by way of humouring her, and drove on the 
 faster. 
 
 She would lie still for a minute, and then start up 
 with terrified eyes and wild fear in her face, crying: 
 "Faster, Stepan! Faster! They are coming! They 
 are coming!" till little Katenka shrieked with terror, 
 and the tiny Stepan, sharing the general discomfort, 
 added his tiny pipe. And Stepan, with a greater fear 
 at his heart than the wolves had ever roused there, 
 flogged the straining horse to still greater speed, for 
 this was beyond his understanding, and all he knew 
 was that he must get help. 
 
 So they rattled through the long street of Chernsk, 
 and the townspeople all turned out to wonder at 
 them. 
 
 He drove to the inn, and carried Katia and little 
 Stepan inside, leaving little Katenka wailing in the 
 telega. 
 
 "She is ill," he said hurriedly to the woman of the 
 inn. "Send for a doctor while I get her to bed." 
 
 And the doctor, when he came and examined her, 
 shook his head gravely, and said : - 
 
 "She has the fever and she has had it many days. 
 
THE LONG ROAD 225 
 
 Why has she not been nursed ? " and he looked sombrely 
 at Stepan. 
 
 "I am only released from prison to-day," said Stepan, 
 "and I knew nothing of it." 
 
 " Ah !" said the doctor, who knew his story. "Well, 
 I will do what I can, but unless you watch her night 
 and day, you will lose her." 
 
 "Lose her! Lose her! Oh, my God!" began 
 Stepan, at so dire a prospect. 
 
 Then the woman of the inn came in to tell him he 
 was wanted outside. And outside was a stolid Cos- 
 sack, with a message from the chief that he could not 
 be allowed to stop in the town that night and must 
 move on at once. 
 
 "See, Iline!" said Danof, when Stepan had panted 
 out his story, in words that tumbled hotly over one an- 
 other, and with eyes that swam blindly at thought of 
 Katia's extremity. " It was not I indorsed your papers, 
 but on me rests the responsibility if I depart from the 
 instructions. You must go." 
 
 "I have been away thirty days," panted Stepan, 
 grasping wildly at any chance. 
 
 "You have stopped here ten days already. Your 
 papers do not permit you to stay longer than ten days 
 in any one place upon any conditions whatever. It is 
 no use talking. You must go." 
 
 "Before God, Excellency "began Stepan, feeling 
 somewhat as he did when he chopped at the wolves. 
 Q 
 
226 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 But Danof waved him down peremptorily and closed 
 the interview. He was not by nature an exceptionally 
 cruel man ; arbitrary and hard, indeed, and bound to 
 the final letter of the law, but he was getting tired of 
 the trouble this man caused him. And when it came 
 to a question of possible ill results to himself or to 
 another, the matter needed no consideration. 
 
 "If you are not out of Chernsk inside an hour, you 
 will leave under escort for Irkutsk," said Danof, angrily. 
 
 And Stepan smote down both him and Paschkin 
 with the blow of an imaginary axe, and turned and 
 left the room. 
 
 Within the hour he had made such arrangements for 
 Katia's welfare as were possible at alien hands; had 
 seen the doctor and bitterly explained the matter to 
 him, and enlisted his sympathy and best care; had 
 settled up his affairs with the townsfolk; had bought 
 another horse ; and was bumping slowly over the thin 
 snow to a village ten miles away. There even Pasch- 
 kin could not hinder his staying for ten days, and there 
 he could get news of Katia each day in one way or 
 another. 
 
 He took the children with him. Fortunately, Katia, 
 feeling her own strength on the wane, had weaned little 
 Stepan and he felt the separation least of all. Katenka 
 sobbed ceaselessly for her mother ; and her father, with 
 his own heart rent and broken, comforted her as best 
 he could and with infinite tenderness. 
 
CHAPTER XL VIII 
 
 Now indeed the decree of Paschkin bit deep, and 
 the venom of it might well have poisoned the soul of a 
 better man. But it struck too deep for curses. Words 
 were futile and cursing was waste of breath. 
 
 He could think only of Katia tossing on her bed 
 among strangers, chased for ever by the howling pack, 
 and calling ceaselessly for his help, as he had heard 
 her when he went in to kiss her forehead and she in- 
 stantly lay still. Ah, God! Would they watch her 
 and tend her as he would have done? Could they 
 soothe her with gentle words as he would have done? 
 Could they No ! They could do nothing, and Katia 
 would die. And his heart curdled within him at the 
 prospect. 
 
 Before it was light he left Katenka and the little 
 Stepan in charge of a woman of the village, and took 
 one of his horses, and rode back to Chernsk. 
 
 He found Katia still fleeing before the wolves, and 
 she clung to him desperately. She did not seem to 
 know him, but in some mysterious way his voice 
 soothed her. 
 
 The doctor, when he came in, assured him that she 
 
 had lacked nothing. But he did not look hopeful. Her 
 
 227 
 
228 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 strength had been sapped. The fever was raging high. 
 He knew that before long it would wear her out, that 
 the fires would die for want of fuel, and nothing but 
 ashes would be left. 
 
 It was midday before Captain Danof heard that he 
 was there. 
 
 Then he sent for him, but the interview was a short 
 one. 
 
 "Iline, I cannot permit it," began Danof. 
 
 Stepan said nothing, but there was that look out of 
 his eyes which sent a chill down Danof 's back, as though 
 the finger of Death had touched him, and the remem- 
 brance of it remained with him. 
 
 He saw Stepan 's eyes, and that dreadful thing that 
 lay behind them on the blank wall long after Stepan 
 himself had turned and gone without speaking a word. 
 He saw them on the stark blackness of the night when 
 he lay in bed. And the recollection of where and 
 when he had once before seen eyes like them came 
 back to him and made him thoughtful. 
 
 The stockaded yard of a prison ; a man undergoing 
 the knout, the flesh of his back hanging in strips ; that 
 same dreadful look in his eyes; the man cast off and 
 sunk in a heap, a raw, ragged remnant of humanity; 
 the Governor passing it unmoved with his young aide, 
 Danof; the sudden, horrible uncoiling of the ragged 
 heap ; the leap at the Governor's throat ; the wild beast 
 rending and tearing ; the hacking of it off with swords, 
 
THE LONG ROAD 229 
 
 but not until its dreadful work was done, and the 
 Governor would knout no more men to ribbons. 
 
 And the same dreadful thing that looked out of those 
 eyes in that stockaded yard had looked out of Stepan 
 Iline's eyes at him that day. 
 
 Captain Danof cursed Stepan Iline and he cursed 
 Paschkin. He was still cursing promiscuously, and 
 still undecided what to do in the matter, when he fell 
 asleep. His ideas tended vaguely toward guns and 
 special instructions to his Cossack guard. 
 
 Each time he woke those eyes glared at him out of 
 the darkness. Perhaps, after all, it might be better 
 to waive a point in the matter. It was terribly hard 
 on the man, there was no doubt about that. Paschkin 
 was undoubtedly possessed of the Devil, as all men said. 
 If the effects of his abuses fell only on himself, well and 
 good. But well, he would see in the morning. And 
 he tried hard to shut out those eyes and all that lay 
 behind them, but could not, no matter how tightly he 
 closed his own. 
 
 It was no platoon of Cossacks with instructions to 
 shoot him down, however, which met Stepan outside 
 the town, as he came galloping through the mist- 
 wreaths in the early morning, but only the old sergeant, 
 alone and unarmed, while Stepan presented a wild 
 enough figure on his rough barebacked horse. He had 
 his long gun at his back, his axe in his belt, his home- 
 made spear in his hand, and if looks went for any- 
 thing he was quite prepared to use them. 
 
2 3 o THE LONG ROAD 
 
 He came anticipating resistance. His face was lean 
 and hungry, his eyes burnt in their hollows, his hairs 
 bristled wildly. He looked more beast of prey than 
 man. The old sergeant thought he looked like a bow 
 bent to its fullest just before the arrow leaves the 
 string. 
 
 The sergeant threw up his hand and stopped him. 
 Stepan jerked round his gun and prepared for combat. 
 
 " Don't shoot me, Stepan Ivanovitch," said the 
 sergeant, quietly. "I have come to speak, not to fight 
 with you," and Stepan, seeing that he had no weapon, 
 lowered his own. "And I come on my own account, 
 not from the chief." 
 
 " Speak quickly, then. My wife waits." 
 
 "It was to warn you I came. You risk everything 
 by coming thus. You must know that the chief has no 
 choice in the matter. What can be done for your wife 
 is being done. You can do no more " 
 
 "And you if your wife lay there, what would 
 you do?" jerked Stepan, with sparks in his smoul- 
 dering eyes. 
 
 "I? Before God, I would do as you are doing, 
 Stepan Ivanovitch. All the same, it is not wisdom." 
 
 "With my own hands, up there in the hills, I slew 
 sixteen wolves," said Stepan, not vauntingly, but as an 
 argument of weight. "If needs be, I will slay sixteen 
 men if they stand between me and my wife. Carry 
 that word to the chief. Now I go," and he kicked his 
 
THE LONG ROAD 231 
 
 heels into the shaggy sides of his horse and galloped 
 away through the mist. 
 
 His eyes shot wary glances all round as he came into 
 the town. But they fell on nothing suspicious, and he 
 went straight to the inn. 
 
 He was stepping down the passage as quietly as his 
 armament would permit, when the door of his wife's 
 room opened and the doctor came out. He started at 
 the bristling aspect of the man, then quietly beckoned 
 him in, and they stood by the bed on which Katia lay 
 at rest. 
 
 "She died at the dawn," said the doctor. "I was 
 with her all night. She has wanted for nothing, but 
 it was too late." 
 
 Iline spoke no word, but gazed like a ravenous beast 
 on the sweet, dead face. Then, before the doctor saw 
 what he was at, he stooped and gathered her up, blank- 
 ets and all, and bore her from the room. He scram- 
 bled on to his horse somehow, dug his heels into its 
 sides, and galloped off the way he had come, with that 
 which had been his life clasped tightly in front of him. 
 
 The old sergeant saw him coming and understood. 
 He gravely saluted the burden Iline bore, the visible 
 burden, and perhaps the invisible, and stood and 
 looked after him till he disappeared in the mist. 
 
 Then he shook his head and said, "Paschkin is the 
 Devil," and as he went into the town, he said, "If 
 Iline and Paschkin ever meet " and then he nodded 
 
2 3 2 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 his head, and then he shook it, and possibly he thought 
 what he would have done himself under such circum- 
 stances. For a man may be a sergeant of Cossacks 
 and yet retain the feelings of a man, though it is some- 
 what unusual, I grant you. 
 
CHAPTER XLIX 
 
 STEFAN buried Katia in a lonely place among the 
 hills; where, none but he knew. 
 
 Then he went quietly back to the village where he 
 had left the children, busied himself getting the house 
 on to its wheels again, and two days later set out 
 gloomily for the south. 
 
 But how different now the travelling for him at 
 all events ! For his heart and the best of his life were 
 in that lonely grave among the hills by Chernsk. He 
 went because he had to go, to keep moving on. Pasch- 
 kin had said it. Paschkin ah yes ! Paschkin ! 
 And whenever he thought of Paschkin, his face grew 
 hard and grim, and his eyes smouldered like the ashes 
 of a fire that only needed fuel to make it blaze. 
 
 The bells the deep-toned crimson in the middle 
 and the silvery chimers at the sides sang as merrily 
 as ever; but the music had gone out of his life with 
 Katia, and that in him which had responded to their 
 singing lay under the piled stones on the hillside by 
 Chernsk. But for the children and their delight in 
 them, he would have put the bells away and gone in 
 silence, as his sore heart did. 
 
 The snow still covered the hills and lay in patches 
 233 
 
2 3 | THE LONG ROAD 
 
 here and there, in exposed places, even by the road- 
 side. The roads were full of mud, and he sat on the 
 seat where Katia used to sit, and little Katenka sat 
 beside him, chattering all the time like a merry magpie, 
 full of life and the spring, and calling the little father's 
 attention to this thing and that, as her sharp eyes sought 
 and found their intimate concerns even in muddy roads 
 and snow-streaked hillsides. And Baby Stepan swung 
 safely in a great pocket in the doorway between them, 
 and clapped his hands and gurgled at Katenka and the 
 horses and the bells, and at things about him that were 
 hidden from all but himself. These two found the 
 world still bright, and they lacked nothing, in material 
 matters at all events. 
 
 But at times little Katenka would wring her father's 
 heart, and scrape his raw wounds, with her innocent 
 questionings. 
 
 "Will the little mother come back to us to-day, 
 little father?" she would ask. 
 
 "Not to-day, little Katenka," he would answer 
 gloomily, with a twisting mouth. 
 
 "Why then? I want her. Where has she gone?" 
 
 "She has gone on in front, little Katenka." 
 
 "She never did that before, little father. Why has 
 she gone on in front now?" 
 
 "She had to go, dushenka. She could not help 
 it." 
 
 "Was it the evil Paschkin made her go, little father?" 
 
THE LONG ROAD 235 
 
 for to Katenka Paschkin represented all power and 
 all evil. 
 
 "Yes, it was Paschkin made her go," he would say 
 through his set teeth, and then the smouldering fire 
 in his heart would spurt into a blaze. 
 
 "He is a bad, bad man, is Paschkin," said little 
 Katenka. "Why don't you kill him, little father, as 
 you killed the wolves up there in the snow?" 
 
 "Ah!" and little Katenka heard his teeth gritting 
 inside, and for a moment his face was as it had been 
 when he came in from killing wolves and spoke 
 roughly to her. But he had never spoken to her so 
 except that one time, and she was not frightened of 
 him now. 
 
 And more than once she asked: "The little mother 
 has got a long, long way in front of us. Shall we catch 
 her to-day, little father? Shall we catch her to-day?" 
 
 "Not to-day, little Katenka." 
 
 "She has gone fast, fast. But we shall come up 
 with her sometime, little father?" 
 
 "Please God, little Katenka!" and the child lived 
 in hope. 
 
 He remembered long afterward how Katenka found 
 her first spring flowers. 
 
 They were jogging along through the white spring 
 sunshine, and Katenka was prattling away as usual, 
 when suddenly she jumped to her feet and began 
 dancing excitedly. 
 
236 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 "Stop, little father, stop!" she cried, and he drew 
 rein on the instant. 
 
 "Lift me down, little father, lift me down ! I must 
 get them. Oh, the darlings! I must get them !" 
 
 "What is it then, dushenka?" he asked, as he swung 
 her down. 
 
 "There!" she cried breathlessly, and sped away 
 back, and up toward a swath of snow, and fell on her 
 knees beside it, kissing in wild delight a patch of little 
 blue flowers which her sharp eyes had spied against 
 their background of the snow. 
 
 "Oh, the darlings!" and the rosy face was buried 
 among them again. "They are like the little mother's 
 eyes, little father," and truly they were a wonderful 
 and beautiful deep blue, "she has passed this way, 
 and she told them to look for us. And, oh, if we had 
 missed them ! But they laughed up at me, and I saw 
 them, and they made me think of the little mother. 
 Oh, if we had passed, what would she have said? 
 She would have said, ' Did you see my blue-eyed flow- 
 ers?' And if we had said 'No,' she would have been 
 sad." 
 
 So they gathered the blue-eyed flowers, and little 
 Katenka talked of them all that day, and went to sleep 
 that night with them clasped so tightly in her hand that 
 all the life that was left in them was gone long before 
 the morning. But, because she had been thinking and 
 talking so much of her mother all through the day, she 
 
THE LONG ROAD 237 
 
 dreamed of her all night. And when she had cried 
 over her flowers in the morning, she told her father 
 very minutely and circumstantially all that had passed 
 between them. And that day they found quantities 
 of blue flowers and she was happy again. 
 
 Each day after that brought them more and more 
 beautiful unfoldings of the spring, and little Katenka 
 was busy from morning till night, flitting to and fro 
 among them with shrieks of delight, and never so 
 happy as when her arms were filled to overflowing. 
 
 And yet at times the child grew sober and thought- 
 ful in the lack of that which had been and was not, 
 for nothing can quite fill the place of a mother's care 
 and love. 
 
 Her father was gentleness itself and did his best, but 
 there was a something of softness and tenderness gone 
 out of her life, and just now and again she missed it, 
 and grew sober over it. 
 
 In the little intricacies of their toilets he had at first 
 blundered sorely. But Katenka greeted all his short- 
 comings with such peals of merry laughter, and en- 
 joyed herself so amazingly in setting him right, and 
 showing him how to do things properly, that he proved 
 himself but a dull scholar, and prolonged his appren- 
 ticeship on purpose to keep his teacher entertained. 
 But with it all he took good care that in nothing should 
 they go awanting in nothing save that one thing of 
 which Paschkin had robbed them all. 
 
2 3 3 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 Of an evening, by the fire, when they had fed, and 
 Baby Stepan had, between them, been undressed and 
 washed and got off to sleep, she would climb up into 
 her father's arms, where he sat seeing things in the 
 dancing flames, and seek his caresses. They were 
 soft and tender always, and full of a gentle pity which 
 was beyond her understanding ; but they lacked some- 
 thing of the gladness she vaguely remembered and as 
 vaguely missed. 
 
 And inside the house, in the loneliness of the night, 
 she would creep across to him and nestle into his arms, 
 and he would kiss her softly and sadly. For, dear as 
 she was to him, she could not at all fill the place of 
 the little mother who was gone, nor could he quite to 
 her. 
 
CHAPTER L 
 
 THE early days of their travelling brought a new in- 
 mate to the house on wheels, a little comrade in 
 whom Katenka rejoiced exceedingly, and Baby Stepan 
 also, but in lesser degree in accord with his under- 
 standing. 
 
 Iline was striding along by his horses up a steep hill- 
 road, with his head down in gloomy thought. Katenka 
 was flitting about the hillside after flowers, chattering 
 away to them and to herself as usual. Baby Stepan 
 swung in his pocket in the doorway and clapped his 
 hands at all and everything. 
 
 Suddenly, a shriek from Katenka, arrested in her 
 flight from one side of the road to the other: "Oh^ 
 stop, little father, stop ! See the dear little white 
 brother of the woods 1" 
 
 And Stepan stopped his horses just as they were 
 about to walk over a very small white owl, which sat 
 in the middle of the road looking solemnly at the 
 approaching team, but making no effort to escape. 
 
 It was bruised and dusty and dazed. What family 
 catastrophe had befallen it they could not tell, but it 
 was evidently unhappy, and quite unable to take proper 
 care of itself. 
 
 239 
 
240 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 "Is it alive, little father? Is it alive?" cried the 
 breathless Katenka, as he picked the soft white bundle 
 up. " Yes, it is alive, for it moved its eyes. Oh, what 
 great big eyes the little brother has!" 
 
 "It is hurt, I think, little Katenka, and if you had 
 not seen it, we should have walked right over it." 
 
 "Oh, the poor little brother! Shall we keep it till 
 it is well, little father? I am sure it cannot take care 
 of itself. Shall we keep it, little father?" 
 
 "Yes, we will keep it, little Katenka. We will 
 keep it till it can fly again, and then it shall fly away." 
 
 "Put me up on the seat, little father, and give the 
 little brother to me, and I will nurse it," and all that 
 day she sat nursing the little brother and crooning 
 softly to it to soothe its fears. And when it bit her 
 finger once it was only a very small bite, and she only 
 laughed merrily and cried down to her father, "Little 
 father, the little white brother has bitten my finger and 
 I think he must be hungry." 
 
 So her father gave her a piece of raw meat, and bade 
 her tear it in small pieces and feed the little brother 
 with it. And she had many questions to ask as to 
 why he liked his meat raw, and if he would not like it 
 better cooked if he once tried it; and while she chat- 
 tered, the little brother proved that raw meat was quite 
 to his taste, and, whatever his injuries, he had not 
 lost his appetite. 
 
 He showed no disposition to go away. Such appre- 
 
THE LONG ROAD 241 
 
 elation and attention, such a supply of delicious food 
 without any necessity of seeking it, such comfortable 
 lodgings, and such pleasant companionship did not 
 fall to the lot of little owls every day in the week, and 
 this one showed the wisdom of his kind by accepting 
 the position with philosophic content. 
 
 So preternaturally wise did he look at all times, indeed, 
 that little Katenka's merry laugh pealed out whenever 
 she looked at him, and even Stepan's grave face re- 
 laxed, now and again, when he caught the great solemn 
 eyes of the little brother turned upon him as if he 
 knew all his thoughts and could read him through and 
 through. 
 
 Katenka would sit by the hour on the front seat, 
 nursing the new little comrade and pointing out to 
 him all the odd things which caught her eye as they 
 jogged along. And if the little white brother said 
 nothing, he was at all events an excellent listener and 
 seemed to ponder it all very thoughtfully. 
 
 At night he perched on a cross beam in a corner near 
 the ikon, and when the country folk climbed up to peep 
 inside, and their eyes wandered from the holy images 
 to the solemn little white bundle alongside, they stared 
 hard, and then dropped back, saying: "Da! but you 
 have some strange things up there, Stepan Ivanovitch. 
 One would almost think that little white owl was alive." 
 
 When he quite got over the effects of his accident, he 
 took an occasional flight abroad, and the first time he 
 
242 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 went Katenka thought he had gone for good and was 
 sorely troubled. 
 
 They had made their camp and lighted their fire. 
 The black pot was boiling, and Katenka was mother- 
 ing Baby Stepan as he sprawled on his back and kicked 
 and squealed, when suddenly the little white brother, 
 who had been sitting in a bunch blinking at the flames, 
 flapped his wings and sailed silently off into the forest. 
 
 "Little father! Little father!" shrieked Katenka 
 in dismay, "the little brother is gone. He has flown 
 away above the trees. Oh, little father, whatever shall 
 we do ?" and she wept passionately at the little brother's 
 desertion. 
 
 Her father comforted her as well as he could. 
 
 "You would not keep the little brother against his 
 will, little Katenka," he said gently. 
 
 "No, no, but I loved him, little father, and he loved 
 me, and I wanted him. Oh, why should he go away ? " 
 
 "Perhaps he has gone to seek his own brothers and 
 sisters, little Katenka. Perhaps he heard them calling 
 in the woods." 
 
 "I loved him more than them all," sobbed Katenka, 
 and refused to be comforted. 
 
 But when in the night she lay awake with her grief, 
 feeling the house empty for lack of the little white 
 brother, of a sudden she heard a flutter at the door, 
 then a well-known scrabble of little claws, and the little 
 brother was climbing up to his usual perch. 
 
THE LONG ROAD 243 
 
 She jumped up with a shout of joy that woke Baby 
 Stepan. 
 
 " Little father, little father!" she cried to the sombre 
 man sitting by the dying fire below, "the little white 
 brother has come home again. He is here on his 
 perch above my head." 
 
 "I am glad, little Katenka," said her father, and little 
 Katenka hardly slept at all that night for joy of the 
 little brother's return. 
 
 After that he often took a flight in the twilight, but 
 he always came back, and Katenka had no longer any 
 fear of his going for good. 
 
 Baby Stepan was too young to feel what he had lost. 
 So long as his little round stomach was kept just prop- 
 erly filled, and he could sleep when he wanted, and 
 wake to the tinkling of the bells and the jogging brown 
 backs of the horses and the shining of the sun and 
 Katenka's caresses, he was quite happy. 
 
 But for the gloomy-faced man who sat of a night 
 looking into the ashes the ashes of the wood fire 
 and the ashes of his life when the children were 
 safely abed, there was little happiness left. He was 
 grateful for the children, and much but not all 
 of his thought was for them. But they were not 
 Katia. 
 
 When he was tramping along by the horses' heads 
 up the long mountain slopes, among the greening firs 
 and pines and evergreens, he would catch himself 
 
244 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 turning at times to the open doorway, half expectant 
 of the dear face there. And then he would turn with a 
 sigh and plod hopelessly on. And at such times little 
 Katenka's merry chatter and Baby Stepan's babble- 
 ments gave him no pleasure, but were like the turning 
 of the knife in his wound. 
 
 And the rest of his thought when he sat gazing into 
 the ashes Paschkin always Paschkin. And when 
 his thoughts ran on Paschkin, they were deep thoughts 
 and dark. 
 
 He met Peter Krop among the Altais, and the two 
 men sat long that night over the ashes and spoke little. 
 For Peter Krop had gone through the deep waters in 
 his time and he knew the inadequacy of words. 
 
 It was when they were separating, each to go his 
 own way again, that he said meaningly to Stepan: 
 " Remember, Stepan Ivanovitch, that the children are 
 left to you. And children are a gift from God." 
 
 "I have not forgotten it, Peter Petrovitch," said 
 Stepan, and went on his way. 
 
CHAPTER LI 
 
 WITHOUT doubt the children were Stepan's salvation 
 at this time. For the time being they stood between 
 him and much. And perhaps he dimly recognised 
 the fact and repaid them as he could. 
 
 Their childish ailments he combated as they oc- 
 curred, with the willing advice and assistance of other 
 children's mothers along the way. Their tiny ward- 
 robes he replenished in the same manner. If they had 
 lost one mother, they had found a hundred foster- 
 mothers, who were always on the lookout for their 
 passing, and ran out to greet them as soon as the bells 
 rang out in the distance and the house on wheels hove 
 in sight. 
 
 So far Stepan had had no serious difficulties in con- 
 nection with them. Life flowed along quietly and 
 placidly, and the yawning gaps and fissures below were 
 unseen. Many a good-looking girl in the villages he 
 visited would have jumped at the chance of sharing 
 his house and his fortunes, Paschkin and all, but 
 Stepan never gave them a thought. His heart was with 
 Katia in the hills beyond Chernsk. 
 
 That spring and summer would have been to him 
 as great a joy as the last if only she had been there. 
 
 245 
 
246 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 But without her it was all as nothing. It was living, 
 but it was not life. 
 
 He did not so express himself even to himself. But 
 he felt it, which was very much more, and felt it the 
 deeper, perhaps, because his thoughts were dumb, and 
 his heart was very sore and desolate. 
 
 He looked forward to the winter with doubt and fore- 
 boding. How carry the children with him through 
 the snows ? And yet, how leave them behind ? To take 
 them would be a great risk. To leave them would 
 be a great anxiety. He would be fearing ill to them 
 every moment they were away, no matter how careful 
 the hands in which he left them. He pondered it to 
 and fro as he tramped, and was still undecided in his 
 mind, when, as autumn drew on, a great longing took 
 him to visit Katia again, up there among the hills by 
 Chernsk. 
 
 The steppe was carpeted with the dull gold of the 
 dried-up flowers till they struck the edge of the swamp, 
 which ran from the foothills nearly as far as Chernsk 
 itself. He would not go near the town, but kept along 
 by the hills; and busy little Katenka, who had been 
 mourning the loss of her flowers, woke to joy again, 
 and flitted along the edge of the dark water like a hum- 
 ming-bird, and ran back and forth with her loads all 
 day long, till the house on wheels became a travelling 
 garden once more. 
 
 They were still working round the low-lying bottoms, 
 
THE LONG ROAD 247 
 
 with the bright green islands and the flaming patches 
 of colour that charmed Katenka's soul, when the 
 heavy autumn rains came on, and scored the hillsides 
 with deep channels, and made the rough roads im- 
 passable, and set the dark waters of the swamp churn- 
 ing and boiling. And there they had to wait till the 
 flood-gates above should be closed and the skies should 
 brighten again. 
 
 It was here one night, while the rain was still beating 
 viciously on the roof and pouring in monotonous little 
 cascades from the eaves, that little Katenka suddenly 
 lost all her brightness and the joy of life, and lay heavy- 
 eyed and flushed and listless, and the little white 
 brother from his perch looked down on her with 
 solemn wonder. 
 
 Stepan treated her as he had done under the advice 
 of the many foster-mothers for apparently similar ail- 
 ments, and hoped the morning would find her better. 
 
 But in the middle of the night she startled him from 
 a half sleep with a strange, gasping croak, the like of 
 which he had never heard before, and it seemed to him 
 that she was choking. 
 
 As fast as his slow materials and shaking hands would 
 let him, he lit the lamp and found the child sitting up, 
 with pale lips and starting eyes, clawing for breath 
 with spasmodic clutchings of the pitiful little hands. 
 
 He took her up in his arms, with an instinct of pro- 
 tection from the evil he could not comprehend. The 
 
248 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 little body straightened now and again with a violent 
 jerk and that dreadful croak, which smote his heart like 
 a hammer each time it came ; yet, frightsome as it was, 
 each time it was longer of coming he feared lest it 
 should not come again. 
 
 He tried to get water down her throat, but she beat it 
 blindly out of his hands. The dreadful appeal of the 
 straining blue eyes unnerved him. He would have 
 cut off his right hand to give her breath, but this that 
 had got hold of her was beyond him, and he could do 
 nothing but stand and watch the unequal fight as it 
 dragged slowly to its end. 
 
 He clenched his useless hands till the nails ran into 
 the palms. He ground his teeth in agony. His lips re- 
 tracted, his face crumpled up. He held his breath and 
 his tortured heart in suspense, while each hard round 
 was fought out, and only breathed again when the 
 little sufferer had a moment's respite. The horses 
 outside, under their soaked canvas shelters, stamped 
 uneasily as though aware of the Presence. The rain 
 beat heavily on the roof and poured from the eaves 
 in a monotonous babble of melancholy little voices. 
 Baby Stepan woke up and joined his lusty little pipe 
 to the unaccustomed noise, and the little white brother 
 looked solemnly down upon it all from his corner by 
 the holy images. 
 
 How long that grim struggle against overpowering 
 odds lasted, Stepan did not know. Each slow moment 
 
THE LONG ROAD 249 
 
 was a long-drawn agony to him,- for life and death were 
 in each one. 
 
 But suddenly the rain, which had never ceased for a 
 moment for three days, beat a last wild tattoo on the 
 roof, and there fell a great silence. Little Stepan rolled 
 over and went to sleep. The horses stopped their 
 restless tramplings as though surprised at the sudden 
 quiet, and stood listening, and the little white owl 
 swelled himself to double his usual size and gazed at 
 his little sister with wide, unwinking eyes. 
 
 Little Katenka croaked no more, but lay white and 
 spent. And Stepan, falling on his knees, felt the little 
 cheek cold and damp. He kissed her and spoke to her, 
 but she lay quite still. With the great fear at his heart, 
 he clasped her hands in his. They were very cold. 
 He bent his forehead to her lips. But no breath 
 came. 
 
 Then with a broken sigh he lay down on his face on 
 the floor and stretched himself in his agony, for he 
 and little Stepan and the little white brother were alone. 
 
 It was a silent and grim-faced man who carried 
 burdens up into the hills next day. He was heavily 
 weighted, but the heaviest part of his load was not that 
 which showed most; not the spade which was slung 
 at his back, nor the jumping child in its pocket above 
 it, nor the axe in his belt, nor the quiet little figure 
 rolled in a blanket which he held tight to his sick heart 
 for the last time. 
 
250 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 He climbed gloomily in and out of the new water- 
 courses, and pushed steadily on over the soft ground 
 and the hard, and troubled about neither. He 
 was taking Katenka to her mother, he and little 
 Stepan. 
 
 He buried her there by the side of Katia, and buried 
 her deep, and piled great stones above her to keep off 
 the wolves, while little Stepan gurgled cheerfully on a 
 heap of newly-turned earth hard by. 
 
 Then he knelt and prayed strange prayers by the 
 two piles of stones, and then he picked up little 
 Stepan, and gave him food to comfort his insatiable 
 little stomach, and then he went back the way he had 
 come. 
 
 The loss of Katenka decided him to leave little Ste- 
 pan in safer keeping than his own for the winter. He 
 thought over all the women in the villages through which 
 he was in the habit of travelling, and finally settled on 
 one, Elizabeth Volskai'a, who lived in Zarm. He knew 
 her to be a kind-hearted, motherly soul, and he re- 
 membered that she had not long since lost a child of 
 her own, and he thought she would be good to the 
 motherless one for sake of the one she had lost. 
 
 He journeyed straight to that village, made arrange- 
 ments with her, and his last sight of his boy, when he 
 drove away, was of him jumping in Elizabeth Vol- 
 skai'a's arms., and clapping and crowing at sight of a 
 
THE LONG ROAD 251 
 
 drove of little pigs which were squeaking and scrambling 
 about their prostrate mother in the roadway. 
 
 The little white brother he took with him, because 
 little Katenka had loved him, and now he was a very 
 lonely man. 
 
CHAPTER LII 
 
 THAT was the gloomiest winter he had ever passed, 
 gloomier by far than the one when he was in Yeniseisk 
 and Katia was in Irkutsk. For then if his heart had 
 its fears, it also had its greater hopes. And now 
 
 The house on wheels was a perpetual reminder of the 
 happy times which could never be again. His thoughts 
 filled it with memories of Katia and little Katenka. 
 How very happy they had been ! Katia sitting there in 
 the open doorway ; little Katenka running up, breath- 
 less and excited, with her arms full of flowers. 
 And now 
 
 Always until now he had had something left to hope 
 for. 
 
 Now There was his little Stepan, it is true, and 
 there was ah, yes ! there was still one other thing 
 left to hope for, if ever the chance offered. 
 
 It was not very clear in his mind yet, that other thing 
 that had to be done. It came and it went. Sometimes 
 his thoughts ran along healthier lines, and that other 
 idea of his grew vague and indefinite, and lay in his 
 mind rather as a possibility than a purpose. Some- 
 times the purpose gathered strength and rode him hard, 
 
 and he was tempted to go at once and attempt its 
 
 252 
 
THE LONG ROAD 253 
 
 accomplishment. But common sense as a rule pre- 
 vailed, and he jogged soberly on his way, the quietest, 
 and gloomiest, and since his requirements were small 
 and he did not insist on large profits the most wel- 
 come of traders. 
 
 But those winter nights when, save for the little 
 white brother, he lay all alone in his wooden house, 
 with the horses stamping outside, and the cold north 
 wind piling the snow into mighty drifts all round them, 
 were very long and very trying and did not make for 
 good. Ah ! strange things were done in that little 
 wooden house in those lonely night watches, even though 
 he never raised a finger or moved a limb, and the little 
 white brother, on his perch by the holy images, watched 
 it all with sad and wondering eyes. 
 
 He met Peter Krop more than once, and the two men 
 would sit by the hour with few words between them but 
 much sorrow. For the shrewd old Jew had not lived 
 sixty-six years mostly sad ones for nothing, and 
 he guessed what that was that lay deep down in Stepan's 
 heart. But Stepan never spoke of it, and he would not 
 speak of it himself, lest he should be sorely misjudging 
 his friend and perhaps turning his feet to the very path 
 he feared for them. 
 
 "Time heals all wounds, Stepan Ivanovitch," he 
 said gravely, when they were parting one time. "And 
 you still have your little Stepan left. A man-child is 
 a great gift and a great possession." 
 
254 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 In the spring Stepan turned his horses' heads tow- 
 ard Zarm, and wondered if his boy would know him 
 again. 
 
 But Elizabeth Volskai'a met him with bowed head and 
 streaming eyes and broken voice. 
 
 Little Stepan had died two months before of convul- 
 sions brought on by teething. 
 
 Stepan listened quietly to her story, gave her money 
 for her care of the boy and her sorrow at his loss, and 
 went on his way more gloomily than ever. And the 
 dark thoughts that had lurked so long in the shadowy 
 corners of his mind waxed stronger and darker than ever. 
 
 Since Katia went the children had stood between him 
 and much and now the children were gone, and he 
 stood face to face with that dreadful thing that filled 
 all the place they had left. 
 
 To outward appearance he was much as he had been 
 since Katia died. Somewhat gloomier and harder of 
 face, maybe, but always quiet and thoughtful, and un- 
 exacting in his dealings. 
 
 And now, too, he went silently along the roads and 
 over the steppes. The bells upon the arch of his shaft 
 horse mocked him with their merry chiming. They sang 
 no more after the day he heard of little Stepan's death. 
 And since they had been dear to Katenka, he journeyed 
 up into the hills beyond Chernsk and buried them 
 there in her grave, the deep-toned crimson in the 
 middle and the silvery tinklers at the sides, just as they 
 
THE LONG ROAD 255 
 
 used to swing in the arch, and he liked to think of 
 them lying there, by the side of her who had loved them 
 so well. 
 
 And now, when he sat by his lonely fire of a night, 
 and gazed into the ashes, he laughed grimly to himself 
 at times, as though his thoughts pleased him. And the 
 little white brother, on his perch by the holy images, 
 ruffled himself distressfully as though there was some- 
 thing about that did not please him. 
 
 One night a wanderer begged permission to sit by 
 the fire with him, and Stepan gave him food and told 
 him to sit as long as he would. Then he sat down him- 
 self and leaned forward and looked into the fire, and 
 forgot all about his visitor. And now and again he 
 laughed a laugh that sent cold chills running down the 
 other's back, though the front of him was roasting be- 
 cause he did not dare to move. But at last the new- 
 comer could stand it no longer and he crept quietly 
 away, with backward glances at the man before the fire, 
 to make sure that he was not following him. He slept 
 under a tree that night, as he was in the habit of doing, 
 and thanked whatever gods he served when he woke in 
 the morning and found himself still alive. 
 
 But the village folk, with whom Stepan's dealings 
 were, saw only that his face grew ever more sombre, 
 and that he spoke less, and was less and less exacting 
 in his bargains. His requirements were very small, 
 his desire to amass smaller still. There was only one 
 
256 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 thing he wanted, only one final satisfaction life could 
 yield him, and for that he could wait till the time came. 
 
 Had he been free to wander in Irkutsk, as he was 
 free to wander elsewhere, he would have been able to 
 see his way much more clearly. As it was, he could only 
 travel to and fro along the marches, biding his time, 
 and with but one fear lest his victim should die other 
 death than the one he allotted him over the fire of a 
 night. 
 
 Whenever he met trader or traveller from Irkutsk 
 city, he questioned him quietly, with no show of undue 
 interest, and kept himself fairly informed as to what 
 went on there. 
 
 Peter Krop, when they met, read him like a book, 
 and saw clearly whither he was tending, but was power- 
 less to alter his route. He did his best. He offered to 
 join forces with him and journey in company ; alleged, 
 even pleaded, old age as good reason for such a com- 
 bination; and urged the obvious advantages to the 
 younger partner. For old Peter had made much money 
 and was still always making, and he had not a friend in 
 the world except Stepan. 
 
 But Stepan would not hear of it. He had more money 
 than he required, and he also was always making more 
 than enough to live on. And the only certain thing 
 about the future was that he must live it alone. For 
 somewhere in it was a wild, flaming glory, a mad satis- 
 fying fury, a roaring, rushing outbreak of blasting red 
 
THE LONG ROAD 257 
 
 and yellow fires such as he saw in his mind in the ashes 
 of a night. And when it came, all that he had suffered, 
 and all that he had held in check so long, would burst 
 the barriers and leap at the throat of the cause of it all, 
 and he would once more hew and thrust and smash, 
 and feel the lust of death as he had felt it when he 
 slaughtered the bloody fangs in the hills. 
 
 And him he would reserve till the last, Paschkin, 
 the knouter of women ; Paschkin, the breaker of lives ; 
 Paschkin who feared no man; Paschkin the almighty. 
 He would beat him to his knees, and shout with laughter 
 at sight of the terror in his face Paschkin before 
 whom all men quailed. 
 
 And then he would deal him one blow for little Stepan, 
 and one for Katenka, and one final blow for Katia. 
 Oh, the mad joy of it ! The. keen, fierce thrill of it, - 
 through legs and loins and arms, right up into his brain, 
 till his head felt like to burst into a thousand pieces, 
 as the thirsty steel bit deep, through shrinking flesh and 
 crunching bone, right down to the life, and Paschkin 
 would trouble the world no more. 
 
 And as for himself, what matter? He would die 
 a thousand deaths under the knout, and laugh to scorn 
 the dangling ribbons of his flesh, so long as he had lived 
 that mighty minute when Paschkin lay bare to his axe. 
 
 But no man must suffer with him, or for him, or 
 through him. His alone had been the bitterness of the 
 tyrant's caprice; his alone should be the vengeance, 
 
258 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 his alone the penalty. And so he would not hearken 
 to Peter Krop's offers, and Peter went on his lonely 
 way expectant always of calamity. 
 
 And the little white brother was very mournful in 
 these days and hardly ever left his perch. Stepan fed 
 him and soothed him as little Katenka used to do, 
 because she had loved him. But, at times, he found 
 the little bird's great eyes fixed upon him with so know- 
 ing a look that he felt as if the little brother knew all 
 that was in him, and he was glad the little brother could 
 not speak. 
 
CHAPTER LIII 
 
 THE months dragged on, and another winter passed, 
 and to all outward observation no quieter traveller 
 crossed the steppes than Stepan Iline in his sun-blistered, 
 weather-beaten house on wheels. 
 
 Not a woman in all the villages but was glad to see 
 him, though his face was gloomy beyond the ordinary 
 run of men, and he had few words and no tattle. 
 
 Not a child was afraid of him or ever had a rough 
 word from him. Indeed, he had little notice for them, 
 even when they clustered overcuriously round his 
 house and got in his way ; not more than a tightening of 
 the lips and a stiffening of the face. 
 
 But inside the house on wheels was a long gun kept 
 always bright and clean and well oiled, and always 
 loaded and ready ; and a spear that had drunk blood, 
 and gleamed viciously in the lamplight as though thirst- 
 ing for more; and an axe with an edge like a knife. 
 And sometimes, of a winter's night, he would heft the 
 axe, as he touched up the edge with his stone, and thrill 
 with the feel of it as it swung in his strong brown hand. 
 And when he did that, the little white brother, up on 
 his perch by the holy images, always gave a jump, 
 and a flutter, and thereafter watched him gloomily. 
 
 259 
 
2 6o THE LONG ROAD 
 
 The gun was good, and the spear was good, but the 
 axe was the weapon Stepan loved. Its bite was so 
 much closer and more intimate. You could feel the 
 death in it as it shore through the life that had to go, feel 
 it close, in your very hand as it were, a very part of your 
 very self. Yes, it should be with the axe that he would 
 deal the blows that paid for little Stepan and for Katenka 
 and for Katia. And then he would pass his stone lov- 
 ingly along the hungry, curving beak of it, though it 
 was already as true and keen as cunning hand and bitter 
 heart could make it. For the life that had to go be- 
 fore it was Paschkin's. And the lives that it had to take 
 toll for were Baby Stepan's, and little Katenka's, and 
 Katia's. 
 
 Time ran on. The summer suns blistered the paint 
 on the house on wheels till it chipped and fell off. The 
 autumn rains and winter winds and snows beat upon 
 it, the dust and the mud clung to it, till at last it became 
 all one colour and that a dingy gray, the colour of the 
 muddy roads. 
 
 " But why don't you paint your house again, Stepan 
 Ivanovitch?" they asked him at times; and all that he 
 answered was, "Why should I paint it?" 
 
 For at any time that might happen which would end 
 his wanderings, and another's, and he lived only in the 
 hope of it. 
 
 Summers and winters passed, and still he wandered 
 quietly in and out among them, waiting, waiting, 
 
THE LONG ROAD 261 
 
 waiting, for the fulfilment of his heart's only desire, his 
 only companion the little white owl. 
 
 His mind, intent only upon that one hope, and brood- 
 ing over it night and day, became somewhat closed to 
 outward things. He moved and spoke and acted in a 
 way that showed his thoughts were busy with other 
 matters. But the little white brother never suffered 
 any neglect, for little Katenka had loved him. 
 
 The village folk said that he was ageing quickly 
 since his wife died. Some said that his mind was fail- 
 ing. At all times now he was very deliberate in his 
 movements. What need for haste in a man who was 
 only waiting for one thing, the coming of which he 
 could not hasten? 
 
 And he was very silent. He said just what had to 
 be said and no more. Of a night, by the inn stove, 
 while others talked and laughed, and drank more than 
 was good for them, he would sit, neither speaking nor 
 listening, seeing things that were very far off, in a way 
 that was somewhat disconcerting to strangers, though 
 those who knew him and his story were not troubled 
 at it. 
 
 In any one who came from Irkutsk city, or could 
 give him news of it, he was more interested. He would 
 occasionally even question them as to what they knew 
 of Paschkin and his doings. But quietly always, and 
 not in such a way as to excite any suspicion of undue 
 interest on his part. 
 
262 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 He traded still, but more because it was expected of 
 him than from the desire of gain. The women in all 
 the villages he touched would have felt a gap in their 
 lives, and a considerable difference in their minute 
 treasuries, if his rounds had ceased, for he gave them 
 most astonishing bargains. They rejoiced in him, and 
 he would not disappoint them. 
 
 Then, too, his trading all unconsciously kept his mind 
 just sufficiently occupied to retain its balance. He 
 never reasoned about it, but he felt that it was better 
 to have something to do besides brooding constantly 
 on the past and the future. 
 
 Time enough he had for brooding indeed. Perhaps 
 his purpose drew strength from occasional diversion 
 from itself, perhaps he pondered it the more deeply 
 and cogently when he returned from the slight inter- 
 course he maintained with his fellows. If he had 
 retired into the wilderness, as he had felt tempted to 
 do, doubtless his wits would have become addled like 
 Gnut's, in his lonely hut on the river bank. 
 
 But his purpose never failed. His gun was always 
 oiled and loaded. His spear and his axe were always 
 edged for slaughter. The one and only fear he had 
 was lest his enemy should escape by some other death 
 than the one he held for him. 
 
 And, since all things come to him who waits long 
 enough, Stepan Iline's time came at last. 
 
 The waiting had been long. Full seven years had 
 
THE LONG ROAD 263 
 
 passed since Katia died, but the bitterness of his hatred 
 was in no wise blunted. Life for life, blood for blood 
 - nothing less would satisfy him. 
 
 It was in the town of Krasnoiarsk that he heard the 
 news. 
 
 "Great times !" said the host of his little inn cheer- 
 fully, when Stepan turned in to warm his half-frozen 
 feet at the stove, after seeing to his horses and before 
 leaving his papers with the police. 
 
 "Why then, Philip Alexandra vitch?" asked Stepan, 
 with small interest. 
 
 "If you had arrived a day sooner, you would have 
 seen them. Governor Tatukof arrived first last night, 
 and very soon after him came his Excellency from 
 Irkutsk, the great Paschkin. Tatukof had ten Cos- 
 sacks and Paschkin had fifty." 
 
 Stepan was listening now with every nerve on the 
 strain, but he sat quietly, though the blood was jump- 
 ing in his veins and drumming in his ears so that for a 
 minute or two he could hardly hear the other speaking. 
 
 "They all went off this morning. Tatukof back to 
 Minusinsk, and Paschkin for St. Petersburg. They 
 say the Empress wants him for her right-hand man. 
 They'll have bad times there when Paschkin is right- 
 hand man to the Empress. Ah, God, yes ! He was 
 wise to bring fifty Cossacks with him through his own 
 country. There's many a man there would give his 
 head to break Paschkin's, from all accounts. They 
 
264 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 say he is the Devil. A bold man, too. His Cossacks 
 go back to-morrow, and he went on this morning in 
 two sledges, and they travelled, I can tell you. The 
 Empress must want him badly, he was in such a hurry. 
 What, you are off again? Do you not stay the night, 
 then?" 
 
 "That depends," said Stepan, controlling himself 
 mightily. " I have a call to make. If it is not success- 
 ful I may have to go on at once to Abrova," ten miles 
 away on the road to Minusinsk, on the same side of the 
 river as Paschkin was on, "and as I must travel fast 
 to catch my man, I will leave my house with you. You 
 must keep it safe till I return, Philip Alexandrovitch, 
 and see to my little white owl. If my man has left 
 Abrova, I must follow him." 
 
 " Da ! You travellers ! Such bustle always. You 
 have not time to eat or drink." 
 
 But Stepan was halfway down the street, thinking 
 as collectedly as the jumping blood in his head would 
 let him. 
 
 An hour later he was speeding as fast as three horses 
 could carry him along the Tomsk road. He had left 
 the town, indeed, as though for Abrova, but once clear 
 of it had made a circuit across country, over the snow, 
 till he struck the road along which Governor Paschkin 
 had travelled only that morning. 
 
 He calculated that Paschkin had at least twelve 
 hours' start of him. He would have the pick of the 
 
THE LONG ROAD 265 
 
 horses at every town or village. The chances of catch- 
 ing him were small, unless by the accidents of the road, 
 but it was in those chances of the road that his hope 
 lay. It might be days, it might be weeks, before he 
 caught him. He was prepared to follow if it took a 
 year. 
 
 The hot blood that raced in his veins lifted him above 
 any feeling of cold or weariness. For seven long years 
 he had waited, round the corner of a mighty hope as it 
 were, and at last that for which he had waited lay in 
 the open before him. And so the blood raced in his 
 veins and galloped in his head, and he chirruped and 
 called to his horses, and felt like shouting aloud for 
 joy of the hour that was coming, that must come, 
 he said to himself, that should come, no matter what 
 stood between, now that the quarry had broken cover 
 at last. 
 
 In these few short hours, since he heard of Paschkin's 
 journey, he had lived more vitally than in all the last 
 seven years. 
 
 No one would have believed that this keen-faced 
 man urging his horses along the snowy road was the 
 same who plodded wearily into Krasnoiarsk a few hours 
 before. 
 
 Nor was it. 
 
 That was Stepan Iline, the downtrodden of Paschkin. 
 
 This was Stepan Iline, the Avenger of Blood, on 
 Paschkin's track. 
 
266 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 Two very different men and yet at heart the 
 same. 
 
 It was the change which takes place in the beast of 
 prey, lying listless, with flexed limbs and half-closed 
 eyes, when suddenly his quarry passes, and in a moment 
 he is up and after it, every sinew strung, and death in 
 the pinching of his tight-closed face. 
 
 In that short hour at Krasnoiarsk he had thought 
 and acted quickly. The sledge and horses he had hired 
 for a journey to Abrova, but had left their full value 
 with the owner as pledge of their safe return. Their 
 return at all was more than doubtful, but he would 
 have no man suffer through him. He had bought 
 provisions for many days, and by his side in the sledge 
 lay his gun, his spear, and the axe with which he in- 
 tended to deal Paschkin those three last satisfying 
 blows, one for Baby Stepan, one for little Katenka, and 
 one for Katia. 
 
 That Paschkin travelled with two sledges, which 
 meant attendants, did not trouble him in the least. If 
 the choice were given him, he would sooner fight his 
 way to his man, inch by inch, with the other watching 
 his coming and knowing what it meant, than find him 
 lying helpless and open to his assault. He wanted to 
 feel that mighty thrill of battle once again, with the 
 death of Paschkin as its climax. And for these things 
 he was ready to give his life. Ready ? ay, eager, 
 keen-set, and as careless of consequences as a great 
 
THE LONG ROAD 267 
 
 tusked boar of the woods ; for, once he had settled with 
 Paschkin, he had nothing left to live for. 
 
 The chase, barring much-to-be-desired accidents in 
 front, might, he knew, be a long one. Two thousand 
 miles of bad road lay between Paschkin and the Urals, 
 and anywhere on that road the end might come, the 
 end of the chase, and the end of Paschkin, and maybe 
 the end of himself. 
 
 And Stepan Iline drove his horses joyously. 
 
CHAPTER LIV 
 
 PASCHKIN had everything in his favour and all the 
 advantages on his side. The pick of the horses was a 
 great thing. Stepan, who had not laughed for years, 
 laughed aloud as the idea occurred to him that, being 
 just twelve hours behind, it was possible that he might 
 be able to pick up Paschkin's discarded steeds. And 
 then he fell gloomy at the second thought that, as 
 far as was possible, he would do well, maybe, to 
 avoid the towns and villages and skirt them over the 
 snow. 
 
 His papers, indeed, gave him freedom of travel within 
 the bounds of Siberia, except in Irkutsk, and only 
 bound him to perpetual progress, and truly he would 
 be progressing as never before. But any quick-witted 
 official, with Paschkin's immediate visit in his mind, 
 might well, at sight of Paschkin's harsh decree on his 
 papers, put two and two together and fathom his inten- 
 tions. Yes, it would be best to avoid the police as far 
 as possible. And that meant slower speed and longer 
 travel. 
 
 On the other hand, in spite of his impressive haste, 
 Paschkin was not likely to travel himself to death. 
 
 For how should he know that death was on his track, 
 268 
 
THE LONG ROAD 269 
 
 and that every moment he lost brought it that much 
 nearer to him ? 
 
 He would halt each night to eat and sleep. There 
 was a chance of minimising disadvantages and levelling 
 odds somewhat there, for he himself felt as though he 
 could rest no more till this matter was ended and done 
 with. Then he would sleep his fill when Paschkin 
 slept too. 
 
 And then there were the accidents of the road which 
 might, indeed, quite as likely befall himself as Paschkin, 
 but in which he still reposed a certain hope. 
 
 So, day after day, he sped along, with the dogged 
 persistence of a bloodhound, and the fell concentration 
 of a starving wolf on a hot trail. 
 
 The north wind, keen as a knife from its thousand 
 leagues of travel over the icy wastes, bit him to the bone. 
 The snow whirled round him and plastered him into 
 the semblance of a snow man, till at times he could not 
 open his eyes and had to let his horses choose their own 
 path. But cold and snow and the deadly desolations 
 of the steppes were nothing to him, since his heart was 
 on fire and his brain on the boil. 
 
 He found accommodation at night where he could, 
 in outlying cottages, where also he renewed his supplies 
 for himself and his horses, and many times, when no 
 shelter offered, he camped out under the trees and built 
 huge fires, and suffered not much in spite of the cold, 
 because of the fiercer fire within. 
 
270 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 He ate at night and as he went along, but only because 
 one must eat to live, and grudged every moment when 
 he was not on the road. Thought for his horses brought 
 him to a halt many times when his own will would have 
 urged him on. The horses were wearing out in spite 
 of all his care, but he renewed them, one after another, 
 by sale and barter, as necessity compelled and oppor- 
 tunity offered ; and since money was of small account 
 with him compared with the compassing of his ends, 
 those with whom he dealt had no reason to complain of 
 their bargains. 
 
 He heard from time to time reports of Paschkin's 
 passage, always just ahead of him and always ^oing at 
 speed. He had no fear of missing him, for I here was 
 but one safe road into Russia, and Paschkin had too 
 much at stake to take cross-country risks. 
 
 Then a strange slice of luck befell him, as once before 
 in time of need. 
 
 He was gliding swiftly along very early one morning, 
 and the monotonous beat of the horses' feet, and the 
 smooth hiss of the runners, and the boundless desolation 
 of the white waste all round, with the darker sky shut- 
 ting down on it at the edges, had made him sleepy 
 in spite of the fact that he had only just taken the 
 road. His chin was on his chest and he saw noth- 
 ing, when suddenly his team shied violently and he 
 drew rein. 
 
 By the roadside lay a sledge turned completely upside 
 
THE LONG ROAD 271 
 
 down, with a couple of horses shivering patiently along- 
 side. 
 
 Stepan looked round in surprise for the owner, and, 
 seeing none, leaped out and went up to the sledge, 
 while his steaming horses looked round at the starve- 
 lings in surprise, and the latter whinnied joyfully at 
 sight of their kind. 
 
 He turned the sledge over and found the owner un- 
 derneath, dead, frozen stiff. From his face he thought 
 it likely he was drunk when the catastrophe occurred, 
 and had frozen where he lay. There was nothing to 
 show what had happened, except that the rear corner 
 of the sledge was smashed in as from a heavy blow. 
 As a matter of fact, Paschkin's driver, the night 
 before, rinding the drunkard blocking the road, and 
 failing to rouse him to a sense of his duty by shout- 
 ing, had cannoned him neatly out of the way, and 
 Paschkin had laughed hoarsely and promised his man 
 an extra drink on the strength of his performance. 
 
 Stepan was feeling inside the dead man's clothes for 
 his papers, when an idea shot through his mind which 
 made his eyes flash hopefully. 
 
 He found the papers and a belt of money. He 
 hesitated at the latter, but finally strapped it round his 
 own waist. He doubted if it would fall into honester 
 hands than his own. From the papers he would learn 
 who the man was, and, if opportunity offered, the money 
 should be sent to its rightful owner. For the papers 
 
272 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 he had a use of his own. They would shorten his 
 journey and bring him the quicker to Paschkin. 
 
 He learned from the papers that the man was one 
 Ignat Festal from Orkaorsk, away down in the south of 
 Tomsk. He had been journeying evidently the same 
 way as himself. For the moment the idea occurred to 
 him of leaving his own papers on the dead man and 
 changing names with him. But there were things to 
 be said on both sides of that question, and he could 
 not wait to follow them out to their possible ends. He 
 stuffed the papers into his breast, dragged the dead 
 man's sledge off the road, laid him in it, and covered 
 him and it with snow. Then he loosed the shivering 
 horses and tied them behind his own sledge, and set 
 off again at speed to make up for lost time. 
 
 Now his way was clearer. As Ignat Festal he would 
 drive boldly into the next village, and there would be no 
 more time wasted going round to avoid it. As Ignat 
 Festal he could follow Paschkin without exciting the 
 suspicion of the most wide-awake official. Ignat 
 Festal, living, might or might not have been a good and 
 useful citizen, but in his death he served another as he 
 never could have served him in his life. Paschkin's 
 driver's humour of the previous night seemed like to 
 turn out none too prosperously for his master. 
 
 For the sake of the strange horses, Stepan made an 
 early halt that day. He exchanged the newcomers' 
 gear for rope halters, and soon after dark drove into a 
 
THE LONG ROAD 273 
 
 good-sized village and sought accommodation at the 
 inn. 
 
 He was Ignat Festal of Orkaorsk, travelling in the 
 horse line to Tobolsk. His Excellency, Governor 
 Paschkin, had passed through early that morning, and 
 the landlord was very full of the great man, of whom 
 he had indeed caught only a glimpse, but quite enough 
 to provide him with talk for many days. 
 
 "The Empress has sent for him, they say, to keep the 
 Don Cossacks in order. Da ! It is good to be a strong 
 man and to be sent for by the Empress. They say he 
 is the Devil himself, and that is the kind of master 
 those Cossacks need, for, see you, they are devils too. 
 Horses ? Yes, surely. One is always open to a deal if 
 there is anything in it. Which do you want to sell?" 
 
 Stepan made a very early start next morning and was 
 glad to get safely away. 
 
 There was another trader at the inn, one of those 
 industrious busybodies who knows everybody's business 
 better than his own. As soon as he heard the name 
 Festal he asked: "Any relation of Ignat Festal of 
 Orkaorsk? I have met him." 
 
 " Cousin," said Stepan, briefly. 
 
 "And where is the good Ignat now?" 
 
 "He is behind," said Stepan, with a jerk of the 
 head. 
 
 "You do not favour him. He is round as a tub, with 
 
 a face like a winter sun. You are thin as a pole and 
 T 
 
274 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 your face is like a hawk's," and the knowing one laughed 
 at his blunt wit. "Your father was a careful man, I 
 bet." 
 
 "He was a careful man." 
 
 "If the jovial Ignat favoured your, side of the house 
 a trifle more, he would be none the worse. Not too much, 
 but a trifle. Last time I saw him he was drunk, and I 
 said to him, 'Ignat, my friend,' I said, 'sometime you'll 
 take an overload of vodka and you'll be picked up by 
 the roadside frozen as stiff as a dead horse,' and that 
 frightened him so that he ordered more vodka and 
 got drunker still at thought of it. You are going to 
 Tobolsk?" 
 
 Stepan nodded. 
 
 "We might travel together. Company is good 
 across the great steppe. It is a hard winter, and they 
 say the wolves are very hungry out there. I met a 
 traveller who had had a race with them and escaped 
 by the skin of his teeth. He, too, needed much vokda 
 before he got the taste of them out of his mouth. Land- 
 lord, another glass. And you?" But Stepan shook 
 his head. "He swore he would never cross the steppe 
 alone in winter again if he had to wait a week for 
 company. We will go together." 
 
 "I travel quickly," said Stepan. "There is a man 
 waiting for me over there and I must not disappoint 
 him." 
 
 "The quicker the better across the steppe," said the 
 
THE LONG ROAD 275 
 
 other, " especially when the wolves are out. I will 
 travel quickly, too. When do you start?" 
 
 " At daylight." 
 
 "Da! That is early," and he looked doubtfully 
 across at the tense dark face and smouldering eyes. 
 
 And "bozhe-moi!" he said to the landlord next 
 morning, when he heard that Stepan was already on 
 his way, "I am not sure but what I would as soon 
 travel with the wolves. That man is mad." 
 
 And the landlord agreed that there was something 
 queer about him; but he undoubtedly knew a good 
 horse when he saw one and was a free hand at a bargain. 
 
CHAPTER LV 
 
 STERN chase, long chase ; but even the longest must 
 end at last one way or the other. 
 
 For fifteen days Stepan Iline followed Paschkin over 
 the snowy wastes, straining his own powers of endur- 
 ance and urging and husbanding his horses' to the 
 utmost. At times he gained on him slightly and at times 
 he lost. For Paschkin held the trumps as regards 
 relays of horses, and though fear had no part in the 
 composition of his spur, since he was unconscious 
 of pursuit, yet he was urged to speed by motives 
 little less worthy, the craving for power and personal 
 advancement. 
 
 The court was a hotbed of intrigue. The Empress 
 had sent for him. Every minute, until he arrived and 
 grasped the offered reins in his own strong hands, was 
 big with possibilities of reverse. And so he whirled 
 across the snowy plains, and floundered through the 
 drifts, and bumped over the rocks, regardless of every- 
 thing but one, that the minutes flew faster than he, 
 and that any one of them might be his undoing. 
 
 Toward the end of the time, since Pestal's papers 
 allowed him to keep the road, Stepan found himself 
 
 steadily gaining ground. 
 
 276 
 
THE LONG ROAD 277 
 
 Paschkin travelled faster, but Iline travelled longer, 
 and allowed himself no more rest than Nature absolutely 
 insisted on. 
 
 Paschkin's bold eyes saw a mighty future dancing 
 before him on the endless white wastes. Iline's fiery 
 caverns saw no farther than Paschkin, lying shorn of 
 further harm to his kind, in a muddle of bloody snow. 
 
 When he drove up about midday to the little inn at 
 Zarnskaya, he found himself nearer to his quarry than 
 he had dared to hope. 
 
 " You will stop the night, barin ?" asked the landlord, 
 when he got out to stamp the cramp out of his feet and 
 to get a glass of vodka, for it was bitterly cold. The 
 sky was black above the snow and the north wind swept 
 between the two like a scythe. 
 
 "I go on," said Stepan. 
 
 "It is madness," said the landlord. "You are all 
 mad together to-day, and some of you will pay for it. 
 Ah, God, yes ! There were others here over night 
 intending to start at daybreak, as one must to cross 
 the steppe. It is one hundred and twenty versts, and 
 the wolves are out, and it is going to snow again, and 
 those things mean death. One of their sledges broke a 
 runner when they started and they had to get it mended, 
 and they started three hours late. I did my best to 
 get them to wait till to-morrow, but they thought I 
 was thinking only of myself. They will find it was of 
 them I was thinking before they are done with it. The 
 
278 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 steppe is a hungry devil, and the wolves are hungry 
 devils, and they will all get fed to-day. You go to 
 your death if you go on, barin." 
 
 "I go all the same." 
 
 "You are all mad together. Pity you did not get 
 here in time to go with the other madmen." 
 
 "I wish I had. Perhaps I shall catch them." 
 
 "Then you can all die together. It is better than 
 dying alone." 
 
 " Akh ! hear the snow !" he said, as Stepan drew his 
 sheepskin coat up above his ears and went toward 
 the door. 
 
 And it was to be both seen and heard. The wind 
 had increased since he went into the house. The stout 
 wooden eaves hummed in it, the whirling flakes shot 
 past on the level with a venomous hiss. The shaggy 
 coats of his horses were thick with it already. They 
 hung their heads with their ears laid back and looked 
 askance at him. 
 
 "And you go?" said the landlord once more, in final 
 remonstrance at folly so great. 
 
 " Yes, I go," and he cleared the snow from his seat and 
 drew the sheepskin over his knees and was gone. 
 
 "There will be so many madmen the less in the world. 
 Ah, God, yes!" said the landlord, philosophically, as 
 he shut the door. 
 
 Paschkin but two hours ahead of him ! What were 
 wind and snow and hungry devils of steppes and wolves, 
 
THE LONG ROAD 279 
 
 with Paschkin but two hours in front ? There was that 
 inside him that was hungrier than steppe or wolf. 
 The hunger that had waited seven long years to be 
 fed. And now that which it sought was only two hours 
 ahead. The hunger ravened within him. 
 
 His gun lay at his right hand snugly covered from the 
 snow, his spear at his left hand, and in his belt hung 
 the axe that was to take payment in Paschkin's blood for 
 Baby Stepan, and little Katenka, and Katia. 
 
 Now and again he dashed the snow out of his face 
 and peered through his narrowed lids at the whirling 
 waste in front. There was no mistaking the road 
 across the steppe, for its course was marked by gaunt 
 skeletons of trees stuck up at regular intervals. He 
 could not indeed see fifty yards or fifty feet, but the 
 road was straight, and so long as the skeleton trees 
 sped silently past him he was keeping to it. 
 
 The wind bit like an axe, but he was too hot inside to 
 feel it. The horses plunged through the gale with their 
 heads down, and flung them up every now and again 
 to shake the snow out of their eyes and ears. And their 
 driver leaned forward with a face like a hawk, and every 
 now and again he dashed the snow away and peered 
 into the whirling waste in front. 
 
 It seemed as if the whole world were emptying itself 
 against him, in showers of white arrows out of a black 
 sky. But he heeded them not. He would not turn, 
 though the black sky itself came tumbling down on ' 
 
2 8o THE LONG ROAD 
 
 him and emptied itself in one fell crash, not if his 
 horses could struggle through the fragments. 
 
 For Paschkin was on in front there. He might find 
 the gale too much for him and turn back. Any moment 
 they might come face to face. He felt for his gun with 
 one hand, and shifted the reins and felt for his spear 
 with the other, and shifted them again and loosened the 
 axe in his belt. 
 
 And then, dashing away the snow and peering ahead, 
 he saw, close upon him, a sledge coming slowly to meet 
 him, like a wounded animal. 
 
 He eyed it like a hawk. His eyes gleamed through 
 the snow that plastered them in a moment. 
 
 There were three men in the sledge. They shouted to 
 him, but he sped on. None of these was the man he 
 sought. 
 
 "God in heaven !" said one of the three in the other 
 sledge. "Was that man or devil? Did you see its 
 eyes?" 
 
 "It looked like a man," said one. 
 
 "It looked like a devil," said another. 
 
 "The steppe will find out," said the third. 
 
CHAPTER LVI 
 
 ON went Stepan into the mad white whirl, where 
 Paschkin was, somewhere in front. On for another 
 hour, for two hours, and still no sight of what he sought ; 
 but the gale slackened somewhat in its fury, and he 
 could see farther ahead. 
 
 Then, as he crouched with lowered head like a great 
 bird of prey, a sound other than the wind fell on his 
 ear, keyed in a different tone, a sound he knew well, 
 wild yelpings and howlings, hideous snappings and 
 snarlings, wolves fighting over their prey. Not the 
 long howl of the prowler, nor the short snarling yap 
 of the trailing pack. These brutes had got something 
 and were fighting over it. Please God it be not Pasch- 
 kin ! Ah ! God ! to think of losing him so, after all 
 these years ! Then came other sounds along the wind. 
 Thud ! thud ! at once sharp and dull through the 
 muffling of the snow, but guns without doubt. 
 
 And then he was on them before he could stop. 
 
 A sledge still standing, one outside horse down, 
 with a dozen wolves tearing and rending at it. The 
 other two plunging and kicking and biting for their 
 lives*. 
 
 A bristling hedge of wolves round the sledge. A burly 
 281 
 
282 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 man in furs holding on to the cover with one hand, 
 and slashing wildly at the bloody fangs on each side 
 with a sword in the other. A hopeless fight! They 
 were scrambling up the back, leaping at the sides, 
 twenty to one. An impossible fight ! 
 
 All this Stepan Iline grasped in one single glance as 
 he swept up at a gallop. 
 
 His sledge bowled over half-a-dozen of the bloody 
 fangs as he passed. 
 
 He could barely draw in his own terrified horses, but 
 managed it at last, and leaped out into the snow, and 
 ran back, dragging out his axe as he went. 
 
 Were the bloody fangs to cheat him of his prey? 
 After seven years ! 
 
 He shouted as he ran, but knew not what he shouted. 
 Then he was in among them, shouting still and hacking 
 wildly at leaping brown bodies and snarling fronts. 
 And the mad thrill of slaughter ran up through leg and 
 loin as they tightened to the fight ; up through muscle 
 and sinew, through hand and arm, as the hungry axe 
 bit death through bristling hide and crunching bone, 
 and he felt life die close under his hand ; up into his 
 brain, till he saw nothing, thought nothing, felt nothing 
 but blood-red, snarling fangs, and blood-red eyes, and 
 gaping bloody wounds wherever his keen axe fell. 
 
 They leaped at his throat, with gnashing teeth, and 
 scrabbling claws, and yellow-green flaming eyes like 
 fiends incarnate, and he laughed aloud as he shore them 
 
THE LONG ROAD 283 
 
 down. The smell of them their fetid breath and 
 stinking bodies was in his nostrils in spite of the wind. 
 His heart and brain were bursting with the lust of 
 slaughter. He was Berserk, and nothing could with- 
 stand him. 
 
 The back of the sledge was cleared. He swung round 
 the side and cleft the head of a brute that was climbing in 
 there in spite of the man with the sword. They were 
 still swarming on the foundered horse, and he cleft 
 them as they fought, and they fell with their mouths 
 full of meat. 
 
 The driver, with his arms laced in the reins, had been 
 doing his best to restrain the plunging horses. He was 
 jerked suddenly from his seat and fell headlong into 
 the turmoil in front. Stepan had no time to help him. 
 If he was to die so, he must die. He did not hate him 
 to the point of saving him for a keener death. 
 
 The burly man in fur had managed to hold his own 
 fairly well. He made good play with his sword and kept 
 the brutes at bay, but could do little more. Then Stepan 
 heard a hot oath, and from the corner of his eye he saw 
 what had happened. The swordsman had transfixed a 
 great brute on the spring. It twisted as it fell, and the 
 sword snapped at the hilt, and now the big man stood 
 kicking furiously with his big boots at the gnashing 
 mouths that menaced him. 
 
 That was unprofitable fighting and could not last 
 long. It needed close quarters, and a short axe, and a 
 
284 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 brain but one remove from madness, to cleave them in 
 pieces and strike terror into the rest. 
 
 And that Stepan did. When at last he found no 
 leaping body to hack at, and stood panting and spent, 
 the snow was like a shambles, and the edge of his axe 
 was blunted. 
 
 Close upon a score of gaunt bodies lay about, horri- 
 bly mangled, and the rest had limped away, all save one. 
 It stood alongside the dead horse, still tearing and 
 eating ravenously. 
 
 Stepan strode at it. It looked up at him as he came, 
 but went on wolfing the unexpected meal without a 
 pause. He remembered that strange, reproachful look 
 in the famished green eyes for many a day. He cleft 
 its head, and it fell with its mouth full of red meat, and 
 as it rolled over he saw two untimely pups sucking hard 
 at its shrivelled dugs. They were very small and very 
 hungry, and they went on sucking at the mother who had 
 died doing her best for them. The pack, he perceived, 
 had been on the prowl, this belated mother among them, 
 when Paschkin's sledge ran into them ; and while the 
 fighters fought, she had turned her opportunity to ac- 
 count. 
 
 Scarce knowing what he did, but with an instinct of 
 pity for their forlorn estate, Stepan picked up the cubs 
 and stuffed them inside his sheepskin. 
 
 He saw the driver lying among his horses' feet, but 
 whether he was alive or dead he did not know. 
 
THE LONG ROAD 285 
 
 horses stood still now, shaking with terror, but not 
 moving a hoof, as though they feared to harm the 
 man. 
 
 Then the burly man in fur, as he stood panting in the 
 sledge, looked at him, and said, "By God, man, but 
 you are a fighter!" 
 
 And Stepan looked on Paschkin 's face for the first 
 time in nine years. 
 
 It was very little altered, fuller and redder beneath 
 the big red beard, but otherwise as he had known it, 
 hard, brutal, domineering. 
 
 Paschkin did not recognise him. That was not 
 surprising. 
 
 " Who are you, and how came you in the nick of time 
 to save our lives?" He got heavily out of the sledge 
 and came toward him. 
 
 Stepan gazed at him and tightened his grip on his 
 axe. 
 
 "Before God, I believe the fighting has addled his 
 wits," said Paschkin. "What is wrong with you, 
 man?" and he came closer. 
 
 Stepan swung his thirsty axe in his hand and looked 
 at him, and Paschkin saw that looking out through his 
 eyes which brought him to a stand. 
 
 "You are Paschkin," said Stepan at last, in a voice 
 
 ' that was raucous and broken, a voice which had in it 
 
 all the years of waiting, all the years of suffering, all the 
 
 years of loneliness and brooding madness; had in it, 
 
286 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 too, something of these last strenuous minutes of blood 
 and slaughter. 
 
 "I am Stepan Iline." 
 
 1 ' Iline ? Iline ? " said Paschkin, vaguely. He 
 had not thought of the man for years. "Well, I will 
 reward you." 
 
 "Nine years ago," came the harsh voice again, 
 "you broke my life. You robbed me of home and wife 
 and children. All these years I have waited for you. 
 For fifteen days I have followed you. Now you are to 
 die for my little Katenka, and for little Stepan, and 
 for Katia." 
 
 "Little Katenka?" said Paschkin. 
 
 The man was mad, as he had supposed. Now he was 
 sure of it. He turned and ran to his sledge to seek a 
 weapon. But Stepan was the quicker, as offence is 
 quicker than defence. He hurled himself against the 
 other with such force that he stumbled and fell, and 
 Stepan sprang into the sledge. 
 
 He had not done with him yet. One blow as he lay 
 would have ended him. But he had not suffered enough 
 yet. He must taste death slowly. Nine bitter years 
 were not to be wiped out with one hurried blow. 
 
 Paschkin picked himself up and wondered to find 
 himself alive. 
 
 Stepan stood in the sledge and swung his axe slowly. 
 
 "Here you die," he said hoarsely, "for all the ill you 
 have wrought your fellows. But you shall die slowly. 
 
THE LONG ROAD 287 
 
 You shall taste death inch by inch, as you have 
 dealt it. One blow for little Stepan, and one for 
 little Katenka " 
 
 "Little Katenka!" echoed Paschkin once more in 
 astonishment. 
 
 " and one for Katia. And then you will be dead, 
 and all that you have been thinking will be gone from 
 you. And it is for little Stepan and Katenka " 
 
 " Katenka!" said Paschkin again. 
 
 " and for Katia that you die." 
 
 And then a wonder happened. 
 
 Something moved beneath his feet in the sledge and 
 the fur robes tumbled over, and a little child sat up 
 among them, a fair child in a close-fitting fur capote, 
 from under which streamed a halo of fair curls, a girl- 
 child with a pitiful sweet face, white and drawn with 
 fear, and blue eyes running tears. 
 
 And Stepan gazed down at her with amazement. 
 She was so very like his own little Katenka who lay 
 out there on the hillside by Chernsk. 
 
 She looked wildly round and clasped her little fur- 
 mittened hands, and catching sight of Paschkin in the 
 snow, she cried: "Oh, little father! Are they gone? 
 The dreadful beasts?" 
 
 "They are gone, my little Katenka," said Paschkin, 
 in a voice the like of which Stepan had never heard from 
 him before. 
 
 "Katenka! Little Katenka!" gasped Iline, and 
 
288 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 his thirsty axe stopped swinging, and he gazed down 
 at her with blazing, hungry eyes. 
 
 The snow fell into her face as she looked wonderingly 
 up at him so like, so very like, his own little Katenka 
 who was gone. She brushed it off with her furry hands, 
 and stared up at him with terrified blue eyes and quiver- 
 ing lips. So like ! Oh, so like ! So like ! 
 
 " Oh, little father, don't let him kill me ! The dread- 
 ful man, don't let him kill me!" she shrieked in an 
 agony of fear, and squeezed her furry hands tight against 
 her ears, as though to shut out sound of death, but could 
 not tear her eyes from the terrible figure that towered 
 above her. 
 
 And at that Paschkin lowered his bull head and 
 rushed blindly at Stepan with a roar, on the poor chance 
 of getting in to grapple him, and Stepan raised his red 
 axe for the blow he had hungered for all these years. 
 
 "No! no! no!" shrieked the child at his feet, and 
 clasped her arms round his big boots. 
 
 Then, of a sudden, something happened to him, 
 something which he never fully understood, though he 
 often tried to grope back to the roots of it afterwards. 
 
 It was as if something snapped inside him, as if some- 
 thing went out of him and left him suddenly weak 
 and powerless for harm. And he knew that in the face 
 of this new little Katenka he could not carry out his 
 purpose, and that Paschkin must live. Instead of the 
 red axe edge the bull head met the heave of a mighty 
 
THE LONG ROAD 289 
 
 shoulder, and Paschkin reeled over into the snow 
 among the dead wolves, and wondered once more to 
 find himself alive. 
 
 And Iline heaved a great sigh, a sigh which seemed 
 to rend him in twain. It told of cleavage. In that 
 moment the past died and the future was born, inchoate, 
 formless, void. 
 
 For seven years he had lived for one sole object, and 
 in a moment all that he had lived for died, brushed aside 
 by a tiny, quivering face and a pair of terrified blue eyes 
 and a mass of yellow curls, even as the little furred 
 hands brushed aside the snowflakes which fell upon 
 these things. 
 
 He felt suddenly old and weary, and weak and empty. 
 He looked at the child, and then he looked at Paschkin, 
 who had picked himself up and stood stormily defiant 
 in the snow, wondering, but not afraid, and meditating 
 another onrush. 
 
 Once again, at sight of him, Iline swung up his axe 
 irresolutely. But his own little Katenka looked up at 
 him out of the terrified eyes of the child at his feet, and 
 it fell again. 
 
 " Before God, I cannot," he muttered, and he shook 
 himself free of her and stumbled blindly out of the 
 sledge, and was lost in a moment behind the screen of 
 falling snow. 
 
 Paschkin waited to see if he would return, then came 
 up to the sledge. 
 
2 9 o THE LONG ROAD 
 
 ''Lie down, dushenka," he said gently, "and I will 
 cover you from the cold." 
 
 " Is the bad man gone, little father ? " asked Katenka. 
 
 "He is gone, little one. He will not harm you. Lie 
 down now, while I see if Mikhail is alive or dead." 
 
 He covered her with the furs, found one of his empty 
 pistols and loaded it carefully, and then peering round 
 into the snow and seeing nothing, he turned to the man 
 who lay among the horses' hoofs. 
 
 He soothed the terrified beasts with words which 
 they understood. He was ever a lover of horses and 
 they recognised it. He went in between them and 
 drew the man out from among their nervous feet. He 
 was not dead, but senseless from an unintentional kick 
 before they knew he was there. 
 
 Then Paschkin unhooked the dead horse and led 
 the other two and the sledge away from it. He spoke 
 encouragingly to the others, and saw that the outside 
 one was bitten in many places and had lost blood. It 
 had frozen in cakes on her rough skin. The other, the 
 shaft horse, was in better case, but both trembled still 
 as if taken with the staggers. 
 
 Paschkin shook his head as he looked them over. 
 Thirty miles to go, he reckoned, at the very least, and 
 those two shivering beasts could never do it with the 
 laden sledge. 
 
 He pondered the matter gravely. It was a matter 
 of life or death. 
 
THE LONG ROAD 291 
 
 He could lighten it somewhat by jettisoning his per- 
 sonal effects. He considered the idea of leaving Mik- 
 hail behind with them. He would be dead before they 
 could send for him, of course. But as between the life 
 of Mikhail and the lives of Paschkin and his daughter, 
 there could be no question. 
 
 "The madman has spared us quick death for slow," 
 he said to himself. 
 
 Before he was committed to a decision, however, 
 the matter resolved itself. A clump of black figures 
 loomed through the snow vail Stepan Iline and 
 his three horses to Paschkin 's vast and undying 
 amazement. 
 
 He had followed them along the road and found them 
 half a mile away, anchored to one of the skeleton trees 
 by the broken sledge. They had bolted from the wolves 
 when he leaped out, and the sledge flying from side to 
 side, had ended by crashing into one of the trees and 
 jamming so tightly round it that the horses fell in a heap. 
 On rising and finding themselves held, they stood. 
 
 Without a word he loosed Paschkin 's two and tied 
 the reins to the back of the sledge, harnessed his three 
 in their places, and motioned the astounded Paschkin 
 to get in. "The shafter is sound," said Paschkin. 
 "Better use her," and Stepan saw the wisdom of it, 
 and with some rearrangement of the gear succeeded 
 in yoking the four abreast. Then they placed the un- 
 conscious Mikhail in the sledge and Paschkin gathered 
 
2 9 2 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 his furs about him. Stepan picked up his whimpering 
 wolf cubs from the snow where he had dropped them 
 while working, tucked them into his coat, and climbed 
 into his seat, and they sped away from the cluster of 
 little white mounds which marked the scene of the fight. 
 
CHAPTER LVII 
 
 AND as the skeleton trees which marked the road 
 whisked past them one by one, Paschkin thought over 
 it all, and knew that he had been very near to death, and 
 had escaped by a miracle which was past his under- 
 standing. And before him, on the great white sheet 
 of the steppe, he pictured the panorama of the mighty 
 future that should be his. 
 
 And Stepan Iline on the driver's seat looked out 
 with vague and lustreless eyes, and saw nothing in front 
 but a wide, white desolation. For the hope that had 
 been in him the one thing he had lived for all these 
 years was dead, and now he had nothing left to 
 live for. 
 
 He felt the cold as he had not felt it before, for the 
 fire that had warmed him for seven years was burnt out, 
 and only the ashes were left. The snow fell upon him 
 and covered him till he looked like a snow man. He 
 did not even trouble to shake it off. The only warm 
 spot about him was where the wolf cubs whimpered 
 close above his heart. 
 
 More than once as they swept along, hour after hour, 
 with the wounded horse panting heavily behind, 
 Paschkin 's eyes settled on the motionless white figure 
 
 293 
 
294 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 in front, and under the hypnotising influence of the 
 steadily falling flakes, and the swift backward rush of 
 the white plain, strange thoughts came into his mind. 
 
 At times he felt an overpowering inclination to place 
 his pistol to the back of that moveless head and end 
 the man. He was a menace. He was beyond doubt 
 mad. It would be but the raising of a hand and the 
 pressure of a finger and the menace was gone for ever. 
 
 The madman had undoubtedly saved their lives 
 from the wolves, but he had done it only for the purpose 
 of his private vengeance. Why should he spare him? 
 
 Yet, again, he had abandoned that purpose under 
 some strange impulse which could only be guessed at, 
 and which Paschkin did not pretend to fully understand. 
 The intention might spring up again at any moment and 
 prove too much for him. Why should he spare him? 
 
 Paschkin fingered his pistol doubtfully and was 
 strongly impelled to use it and suffer no risks. He 
 decided to watch the man warily and at the first sus- 
 picious sign to make an end of him. 
 
 If he carried them through safely, he could hand him 
 over to the police to deal with as they thought fit. 
 That would undoubtedly be the best thing to do, both 
 for the man himself and for the community at large. 
 
 But Stepan had no evil mind left in him. It was all 
 a blank, and his dull thoughts carried him no farther 
 than the next inn. 
 
 So, on and on across the endless white waste. The 
 
THE LONG ROAD 295 
 
 snow ceased falling, but it had grown too dark to see 
 the guiding trees ; and Stepan at last drew rein, and the 
 panting horses stood in a great cloud of steam and hung 
 their heads and snuffled at the snow on the ground. 
 
 Paschkin fingered his pistol. Stepan got down 
 heavily. He was cramped and half frozen. 
 
 "What now?" asked Paschkin, on the alert. 
 
 "I can no longer see the road," said Stepan. "The 
 moon will come soon. We must wait," and he stamped 
 his numbed feet and swung his arms one after the other 
 to set the blood running again. 
 
 He went round and said a word to each of the horses 
 in turn. The clouds of steam fell down on their backs 
 in white rime. He brushed it off with his hand and 
 spanked them over the loins to keep the cold from strik- 
 ing in. Presently he tucked his cubs into his inner 
 coat and took off his sheepskin and laid it on the loins 
 of the shaft horse, which was beginning to shiver. 
 
 Paschkin, warily observant of his every movement, 
 saw him do it and said to himself, "The madman is 
 good to his horses," and thereafter felt somewhat less 
 suspicious of him. 
 
 He heard him go behind the sledge and wondered 
 what he was up to. And the hair at the back of his 
 head began to prickle, and he half expected to feel the 
 edge of the axe in his neck. Then he heard him mur- 
 muring to the wounded horse and cheering it up, and 
 his mind was at ease again. 
 
296 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 Little Katenka, overwrought with her fears, had 
 fallen asleep in her nest of furs when her father covered 
 her up. She woke now with the sudden cessation of 
 motion, and cried, 
 
 "Little father, are you there ?" and felt for him in 
 the dark with her hands. 
 
 "I am here, dushenka," said Paschkin, in the voice 
 Stepan had found it difficult to reconcile with him. 
 
 "Are we there, little father?" 
 
 "Not yet, little one; we are waiting for the moon." 
 
 "Where is the bad man? Is he gone? Did you 
 kill him, little father?" 
 
 "He is seeing to the horses. As soon as the moon 
 comes we shall go on. Lie down again and go to sleep." 
 
 She lay still for a minute and then sat up, saying, 
 "I cannot sleep. What is this, little father?" and she 
 kicked Mikhail's body with her toes. 
 
 "It is Mikhail. He is asleep." 
 
 Stepan moved about the horses, patting them and 
 spanking them, and straining his ears to catch every 
 note of her prattle. So like ! so like ! But his little 
 Katenka lay on the hillside by Chernsk. And it was 
 Paschkin sent her there. And this was Paschkin 's 
 little Katenka. 
 
 Vaguely, like a bat in the night, the idea flitted across 
 the blankness of his mind, that it was still in his power 
 to kill Paschkin and make this little Katenka his own. 
 Tt would only be taking from Paschkin what Paschkin 
 
THE LONG ROAD 297 
 
 had taken from him. And once his hand stole up to 
 the axe in his belt, but he dropped it again with a sigh. 
 He knew it could not be. Then he ran his hand gently 
 under the breeching of the horse near him, and separated 
 the leather from the skin, to which it was freezing with 
 the sweat. 
 
 At last the moon broke through the clouds, which 
 trailed mistily across her face for a time and then cleared 
 off and left a clear dark sky, and the white plain stretched 
 suddenly to a wide horizon. 
 
 Stepan put on his sheepskin coat and climbed into 
 his seat, and the horses sprang forward at a gallop, 
 and were glad to be on the move again. 
 
 "Ah, there is the bad man who wanted to kill me 
 with his chopper!" said little Katenka. "You won't 
 let him kill me, little father." 
 
 "He doesn't want to kill you, little one." 
 
 "He looked as if he did, little father. He looked as 
 if he would eat me." 
 
 "He will not eat you, little one." 
 
 Stepan would have liked to hear her talking, even 
 though it was only hard words about himself. But 
 the cold air made her glad to muffle her head in the robes, 
 and presently her prattle died away, and she fell asleep 
 again. 
 
 It was long after midnight when they reached the 
 inn on the edge of the steppe. Tsarinsk itself lay five 
 miles farther on, but the inn was commodious and 
 
298 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 did good business with the teamsters crossing the 
 steppe. 
 
 Paschkin, with little Katenka sound asleep in his 
 arms, hammered on the door till the landlord opened 
 it in a surly humour, which changed suddenly to oily 
 obsequiousness when he learned who his visitor was. 
 Stepan and an ostler, surly like the landlord at being 
 roused out of his bed, carried the still unconscious 
 Mikhail in and laid him on the floor. Then the man 
 showed Stepan where he could stable the horses, 
 and retired to his lair, leaving him to his own 
 devices. 
 
 He mechanically rubbed down the horses, and washed 
 the bitten one, and put some ointment on its wounds, 
 and made them all comfortable in the great stable which 
 had accommodation for thirty horses and held only half 
 a dozen. He made a nest of hay for his whimpering 
 cubs, but had no food to give them. He felt no hunger 
 himself, though he had eaten nothing since the morning, 
 and the day had been a wasteful one. He took a drink 
 of water from a straw-swaddled barrel in the stable 
 and lay down alongside his shaft horse, the one over 
 which he had spread his sheepskin. 
 
 He did not sleep and he did not think. He just lay 
 vacuous, spent and weary, now that nothing remained 
 to be done. 
 
 As he began to grow warm his own wounds began to 
 make themselves felt. They grew so uncomfortable 
 
THE LONG ROAD 299 
 
 at last that he had to bestir himself and dress them, 
 and then, in greater comfort, he slept. 
 
 Paschkin, when he had eaten and drunk his fill 
 of the best the place could afford, which nevertheless 
 excited his voluble comminations, lay down on his bed. 
 But he had eaten and drunk so much that it was long 
 before he slept. And in the ensuing wrestle with the 
 slippery god his brain grew so active that by degrees, 
 and with no desire thereto, he found himself recalling 
 the long-forgotten episode of Stepan Iline. It was only 
 one among so many, and he had not once thought of 
 him for quite seven years. 
 
 He recalled it now as somewhat of a stroke of genius 
 on his part. He had not made up his mind what to 
 do in the matter when at last he fell asleep. 
 
 In the morning, when he sent to inquire after the 
 man, he found that he had set off at daybreak with 
 his three horses to recross the steppe. 
 
CHAPTER LVIII 
 
 WHEN Stepan woke after a brief sleep, there was but 
 one idea in his mind, and that was that here Paschkin 
 could command power again. He had spared Pasch- 
 kin's life, he had perhaps saved it, but he mistrusted 
 Paschkin. 
 
 He fed his horses and got a supply of food for himself 
 and them, and then, to the landlord's surprise, pur- 
 chased from him an old Tatar saddle that lay in the 
 stable, and announced his intention of returning at 
 once at Zarnskaya. 
 
 "But his Excellency?" said the other, agape. 
 
 "His Excellency?" said Stepan, vaguely, "his 
 Excellency is nothing to me," and finished buckling 
 the saddle on to his trusty shaft horse and climbed on 
 to its back, with his wolf cubs in his breast, and started 
 off across the snow. 
 
 Peter Krop had long since given him up for dead. 
 By dint of pertinacious inquiry he had run the house 
 on wheels to earth in the yard of the inn at Krasnoiarsk, 
 where it stood awaiting Stepan's return. But no 
 amount of inquiry availed to cast any light on what 
 had become of Stepan himself. He had started for 
 Abrova but never arrived there, and at last Peter Krop 
 
 gave him up as lost. 
 
 300 
 
THE LONG ROAD 301 
 
 The housewives of Yeniseisk missed him sorely, and 
 many of their wants had to go unfilled, or to be filled 
 at a price that caused their slender pockets to miss 
 him more sorely still. At one time, all along the line, 
 a thrill of hope passed through them at sight of the house 
 on wheels coming along just as it used to do. But it 
 was only Peter Krop, who had purchased it from the 
 innkeeper at Krasnoiarsk when they had decided at 
 last that Stepan was dead, and the spoiled wives of 
 Yeniseisk found Peter a much harder man to deal with 
 than Stepan had been. For old Peter's business in- 
 stincts would have required a fair profit even on his 
 death-bed. 
 
 So Peter Krop mourned the only friend he had ever 
 made outside his own race, and jogged along in his 
 place, though at longer intervals, since he had rounds 
 of his own to do as well. He took a mournful pleasure 
 in occupying the house on wheels, and in his fancy 
 tried to people it again with the bright faces of Katia 
 and little Katenka and Baby Stepan. 
 
CHAPTER LIX 
 
 AND far away, in a strange northern land, a strange 
 man was living a strange wild life. 
 
 It was a land apart. He was a man apart. Place 
 and man suited one another exactly. 
 
 It was, and still is, save for a few brief weeks in the 
 summer, the most unutterably desolate land on the 
 face of the earth. In the winter the temperature falls 
 as low as seventy degrees below zero. The ground is 
 frozen solid to the depth of many hundreds of feet. In 
 the summer the surface thaws to the depth of a foot or 
 so, but nothing ever penetrates the icy barrier below. 
 All the vegetation of that strange lone land springs 
 therefore from that foot of water-soaked surface soil, 
 and the vegetation is in keeping with the rest. 
 
 Life there is at its very lowest just twelve inches 
 or so removed from frozen death. 
 
 It is the great moss-land. Almost the only thing to 
 be seen is moss, living brown moss growing on gray 
 moss dead, growth upon growth; and creeping lichens 
 here and there, till for thousands of miles the surface 
 of that land is one vast sponge, whereon and wherein, 
 if any man try to walk, he sinks to his waist, to his 
 
 shoulders, or completely out of sight. 
 
 302 
 
THE LONG ROAD 303 
 
 And into this strange land the strange man crept 
 one day and dwelt there. 
 
 He had journeyed he knew not how or whence. 
 There was a void in his mind, with a dangling thread 
 in it which he strove in vain to grasp. Always it lay 
 just beyond him, but some strange impluse had driven 
 him on and on in hopes of laying hold of it in time. 
 
 So he had journeyed doggedly on through the mighty 
 forests which belt the Northern Spirits into their dreary 
 holds, and ward off their coldest breaths from the plains 
 below. For months he had wandered through age-old 
 growths of shivering poplars and aspens, and mighty 
 elms and maples, till these gave place to firs and pines 
 and larches. 
 
 He had fallen in with companies of the hardy dwellers 
 in those northern woods, whose language he could not 
 speak, and whose habits were strange and uncouth 
 even to him. He had joined them silently, lived with 
 them silently, and departed as he came; and, uncouth 
 as they were, they had recognised his affliction and had 
 suffered him as one stricken of the gods. 
 
 Wherever he went, at his heels gambolled two shaggy 
 wolf-pups, and the only thing that ever roused him 
 from his lethargy was menace to these. He was gentle- 
 ness itself, but once, when a wood-dweller threatened 
 his pets with an axe, the silent one flamed like Hekla, 
 and the woodman escaped with his life, and food 
 for thought and time to think it. 
 
304 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 And so, on and on, till the vast solemnities of the 
 forest-land lay behind, and he crept silently through 
 straggling patches of dwarfer growths, stunted pines 
 and twisted larches, cringing bitterly before the blasts 
 that racked them ten months out of the twelve. 
 
 He had travelled along a watercourse which carried 
 a projecting arm of the final forest-land out into the 
 moss- country. It stretched like a peninsula far into 
 the treacherous gray-brown bog-land. 
 
 He went on till even the dwarf trees failed him and 
 further advance meant death. Then he stood on the 
 edge of the moss and in some strange way it appealed 
 to him. It was a waste and empty land. He was a 
 waste and empty man. He desired no intercourse 
 with his fellows, and here was no man but him- 
 self. 
 
 The gloom of the interminable woods had weighed 
 upon him like the stones on a hillside grave. Here were 
 light and air and infinite space ; as far as his eye could 
 travel, in front and on either side, nothing but the soft 
 gray-brown cushiony plain, with sheet: of water here 
 and there, and, marvel of marvels, on the hither edge, 
 among the stunted pines and larches, actually some 
 tiny flowers. Not the gorgeous blooms which carpeted 
 the steppes, but still flowers, though their time was as 
 short, and their aspect as thin and watery, as the sources 
 from which they sprang. 
 
 It was summer time when he came upon the moss- 
 
THE LONG ROAD 305 
 
 land, and his vacant mind was still too numb to fore- 
 cast the terrors of .winter in such a place. 
 
 He still had his axe, the axe that was to have done 
 some great deed and had not. His mind was in a fog, 
 but he knew the axe had something to do with the 
 matter. He would sit by the hour looking at it and 
 groping for the lost threads which seemed to centre in 
 it. But he felled stunted trees with it and built him- 
 self a tiny hut on the edge of the moss, a rough enough 
 abode, in sooth, but while the mild weather lasted it 
 sufficed for wool-gathering wits. 
 
 Of food there was no lack, for the time being. For 
 the spawning salmon were still in the river, in quantities 
 so vast that he had them for the taking, and hunger 
 knows no close time. And as he sat, day after day, 
 gazing listlessly over the infinite expanse of the moss, 
 he saw it mottled in places with countless flights of 
 birds. And, desiring them, he and his wolf-pups 
 essayed a trip on the spongy plain and came near to 
 ending there. He sank up to his waist at once, and all 
 his struggles only took him the deeper, while the four- 
 footed ones went completely out of sight. 
 
 They all managed to crawl out at last, however, like 
 drowned rats, and sat looking at the birds for the rest 
 of the day with desire increased by impotence. 
 
 In the morning, with no conscious evolution of the 
 idea, rather by an instinct of necessity, he bound flat 
 pieces of wood to his feet with withes of plaited bents 
 
306 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 and rushes, and, with a pole for support, proved him- 
 self master of the bog. And so, for a time, eggs and 
 young birds were added to their faring. 
 
 Fire he had, since flint and steel never left him, and 
 while the summer lasted he fared well. And, as body 
 strengthened, mind improved somewhat, but always 
 with a misty vagueness as to the past, and, when he 
 tried to get behind it, with racking pains in the head 
 which at times prostrated him. 
 
 He had strange fancies too. In unexpected places 
 he would come across those unexpected flowers, now 
 and again things of a day, brought by the uncon- 
 scious birds, sprouting in decay and with little to feed 
 on. And every flower he saw was a reminder of some- 
 thing, he knew not what a tiny pin-prick on that 
 dull thing that answered for his mind, which spurred 
 it to further groping, but still left him ever in the dark. 
 Nevertheless he gathered every flower he saw and 
 carried it home with him. 
 
 As he drew near to the hut a dim expectancy would 
 light his face. And then he would go inside and look 
 round with a puzzled frown, and draw his hand wearily 
 across his brow and try to remember. As with the 
 axe, the flowers stirred the ruins of his mind, and he 
 would sit by the hour gazing at them and trying in vain 
 to understand their message. 
 
CHAPTER LX 
 
 His dulled thought had not yet forecasted the future 
 in such a place. He lived from hour to hour and from 
 day to day, and made no provision for the next, and so 
 one day there came to him the rude awakening to which 
 life with half-closed eyes is always subject. 
 
 For many days the sky was dark with flying birds, 
 myriads of birds, and all flying the same way. The 
 man sat stolidly watching them, and listening to their 
 cries. And when they had all disappeared behind the 
 low black line of stunted trees, the sky was gray and 
 cold. 
 
 Black clouds swept up from the north. The great 
 morass shuddered and wailed, and shrivelled before 
 his eyes, as the icy gale came shrieking across it from 
 far-away polar seas. Every growing thing lay flat 
 before the storm. The moss was beaten as with a 
 mighty flail and scored as with a mighty harrow, and 
 came flying inland in flakes and blankets. The man's 
 hut vanished with the first breath, and he lay prone 
 with the rest, bitten by the wind, beaten by the rain. 
 His companions fled howling to the nearest forest 
 growth and grimped to earth in the first thicket they 
 came to. 
 
 307 
 
3 o8 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 But the storm passed and the sun shone out again 
 next day. The wolf-cubs came bounding back, un- 
 conscious of perfidy, since Nature had gifted them no 
 more generously. And the man set stolidly to work to 
 house himself again. 
 
 He built nearer the forest land this time, and his hut 
 turned its back to the north winds. And he built 
 more strongly, and blanketed his woodwork with great 
 sheets of moss, piling it thick and deep, till his house 
 looked like nothing but an outgrowth of the moss itself, 
 a larger cushion from the cushiony plain. 
 
 And instinct made him burrow down now as well 
 as build up. He dug out the stiff clayey earth with 
 his axe, as deep as he could get, and lined the whole with 
 mosses, live and dead, till the inside was a nest. He 
 built a tiny fireplace of clay and cut down trees and 
 hauled them home for firing. All sheer instinct of the 
 primitive man for warmth and shelter. 
 
 Each day the sun was going. The birds had gone 
 long since, and when he looked for salmon he found 
 only belated stragglers. Before long these were gone 
 too, and he had to roam the farther woods for berries, 
 and grew lean and thin on them, and his wolves leaner 
 still. 
 
 Each day now was shorter and grayer than the last, 
 and the storms which came howling out of the north 
 brought icy sleet instead of rain. 
 
 Then, one morning, he crept out of his nest to find 
 
THE LONG ROAD 309 
 
 the world all white, the morass a wavering snow plain, 
 all grooved and furrowed and fluted into fantastic 
 whorls by the wind ; and winter was upon him. 
 
 He could still find occasional berries in the woods, but 
 ever more precariously, and when at last they failed 
 him entirely, he tried a diet of bark but found no nutri- 
 ment in it. 
 
 Then came a gale so merciless that for two whole 
 days he dared not venture his head outside. The snow 
 banked up deep and high behind his hut, and the fierce 
 blasts welded it into an icy cuirass impervious to the 
 keenest assaults of the storm fiends. 
 
 Outside, the wild winds shrieked and howled across 
 the tortured wastes, and inside, his wolves whined 
 mournfully over the misery of their stomachs. He 
 began to eye them at last as hungrily as they eyed him. 
 But they were all spared that extremity, though they 
 came within sight of it, and sat and stared it in the face 
 with hungry foreboding. 
 
 In his ravenous hunger for something to stay the 
 groaning void within, he one time plucked a handful 
 of the moss that formed his nest and stuffed it into his 
 mouth. It took much chewing, but even chewing 
 was akin to eating, and at last it slipped down and gave 
 him some cold comfort. 
 
 He did his best to induce his starving companions 
 to try it also, but they found no pleasure in it. He con- 
 tinued eating, and ruminated, in slow and bovine 
 
3 io THE LONG ROAD 
 
 fashion, while he chewed the cud, and then set to work 
 on that which had come to him. 
 
 With infinite patience, he delved up clay from the 
 lowest floor of his hut, kneaded it to a proper consistency 
 with snow which he melted in his hands, and from it 
 shaped a rude bowl. This he set to bake in the ashes 
 of his fire, and sat and watched it till it cracked and fell 
 in pieces along with his hopes. 
 
 He set doggedly to work again and made another 
 bowl, and dried it more slowly, and baked it more 
 cautiously, but the result was still the same. 
 
 There was no going outside, however, and he had 
 plenty of clay, and before him lay months of semi- 
 starvation unless he could make a pot that would hold 
 water and stand fire. With all his shadowed mind 
 concentrated upon this one thing he made pot after 
 pot, cleansing his material now most carefully, in 
 case the previous failures had been brought about 
 through some alien mixture in the clay, and the wolves 
 sat watching hopefully, such time as they could spare 
 from dismal protest over their clamorous emptiness. 
 
 And at last he succeeded. One of his pots came out 
 whole and hard and red, and when it had cooled, and 
 he filled it with snow and placed it in the ashes again, 
 he had got his desire. 
 
 He was cold inside with the amount of clammy pulp 
 he had eaten. He melted snow and heated water and 
 drank it for its comforting warmth. Then he filled 
 
THE LONG ROAD 311 
 
 his pot again and shredded into it some handfuls of 
 moss, and boiled it to a pulp, and found it not over- 
 palatable, indeed, but more easily eaten than when 
 raw. It stayed his stomach and he believed he could 
 live on it, and the scraps he offered to his companions 
 they bolted greedily and demanded more. 
 
 The storm ceased next day and he crept out into the 
 strange new wintry world, the moss- land all a mighty 
 white plain, scored with league-long grooves by the 
 flailing of the wind, and all its surfaces polished smooth 
 and round; the dwarf trees of his peninsula almost 
 hidden by the drifts ; the smaller growths gone entirely ; 
 the sky up above grim and gray, and the light between 
 but a glimmering twilight. 
 
 With his footboards he found he could travel freely, 
 and the first thing he did was to go to the moss and dig 
 down under the snow for a fresh supply, which he 
 thought might be more eatable than his own partly 
 withered stuff. 
 
 He took a new interest in it now. Hitherto it had 
 been simply building material and bedding. Now it 
 was food and life. He took note of the various kinds 
 and kept them separate, for experimental purposes. 
 Anything he came across which looked capable of boil- 
 ing and eating, he took home for trial. 
 
CHAPTER LXI 
 
 To a man in full possession of his senses the vast 
 silence and solitude must have been overpowering. 
 Not so with this man. Since that night when some- 
 thing had seemed to snap suddenly in his head, he had 
 been out of touch with his kind, and to a jangled mind 
 silence and solitude are merciful ministers. 
 
 Then, too, he was not without companionship even 
 in that immensity of desolation. The wolves were 
 with him always, and their novel faring and utter 
 dependence on him seemed to tame their natural in- 
 stincts and make them more companionable. 
 
 But there were higher things than these, and uncon- 
 sciously they made for strengthening and uplifting. 
 
 The sun had left him, indeed, and its going and not 
 returning had filled him for a time with a great dread, 
 and then with vague fears as to what this might por- 
 tend. But the going of the sun had not left him in 
 absolute darkness. For a portion of each month the 
 moon shone clear and bright, and he was alone in a 
 silent silver world. It was no longer snow he gazed 
 upon then, but a mighty plain of frosted silver, fan- 
 tastically chased and wrought, and soothing to the 
 senses in the very sight of it. 
 
 3" 
 
THE LONG ROAD 313 
 
 And the friendly stars shone brilliantly by day and 
 by night, as though they shone for him alone, and he 
 came to know them well, though not one could he call 
 by its name. And at times there were strange happen- 
 ings up there, when one and another of the radiant 
 twinklers would loose its hold with startling sudden- 
 ness, and shoot silently across the darkness, and dis- 
 appear, and leave him wondering. 
 
 Once, as he sat watching them, a sudden flash of 
 steely blue scared him trembling to his feet. On the 
 blacker darkness above there shone and died two trails 
 of fiery smoke. It seemed to him that something fell- 
 with a hiss into the far-away moss. The earth shook 
 under him and he crept into his house and lay in fear. 
 
 When the winds were loosed upon the flats, they 
 woke strange sounds like mighty voices, wild wailings 
 and sobbings and long-drawn dolorous groans as of 
 spirits in travail, and at first these also filled him with 
 fear. But he grew accustomed to them at last, since 
 no harm came to him from them, and in time the weird 
 voices became less irksome than the infinite silence. 
 
 But the greatest of all the wonders of that strange 
 land came upon him one day as he sat, muffled in his 
 sheepskin, striving in vain to lay hold of the something 
 that was behind all this and himself, and which he 
 could not grasp with all his striving. And so terrify- 
 ing was it in its magnificence that he fell on his face in 
 fear, believing that the end of all things had come. 
 
3 i4 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 For, of a sudden, and in a strange and solemn silence, 
 the rim of the northern darkness began to pulse with 
 tremulous hints of that which was to come, as though 
 some great quivering heart of light was travailing into 
 life down there ir the dark. 
 
 Then, gathering force, the throbbing glow took 
 shape in a nebulous haze, which rose and brightened 
 till the top of it was a luminous arch, and from the arch 
 streamed wavering tongues of fire, of colours innumer- 
 able and of a radiance unsurpassed. Now they were 
 all blood-red, and now they were vivid blue, and now 
 lightning-yellow. Then, in a moment, the wavering 
 flames all mixed as though a mighty breath had swept 
 across them, and green and violet and orange quivered 
 into the upper darkness and dyed the snow fresh 
 colours every second. Then, as quickly, the blending 
 fires shone dazzling white; and again each darting 
 tongue flashed all the various tints throughout its 
 length from base to tip, red at the base, and yellow at 
 the tip, and all the rest fluttering along it from end to 
 end in strange, fitful pulsations. 
 
 So, for hours, the mighty spectacle played above 
 him, and he, enthralled and spellbound, lay on his face 
 in fear and only dared to look up now and again, 
 wondering dimly what it all might mean. 
 
 Did they dance to some strange music, those mysteri- 
 ous lights? It seemed to him there must be music, 
 but his dulled senses could not catch it. He strained 
 
THE LONG ROAD 315 
 
 his ears and feared to breathe, and at times it seemed 
 to him that he came very near to hearing it, and he 
 thought it was like the singing of swinging bells 
 golden bells and silver bells. 
 
 And then at last the dancing lights waxed to their 
 highest, and gathered in a lambent coronal above the 
 arch, and slowly died away, and left the dark world 
 the darker for their having been. 
 
 He -crept back into his lair full of fears of what 
 might follow. But nothing broke the silence of his 
 dim world and he was rilled with wonder and amaze, 
 and as he lay in the darkness he saw the tongues of fire 
 still quivering through his closed eyes, and in his ears 
 was the singing of the bells. 
 
 He had no knowledge to bring to the matter, nothing 
 but a vague, awe-stricken wonder; but in some dim 
 way it seemed to him that God was in it, and his soul 
 was strangely stirred. 
 
 But these were the bright times in the darkness of 
 the desolate land. At other times the heavens were 
 shut, grim and black, and out of the north, where the 
 strange lights dwelt, came only storm and tempest. 
 And then the snow-bound flats clanged with the rush 
 and roar of it, and for days he and his wolves would 
 lie in their sunken nest, trembling as the storm fiends 
 howled and tore above them, but grateful all, in their 
 various ways, for the thick snow covering that knit 
 them safe to earth. 
 
CHAPTER LXII 
 
 IT was then, when the storm fiends raged and fought 
 above his hut, till the whole black vault and the vast 
 untrodden spaces of the flats rang with the sound of 
 them, that he heard the bells again silver bells and 
 golden bells, singing and swinging in the hollows of the 
 storm. 
 
 And the sound of them stirred him strangely at 
 times, and set him straining dumbly to get round the 
 edge of the curtain that hung between him and the 
 past. There were bells behind the curtain, and they 
 meant something to him, but what it was he could &ot 
 tell. And this elementary striving after knowledge 
 racked his head with such pains that he would lie for 
 hours with his head clasped tight in his hands to keep 
 it from flying in pieces. 
 
 More than once, when the bells rang clear and close, 
 and he could stand it no longer, he got up and went 
 out into the shriek of the gale and wandered blindly 
 over the frozen plain in search of them. 
 
 They led him hither and thither, now he would 
 stand listening eagerly; then he would set off running 
 and stumbling, this way and that way, but wherever 
 
 he went they were elsewhere. 
 
 316 
 
THE LONG ROAD 317 
 
 One time, however, he came nearer to them than he 
 had ever been before, nearer to the ar.swers to air his 
 puzzles and to all that he had lost out of his life. 
 
 It was terribly hard going, for the earlier storms had 
 chastened the hummocky plain into nightmare flutings 
 and convolutions, and these had been wrought into ice 
 by the later Sailings, and some were smooth as glass, 
 and some were ribbed as though the bones of giants 
 lay below, and some were sheaves of sharp -pointed 
 spears, and some were hideous traps for stumbling 
 feet. 
 
 But the bells sounded clear in his ears and he ran 
 blindly on, now sprawling headlong, but scrambling 
 up again always, heedless of cuts and bruises, heedless 
 of everything but the calling of the bells/ 
 
 And suddenly he found himself falling, falling, and 
 then there came a crash, and then a great blank. 
 
 When he came to his senses, he found himself in utter 
 darkness and silence in a hollow and windless place, 
 and very sore and bruised. As he struggled to his feet 
 a humming broke out all about him, and rose louder 
 and louder till his head came near to splitting with the 
 noise. He clasped both his hands on top of it, as was 
 his wont, lest his wits should scatter altogether. Then 
 the humming died and he was in silence again, and 
 looking up he saw a patch of stars shining brightly 
 above him. 
 
 In the darkness he tried to make out where he was, 
 
3 i8 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 but with small success. All about him, but at varying 
 distances, was i wall of soft snow, and he perceived 
 that he was in some way shut off from the wind, but 
 how he could not tell. 
 
 Then, suddenly, as his slow wits pondered this, the 
 whole place blazed with crimson light as though the 
 heavens had burst into flame. And in the glow of it 
 he saw a roof of ice above his head, and the ragged 
 hole his fall had made in it. He had fallen from a 
 height on to the thin icy covering of a drift, the snow 
 had filtered away to some extent underneath, and he 
 stood in a small chamber with snow walls all round 
 him and a roof of ice ten feet above his head. 
 
 And out there the mystic lights were dancing. His 
 little chamber was suddenly sun-lit with gorgeous 
 orange rays, and in a moment was a ghastly livid green. 
 Then the colours changed so rapidly, and blended in 
 such strange confusions, that he could not follow them. 
 He only knew that he could see, and what he saw was 
 not helpful. 
 
 The hole he had come through was quite ten feet 
 above his head, and it was in the middle of the sheet 
 of ice which roofed him in. 
 
 He ran to the wall to try and climb it. It was soft 
 and rotten and fell away before him. He tried the 
 opposite side ; it yielded in the same way. Wherever 
 he tried, it was the same. He could scrape into it to 
 his heart's content, but he could not climb it. All he 
 
THE LONG ROAD 319 
 
 gained was a larger space. And the snow he scraped 
 down was so friable and powdery that it vanished under 
 him like dust, the very ghost of snow. He might as 
 well have tried to climb on mist or build a platform of 
 it. 
 
 In panic rage at the futility of all his efforts, he flung 
 his axe at the glimmering roof, but it only starred it 
 and fell back softly at his feet. 
 
 Was there no escape? Was he to die in this trap? 
 The blood boiled in his head in impotent fury. 
 
 And all the while the wonder-lights outside shimmered 
 and blazed in terrifying glory, and every now and again 
 some shift of the storm filled the hole he had made in 
 the ice, and the hollow in which he stood, with that 
 wild booming deeper and louder now than at first 
 which came near to splitting his head. 
 
 Any moment the lights might go and leave him in 
 the deeper darkness that always followed them. He 
 raged round his cage like a forest beast in its trap. 
 
 The lights blazed above him till he could see their 
 forking tongues through the hole in the ice. Then 
 they dwindled and died, and he was in the dark. He 
 fell on his face in the powdered snow and gave up the 
 fight. 
 
 But, lying so, the storm in his blood quieted down, 
 and presently his brain began to work as it had not 
 worked for many a day. The rush of blood had 
 quickened it. He began to think. 
 
3 2o THE LONG ROAD 
 
 Th snow walls were soft. He could bore through 
 them to any distance. The drift he was in must end 
 somewhere. It could not go on for ever. If he could 
 burrow in a straight line, he must come to something at 
 last either to the outside of the snow-bank or to the 
 walls of the hollow in which it lay. 
 
 He sprang to his feet again. One place was as good 
 as another, since he knew nothing of where he was. 
 He began to work his way into the wall nearest him, 
 tearing it down with his curved hands, while great soft 
 masses came rolling down on top of him. 
 
 It worked up his arms and down his back, and ran 
 down into his boots in streams, but he paid no heed to 
 it. He grew hot, so hot at last that he had to take off 
 his sheepskin coat, but he had to drag it with him lest 
 a fall of the soft snow should cover it and lose it to him 
 for ever. 
 
 The very softness of the snow, while it made for easy 
 work, was against his progress. For every armful he 
 tore down a dozen armfuls fell upon him, and so lightly 
 was it packed that the roof of his tunnel was the sheet 
 of ice which overspread the whole. He could not see 
 it, but he could feel no roof of snow above his head. 
 
 He grew weary and empty, but he ground his teeth 
 and went on burrowing doggedly. He had been passive 
 and bioken all these months. Now the fighting spirit 
 was alive in him again and he was not going to be 
 beaten. 
 
THE LONG ROAD 321 
 
 When he grew so weary that he could not lift his arms 
 for another drag at the snow, he wrapped himself in his 
 sheepskin and slept where he fell. And when he woke 
 he set to work again instantly. 
 
 It was a mighty hollow, and how long he worked he 
 never knew. But at last his blindly scooping hands 
 lighted on something more solid than snow, and, by the 
 feel, he knew it was moss. He had worked through to 
 the edge of the cup. He tore down a handful of the 
 moss and began chewing it to stay his hunger. Then, 
 when he had eaten and rested, he climbed up the moss 
 bank, beat a hole in the rim of the icy shield, and scram- 
 bled cautiously up the hummock and sat on the 
 top. 
 
 A sickle moon rode low in the sky and cast a faint 
 light into the darkness of the snowy plain. He had no 
 idea in which direction his hut lay, for his pursuit of the 
 bells had been erratic. But his brain was working, if 
 slowly and heavily still. 
 
 His hut lay on the edge of the moss toward the forest 
 land. If he could get safely off the moss without 
 stumbling into another pitfall, he must find the hut 
 sooner or later by travelling this way and that along the 
 edge. But he had no idea in which direction the edge 
 of the moss and the forest land lay. Whichever way 
 he went might be the wrong one, and he had no mind to 
 fall below the ice again. So he sat on his hummock, 
 pondering dully, and steaming in the frosty air till 
 
322 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 there was a halo of tiny ice spicules falling all about 
 him. 
 
 And as he sat peering into the dimness, this way and 
 that, anxiety to be gone warring with fear of going the 
 wrong way and so landing himself in further difficulties, 
 two very strange things befell him. 
 
 Out of the dimness behind him some white-winged 
 thing came wafting slowly along, its noiseless flight 
 marked by a misty halo of falling frost flakes. It came 
 close to him and circled twice so closely round his head 
 that he could see its great round eyes seeking hungrily 
 if perchance he might be good to eat. 
 
 It was a great white owl, and in some way, though he 
 did not know it, the sight of it stirred the dead leaves 
 of his memory, set fluttering the dark veil which hung 
 between him and the past, brought him nearer to him- 
 self, through the sudden brain activity induced by his 
 late exertions, than he had been since the old self fell 
 away from him. 
 
 The white bird gave him up as unfit for food and 
 winged silently away. Would it be going toward the 
 shore or away from it ? He could not be sure. 
 
 But as he still sat in doubt, his wandering eye lighted 
 suddenly on a stealthy movement close beside him, and 
 he held his breath and watched. 
 
 Up out of the hole through which he had just scram- 
 bled came a small white head, with very long ears which 
 twitched spasmodically to and fro, and a nervous 
 
THE LONG ROAD 323 
 
 little nose which discovered him instantly, and very 
 large outstanding eyes which settled on him doubtfully, 
 a little arctic hare, which had without doubt bur- 
 rowed under the snow after food and got caught 
 there. 
 
 The man sat perfectly still. He had no thought of 
 harming his little brother of the snows. The hare 
 hopped lightly out, and sat up, sniffing eagerly all 
 round, with one eye still on the smoking figure on top 
 of the hummock. Then, having apparently got its 
 bearings, it set off lightly across the snowy crust, and 
 the man rose instantly and followed it. 
 
 He did not consciously reason the matter out that 
 the hare would almost certainly make for the woods, and 
 that the woods were where he wanted to go. The hare 
 had come out of the hole and was making for a safer 
 place. He had come out of the hole and did not know 
 which way to go. The hare evidently did know its 
 way, so he followed it. 
 
 He kept to the hummocks as far as possible. When 
 he came to a hollow he skirted it, and so he very soon 
 lost sight of his little guide. 
 
 The last he saw of it, it was sitting up on a little height, 
 with its ears twitching anxiously and one eye upon him. 
 Then it scampered away and he marked its direction 
 and followed, and presently found himself on solid 
 earth. 
 
 And then, as he stood wondering which way to turn 
 
324 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 for his hut, he heard a muffled howl which for the moment 
 set the blood jerking in his veins. And then he recog- 
 nised it as the voice of one of his wolf-cubs, and he turned 
 and ran toward it. 
 
CHAPTER LXIII 
 
 THEREAFTER for many days he dwelt in the dark, 
 with no companionship but his wolves, and the occa- 
 sional moon, and the steady stars, and now and again, 
 at rare intervals, those wonderful quivering tongues of 
 fire. But all the time his dull mind was groping dimly 
 for the meanings of things, and was coming nearer and 
 nearer to that which it sought. 
 
 And as his mind slowly awakened, the long-continued 
 darkness began to tell on him as it had not done before. 
 He fell into the shadows. It seemed to him that he was 
 accursed, and was doomed to dwell in the outer cold and 
 dark for evermore. But whenever his stomach clam- 
 oured for food he shredded mosses into his pot, and fed 
 himself and his household, and so they lived. 
 
 Meagre living, they say, produces high thinking. 
 This man's living was but one degree above starvation. 
 Perhaps it helped to clear his brain of its tangles. 
 
 In the depth of that long-drawn Arctic night there 
 befell at last a happening which, in more ways than one, 
 tended to his upbuilding. 
 
 He was sitting in his hut, slowly and painfully pon- 
 dering as was his wont, when a sound without pricked 
 his ears and set his blood tingling. It was very faint 
 
 325 
 
326 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 and distant, but he recognised it instantly, and instinc- 
 tively reached his hand for his axe. The wolves at his 
 side stirred in their sleep, and whuffed uneasily, as 
 though the sound had penetrated their dreams also. 
 He rose quietly and went outside, fastening the door 
 so that they should not follow. 
 
 The blood was jumping in his veins as it had not 
 jumped for many a day. As the sound he had heard 
 came nearer and nearer along the frozen plain, he 
 recognised it, the short, eager yelp of wolves hot on 
 the chase. 
 
 Wolves ? Surely at some time he had fought wolves. 
 The recollection of it was very dim, but something stirred 
 within him, his hand gripped his axe with new vigour, 
 a thrill ran through him from foot to head, and he was 
 nearer to his old self than he had been since the past 
 dropped from him. 
 
 He ran towards the distant sounds and became 
 aware of a new one, a quick "click-click-click," and then 
 a break, and then " click-click-click," drawing rapidly 
 towards him. And presently he saw a dim form loom- 
 ing large on the twilight of the snow, with a mob of 
 smaller beasts yelping at its heels. Every now and 
 again the hunted one would turn and sweep its pur- 
 suers into a snarling scatter with its head, and then on 
 again, " click-click-click," panting heavily and well- 
 nigh spent. 
 
 The man's blood boiled in him, from the tips of his 
 
THE LONG ROAD 327 
 
 gripping fingers to the crown of his bursting head, as 
 he flung himself upon them. He was all aflame with 
 the joy of battle as he cleft through bone and sinew and 
 bristling fronts of shaggy fur. They leaped at him like 
 fiends, with fetid pantings and furious gnashings and 
 the eyes of lost souls, and he laughed aloud as he 
 shook himself free of them and stretched them one by 
 one upon the snow till not a single one was left, for death 
 was in the grip of his fingers and the bite of his axe, 
 and the strange, mad joy of slaughter was upon him. 
 
 Then, when all that could go had fled and the rest 
 lay dead, he went to look at the hunted one, and found 
 it lying spent and panting, its red-tipped antlers fur- 
 rowing the snow with every breath. He soothed it 
 gently, and it lay looking doubtfully up at him out of its 
 great sad eyes. It was bleeding in several places from 
 the sharp fangs of the wolves, but the blood froze and 
 dried as he looked. He delved into the snow with his 
 axe and rooted up some moss, and the poor beast 
 nibbled it gratefully. When he turned to go, it lum- 
 bered heavily to its feet and followed him back to his 
 hut. He gave it an armful of moss, and it lay in the 
 snow and ruminated thoughtfully on the hardships of 
 reindeer life and the unbridled appetites of wolves. 
 
 And the man could not sleep that night. His blood 
 had been stirred beyond its wont. His brain was 
 quickened to new life. The forgotten past beat on the 
 closed doors like a wild bird against the bars, and he 
 
328 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 came nearer to himself than he had been since the 
 curtain fell. 
 
 His ill-assorted family gave him constant occupation. 
 Instinct and natural depravity sent his wolves leaping 
 at the newcomer the moment they set eyes on it, and the 
 reindeer received them with lowered antlers and immi- 
 nent death. By dint of chastisement and much scold- 
 ing, he succeeded in convincing the sharp noses that 
 deer meat was not their portion in life, and they patched 
 up an armed truce, and became in time so far accus- 
 tomed to one another as to live together without fighting. 
 
 Then, at last, the long grim night began to soften 
 over the distant forest-lands. He watched it with a 
 gleam of hope. The darkness was certainly lightening. 
 In time the curse might pass. 
 
 And so one time for there being no day and no 
 night he had lost all count of time when he crept out 
 of his hut, he found daylight returned and the red rim 
 of the sun peeping at him over the distant hummocks 
 of the wide white plains. He fell on his knees in the 
 snow and thanked God, in his own way, for the blessed 
 sight of it. The curse had passed and God had not 
 forgotten him. 
 
CHAPTER LXIV 
 
 THE coming of the sun quickened all things to new 
 life. 
 
 The moss land shook off its thrall of ice and snow, 
 and gloomed gray and brown again, with here and there 
 a feeble green. The stunted and misshapen forest 
 trees broke out into bud and leaf. The hollows mir- 
 rored clear blue skies in their glassy pools, and up the 
 river and all its shallow tributaries the silver salmon 
 came leaping, in such strenuous shoals that all the waters 
 and even the air above the water were aglow with them, 
 and for the man the time of plenty had come. And from 
 beyond the forest-lands came flocks of birds so immense 
 that at times the sky was hidden by them. 
 
 Everything sang of the loosing of fetters and the joys 
 of freedom. The mosses were alive, the waters teemed 
 with life and laughed up at the sun, and the air was full 
 of the whirr and chatter of birds. 
 
 It was in keeping with the natural resurrection going 
 on all about him that the man whose brain had been 
 so long in bonds and darkness should drop his shackles 
 also and come forth whole and free. 
 
 More than once of late he had come very near to 
 - 329 
 
330 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 the edge of the curtain. It had rustled in front of him 
 as if about to rise. 
 
 The quickening of the spring told in him also. Per- 
 haps the ampler faring helped, for now he had but to 
 dip his hand into one of the shallow streams and seize 
 a fish and he lived well. 
 
 He was like a man whom some fact or word or name 
 for the moment eludes. It is on the tip of his tongue, 
 but he cannot just grasp it. The slightest thing may 
 suggest it, and it was just that slightest thirfg that let 
 the light into Stepan Iline's darkened brain. 
 
 He had gone to pick up a fish for his morning meal, 
 with his wolf-cubs frisking gaily at his heels. As he 
 bent to the water, his eye lighted on a bunch of frail 
 blue flowers, the first he had seen that season. 
 
 He stood for a moment staring eagerly at them. 
 Something stirred in his brain. He fell on his knees 
 beside them and murmured, ''Little Katenka !" 
 
 He gathered the flowers, forgetful of his fish, and went 
 back quickly to his hut, and there was a new light of 
 expectancy in his face. He looked in through the open 
 door. The light died out of his face, and it crumpled 
 suddenly with the rush of his thronging thoughts. 
 
 He drew his open hand across his eyes and brow, as 
 though bodily lifting away the curtain behind which his 
 life had lain so long. Then he sat heavily down, star- 
 ing fixedly at the blue flowers in his hand. 
 
 And presently he was lying on his face, with his hands 
 
THE LONG ROAD 331 
 
 clasping his aching head, as the unwonted thoughts 
 came struggling into it. And slowly, slowly, with the 
 pains almost of a new birth, the black veil drew off 
 from his brain and the past came back to him. 
 
 "Little Katenka ! Katia ! Baby Stepan !" he 
 had them all at last. Then " Peter Krop !" 
 
 Then he got to Paschkin, and the blood boiled 
 dangerously in his head. And then he remembered 
 Paschkin was past, and he recalled that other little 
 Katenka, whose pleading face had turned the edge 
 of his thirsty axe, when it could have drunk its fill of 
 Paschkin. 
 
 Slowly and painfully he pieced it all together, with 
 many a deep sigh as the harrow of awakening memory 
 raked open the old wounds, and bitter grinding of teeth 
 at every thought of Paschkin. 
 
 They were all gone out of his life, all gone. 
 
 Stay ! There was Peter Krop. Peter had been 
 good to him. He wondered if he too was dead. He 
 had been dead himself and now he was alive again. 
 Perhaps Old Peter was still alive. He would go and see. 
 
 And then and there, just as he was, with all the in- 
 consequence of a jangled mind, he set off in search of 
 him. 
 
 His axe was in his belt, his staff in his hand. He set 
 his face to the distant woods, and never once looked 
 back to the house, which he left with its door standing 
 wide. 
 
332 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 His wolves bounded before him, delighted to be up 
 and doing. His reindeer followed like a dog. 
 
 So Stepan Iline came out of the shadows and back to 
 his kind. 
 
CHAPTER LXV 
 
 Six days later, with his menagerie toiling down- 
 castly in the rear, Iline stumbled silently into an en- 
 campment of wandering Samoyedes in the woods. 
 He had walked doggedly on, looking neither to the 
 right hand nor to the left, possessed of only one idea and 
 living mostly in the past. He had rested little and 
 eaten less, and would undoubtedly have dropped and 
 died before long had he not fallen in with the wanderers. 
 
 They eyed him with wonder, but saw that he was 
 starving and gave him food, which made him sick at 
 first, but presently strengthened him. They questioned 
 him as well as they were able, and set him down as 
 possessed when he told them he had passed the winter 
 alone in the tundra. As one short-witted but harmless, 
 they suffered him among them, and found him of use, 
 whatever his lack might be. And, since they were 
 sure to seek the lower steppes sooner or later, he stayed 
 with them gratefully and repaid them as he could. 
 
 They were a slow-blooded, none-too-nimble-witted 
 race, their round hairless faces and deep heavy-lidded 
 eyes full of cunning, their manners and customs as 
 debased as well could be. But he had nothing worth 
 stealing, and now that he had come to himself he 
 
 333 
 
334 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 craved human companionship. His soul in exile had 
 shunned its fellows and been satisfied with the more 
 tolerant beasts. Now, even the company of these 
 uncouth wanderers was sweet to him. 
 
 One of the occupants of the jurt in which he was per- 
 mitted a corner puzzled him for a time. He sat at 
 meals with the rest, but never seemed to eat, though 
 food was always offered to him. Most of his time was 
 spent in a corner opposite the one Stepan occupied, 
 and he sat there all day long without moving or speaking. 
 He was muffled up in reindeer skins and was evidently 
 helpless, for he had to be carried to and from his place, 
 and at night had to be undressed and laid in his 
 bed. 
 
 Stepan watched him with compassion. Here was one 
 in worse case even than himself. Pity moved him to 
 the proffer of service. When he ventured it, to his 
 amazement he found its object a wooden image, and 
 learned later that it represented the head of the family 
 who had died two years before, but was in this strange 
 way kept still alive in their memories. 
 
 That was one of the least unpleasant of their many 
 curious customs, but they were not without their good 
 points. They were skilled hunters and trappers, 
 hardy and courageous in the chase ; and when the hunt- 
 ing was good, they lived well and did not grudge the 
 stranger his portion. In the handling of the axe he 
 could beat them all, and so repaid them in the fashion- 
 
THE LONG ROAD 335 
 
 ing of household implements and the tinkering of their 
 sledges. 
 
 His chief troubles arose through his wolves. They 
 were very tame, but were none the less offensive to 
 the herds of reindeer which were the nomads' chief 
 possessions, and he was for ever having to defend them 
 from the assaults of their enemies. 
 
 He excited his hosts' perpetual astonishment, too, 
 in the nicety of his eating, and most especially in his 
 insistence upon cooking his food and that of his wolves. 
 For themselves, flesh was flesh and fish was fish, and 
 whether cooked or raw was entirely matter of individual 
 taste and enterprise. Finally he took to binding his 
 wolves' mouths so that they should eat only what he gave 
 them, whereby they were at a disadvantage with other 
 dogs scarcely more domesticated than themselves; 
 and many a battle royal ensued, till the man built a 
 tiny jurt of his own and let them sleep inside with 
 him, as they had done in the hut on the moss. 
 
 He was very quiet, very silent, very gentle, especially 
 with the women and the children. Something there 
 was about him which attracted the latter beyond the 
 bounds of fear or shyness, and made him fellow to them 
 all. He played with them, carried the*m on his back, 
 made rude toys for them, nursed them when they were 
 out of sorts, and never one of them ever had from him 
 harsh word or angry look. Whereby he unconsciously 
 captured their mothers' liking too, and many a dainty 
 
336 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 such as it was found its way to the stranger's 
 platter. Not that their dainties greatly appealed to 
 him, for habit had made his requirements small, but 
 in every child he found something of his lost Katenka, 
 and in every woman a reminder of Katia. 
 
 From his silence and reserve, and the fact that he had 
 come alone out of the northern wilds, the men deemed 
 him first crazy, then possessed, and in the latter estate 
 were inclined to treat him with somewhat of the awe 
 which was the allotted portion of their own occasional 
 mystery-men. But his unprofessional lack of de- 
 mands upon their credulity or their pockets puzzled 
 them exceedingly, and their minds remained in 
 doubt. 
 
 There came a day, however, which raised him high in 
 their estimation, and after that they treated him almost 
 as one of themselves. 
 
 They were travelling slowly southwards through 
 interminable forest-lands, where the trees grew so close 
 and so tall that their journeying was in perpetual 
 twilight. Their course was slow and spasmodic. 
 Where they camped and set up their jurts, there they 
 stopped till their herds of reindeer had cleared the 
 neighbourhood of sustenance. Then they sought fresh 
 pasturage. Their greatest trouble was with the wolves 
 which were still ranging the twilight woods, seeking 
 what they might devour, since it was still too early for 
 their daintier faring on baby sealdom up north. Con- 
 
THE LONG ROAD 337 
 
 stant watchfulness was necessary, and in this the stranger 
 took his full share. 
 
 One night, while he was on duty in the rough en- 
 closure i-nto which the reindeer were always driven, it 
 was attacked by an unusually hungry pack of prowlers. 
 The men of the camp gathered hastily with their spears 
 to repel them. The stranger, with nothing but his 
 axe, leaped out among the snarling crew, and with 
 eager cries and raised laughter smote them right and 
 left, with such exuberance of enjoyment in the slaughter 
 as confirmed the onlookers in their belief in his posses- 
 sion. Single-handed he hacked and cleft, heedless of 
 bitings and tearings, and so far removed from thought 
 of fear that his joy in the battle was obvious to all. 
 And when the hungry yelpers turned at last and fled, 
 he pursued them with jeers and scornful cries. The 
 men of the camp were tried hunters, but no man among 
 them would have fought a pack of hungry wolves 
 single-handed. A vast amazement entered into their 
 new regard for him, so very different was he from the 
 gentle player with the children they had taken him to 
 be, and thereafter they looked upon him with deference 
 and respect. 
 
 What it was that set him to the building of another 
 house on wheels it would not be easy to say. Possibly 
 the discomforts of his tiny skin tent, and the trouble of 
 constantly taking it to pieces and putting it together 
 again, possibly the desire for congenial occupation. 
 
338 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 Possibly the sight of tree trunks so symmetrically 
 round that the suggestion of wheels in them was in- 
 evitable. 
 
 Whatever the reason, the idea came to him and he 
 set to work to carry it out. His wheels were the result 
 of hundreds of years of slow upbuilding and of months 
 of careful fashioning. But once he had them to his 
 mind, the rest proceeded apace. Wood was there for 
 the taking, but of tools he had hardly any beyond his 
 axe. The outcome was strength rather than elegance, 
 but it served. 
 
 His hands were never idle, and yet his small friends 
 were cognisant of no neglect. With patient persist- 
 ence he hacked and chopped and shaped, and the 
 children sat watching the chips fly and wondered what 
 he was making. Piece by piece he got together the 
 framework of his house, transporting it, when they 
 moved from place to place, on the backs of his reindeer, 
 of which he now owned half a dozen, the outcome of 
 the mingled feelings of the community respecting liis 
 valour, his good nature, and his incomprehensibility. 
 
 The building did him good. It occupied his mind 
 and strengthened it with long, deep thoughts of that 
 other house and its occupants. Those dearest ones 
 of all were gone, indeed, and could never be replaced. 
 He could build a new house, but he could not people 
 it again, nor furnish it with that perfect happiness 
 which comes of perfect contentment. Here were other 
 
THE LONG ROAD 339 
 
 helpless ones, however, and the treasures of a heart 
 that was naturally full of tenderness, but which had been 
 warped and twisted by man's malignancy, were given 
 freely to these alien ones. 
 
 When, in due time, during a longer halt than usual, 
 he at last put his house together, pinning it firmly with 
 wooden bolts for lack of nails, and set it on its platform 
 on the wheels, the astonishment of the onlookers was 
 great. Here surely was a man beyond most. He 
 played with children like a child, fought wolves in the 
 pack single-handed, and built houses on wheels the 
 like of which neither they nor their fathers had ever 
 wildly dreamed of. 
 
 He accustomed his reindeer to drag the house, and, 
 going or standing, from the first turn of the creaking 
 wheels, it was rarely free of children. All day long it 
 rang with merry shouts and laughter, but they only 
 made him think the more of what he had lost, and he 
 was gravely silent amid it all. 
 
 When the nomads met the traders to bargain off their 
 accumulated pelts for such necessaries and luxuries 
 as their wanderings craved, the silent one came to the 
 front once more. Hitherto the wily traders had had 
 things very much their own way, with corresponding 
 enjoyment and profit to themselves. Iline listened to 
 the bargaining for some time in silence, but he had had 
 too much business experience not to perceive the dis- 
 advantages under which his rustic friends laboured, 
 
340 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 and was too friendly disposed toward them not to resent 
 it. 
 
 He stepped quietly into the trafficking, and took their 
 interests in hand in a way that set many eyes on both 
 sides wider than their wont. His friends got half 
 as much again for their goods as they had ever got 
 before, and Stepan Iline became a man of still greater 
 consequence among them. In such very high esteem 
 was he held, indeed, that when in the course of their 
 regular wanderings they set their faces to the east, 
 and he would have gone on to the south, they could not 
 bring themselves to the parting, and at last succeeded 
 in getting him to stay with them for a time longer. 
 
 After all, there was much to induce him thereto. 
 It was a life of absolute freedom, secure in the immensity 
 of its range from any possible interference from police, 
 governor, or Tzar. His position in the little community 
 was one of honour, his influence great, and the results 
 visible already in the more reputable habits which his 
 life among them had inspired. 
 
 Perhaps the most remarkable outward manifestation 
 of his unconscious influence and their upward progress 
 was the spirit of emulation which set them all to the 
 construction of caravans similar to his own. He did 
 his best to dissuade them, pointing out that he had 
 built his for travelling south over the steppes, and that 
 for their winter journeyings over the snow and through 
 the forest- lands their own methods were the best. 
 
THE LONG ROAD 341 
 
 But they were like children after new toys and would 
 not be put off, and so long as they kept to the steppes 
 they found their houses on wheels all that they had 
 hoped. When the winter came, and they took to the 
 woods after pelts and furs, they found his views were 
 right, and finally they left their caravans all in a row on 
 the border of the forest-lands to be picked up on their 
 return in the spring. 
 
 For over a year he lived with them, sharing all their 
 labours of the chase and of the road, to their great 
 content and greatly to his own upbuilding and strength- 
 ening. And then, when their faces were once more set 
 to the south, the longing came over him again for Peter 
 Krop and the old life, in spite of all its limitations and 
 restraints. 
 
 He saw them advantageously through their trafficking 
 once more, and then, in spite of all they could urge, 
 exchanged his reindeer a goodly herd by this time 
 for a couple of horses, and with his own collection of 
 skins and furs as the basis of a new start in life, 
 bade them farewell, and laid his lonely course for the 
 Yenisei. 
 
 The men and women stood gazing gloomily after him 
 till he was out of sight, and the children wept aloud at 
 his going and missed him sorely for many a day.' Hav- 
 ing known no other life, they could not understand why 
 he should want to leave them, and if he had tried to 
 make it clear to them he could not have done so. With 
 
342 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 them he had everything man could want, honour, in- 
 fluence, comparative wealth, and he was going back 
 to the narrower life of the made roads and villages, to 
 the arbitrary control of authority, to the bonds of civil- 
 ised life, to Peter Krop. 
 
 It was the thought of old Peter, the man who had 
 befriended him in his need, that drew him back. If 
 Peter should be dead, like all the rest of those he had 
 loved, he would come back, he said to himself, and live 
 and die with these newer friends in the wilderness. 
 
 And so he waved his last farewells to the wanderers 
 and set his face steadily to the Yenisei. 
 
CHAPTER LXVI 
 
 IT was more than three years since Stepan Iline had 
 disappeared so strangely from Krasnoiarsk, when Peter 
 Krop, lying peacefully in the door of his travelling 
 house as it jogged slowly northward along the border 
 toward Terchinsk one evening, got a surprise which 
 he never quite got over. 
 
 For, coming along the road from the opposite direc- 
 tion, he saw in the distance another house on wheels, 
 so like his own that for a time he believed himself to 
 be dreaming. By its side walked a man, and to and 
 fro, before and behind, bounded a couple of huge, long- 
 legged brown dogs with bushy tails. Peter looked at 
 them again and thought they were wolves, and when 
 they came near he was sure of it, and so were his 
 horses. 
 
 But he had little time to give to them just then, for 
 the man who strode by the side of his team, with a 
 long, firm step that told of strength, waved his hand to 
 him, and came running along with the bounding beasts 
 at his side, and Peter's horses snorted at the near 
 sight and smell of them. 
 
 " Stepan Iline! Is it possible?" cried old Peter, 
 with raised hands. "Now, God be praised! I 
 thought you dead." 
 
 343 
 
344 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 "I have been dead, but am come to life again," said 
 Stepan. 
 
 " Where have you been?" asked old Peter, in vast 
 amazement. 
 
 "I have been among the northern men who live on 
 the edge of the great moss-land. But for how long I 
 do not know." 
 
 "It is over three years since you went away." 
 
 "Three years !" said Stepan, musingly. "That is a 
 long time to be dead. But they have been quiet years, 
 and now I am alive again," and old Peter regarded him 
 gravely. 
 
 "I do not think I am out of my mind, Peter Petro- 
 vitch," said Stepan. "But when one has been dead 
 three years, one does not come back all at once." 
 
 "And what have you been doing up there all the 
 time?" 
 
 "For much of the time I do not know. But since 
 then I have built my house. The wheels are not good, 
 but I will get better ones. You see, when I came to 
 life, I knew the time would come when I must keep 
 moving on again. A dead man may rest in peace, but 
 when one is alive one must keep moving on." 
 
 "But you will stop with me now, Stepan Ivanovitch," 
 said Peter Krop, with a great longing swimming in his 
 dark eyes. 
 
 And Stepan, seeing how old and lonely he looked, 
 said: "Yes, I will stop with you, Peter Petrovitch, as 
 
THE LONG ROAD 345 
 
 long as I may. And that is what I came for, but I 
 must keep moving on, you know." 
 
 "I will move on too," said the old man, and thence- 
 forward they journeyed in company. 
 
 "I have something of thine inside here," said old 
 Peter, suddenly, as they sat side by side on the front 
 seat of his caravan, as being the smoother goer of the 
 two. 
 
 " What then?" 
 
 "Up there in the corner," said the old man, with a 
 backward jerk of the shoulder. 
 
 And Stepan, peering in, encountered the solemn gaze 
 of a pair of great, round eyes, and scrambled quickly 
 inside. 
 
 "It is the little white brother," he said huskily, over- 
 come with the crowding thoughts the sight of the little 
 one evoked. And he lifted him gently down from his 
 perch alongside the holy images, and stroked him 
 tenderly, and the little brother bit his finger softly by 
 way of greeting. 
 
 "Philip Alexandrovitch, of the inn at Krasnoiarsk, 
 said you left him in his care, and he had fed him each 
 day. But he was very sad when first I found him. 
 He has been happier since we have been on the road," 
 said Peter, when Stepan had come back and sat down 
 beside him. And they rode for a long while in 
 silence. 
 
 "It seems strange, you know, Peter Petrovitch, that 
 
346 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 the little brother should live when all the others are 
 gone," said Stepan, musingly, after a long time. 
 
 "It is the will of God," said old Peter, quietly. 
 
 Bit by bit, as they rode together and sat over their 
 fire of a night, Peter drew from him what he remem- 
 bered of the past three years. It was not much nor 
 very connected, but Peter's shrewd wits were able to 
 fill in some of the gaps. 
 
 Stepan told him, somewhat shamefacedly, of how he 
 had had Paschkin under his axe and let him go. 
 
 "But I could not kill him unless I killed the child 
 first, Peter Krop," he said deprecatingly. "And I could 
 not kill the child, no, not if it had been to save my own 
 life. She was so very like my own little Katenka." 
 
 "You did quite right," said Peter, slowly. "Your 
 soul will sleep the quieter that his blood is not on your 
 hands. He is dead." 
 
 "Paschkin is dead?" said Stepan, with a kindling 
 of the eye. 
 
 "He was killed by the Cossacks whom he tried to 
 put down with an overstrong hand." 
 
 "And the little Katenka?" 
 
 "I have never even heard speak of her. You are 
 quite sure Stepan Ivanovitch " he began. 
 
 "Quite sure she was real?" said Stepan, soberly. 
 "She was real enough to turn my axe, which had 
 thirsted seven years for Paschkin's blood, Peter Petro- 
 vitch." 
 
THE LONG ROAD 347 
 
 "It may have been an angel sent by God to save 
 you from the shedding of blood," said old Peter, 
 thoughtfully. 
 
 "Undoubtedly! But all the same she came with 
 Paschkin, which is strange to think of, and she stayed 
 with him, which is stranger still." 
 
 Old Peter, in his own mind, was doubtful, but he 
 knew better than to say so. Whatever Stepan's state 
 of mind had been during the years he was "dead," it 
 was sound enough now, though slightly out of touch 
 with things, as was but natural. 
 
 Stepan's wolves were for a time a source of dis- 
 quietude to old Peter, as they were to his horses. But 
 Stepan in his quaint way explained them thus : 
 
 "They are a part of myself, Peter Petrovitch. When 
 everything else went from me, that night in the snow, 
 these were given to me to care for. When all that had 
 been in my heart died out of it because Paschkin still 
 lived, these two lay in my bosom, and I have come to 
 love them. They were with me in the moss-land, and 
 they were all I had. They do not know they are 
 wolves, and they have never eaten raw in their lives. 
 I can see their mother's eyes yet as I chopped her in 
 two while she ate to feed them. She was only a wolf, 
 but yet she was a mother, and I cannot forget her. If 
 ever they learn they are wolves, I may have to kill them, 
 but I hope they will not, for I love them." 
 
 At times he spoke of Katia, and little Katenka, and 
 
348 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 Baby Stepan, and of the happy times they had had 
 together, and for every Katia and Katenka and Stepan 
 he came across on their rounds he had kindly words 
 and little gifts. 
 
 Those names opened his heart and his hand, and as 
 the names were as good as any others and gifts in that 
 land were rare, it came to pass that all along the routes 
 he travelled, Katias, Katenkas, and Stepans sprang up 
 like flowers round a spongy hollow of the steppe. And 
 when they saw him coming they ran to meet him with 
 merry shouts and open arms, and he gathered them 
 all in, a rich harvest to a heart that had well-nigh died 
 of starvation. 
 
 Old Peter watched it all with dry smiles and kindly 
 eyes. It was against his principles to give anything 
 for nothing, and he was naturally of a somewhat mis- 
 trustful nature. But he saw that it gladdened Stepan's 
 heart and he would not interfere with his bargaining, 
 unprofitable though it was from a worldly point of view. 
 This man was to him as the son returned to his father, 
 and he would deny him nothing. 
 
 He tried hard to get Paschkin's decree reversed, now 
 that Paschkin was dead. But it was no one's business 
 to reverse it, and no one would take it upon himself 
 to do so, and at last he gave it up. 
 
 The first time Stepan found himself within reach of 
 Orkaorsk, away down in the south of Tomsk, he 
 journeyed thither and unburdened himself of a debt. 
 
THE LONG ROAD 349 
 
 He found out the relatives of Ignat Festal and restored 
 to them the money he had found on Festal' s dead body, 
 and a liberal allowance for his horses. And Pestal's 
 relatives, not at all understanding the matter, but under- 
 standing perfectly the value of money, rejoiced greatly 
 and did not mourn unduly over Ignat, who had wasted 
 his substance in too copious libations and had been 
 something of a nuisance. 
 
CHAPTER LXVII 
 
 As soon as the first snows fell, Stepan insisted on old 
 Peter laying up in winter quarters. Then, having seen 
 him comfortably settled, he set off again with his own 
 old house and his wolves, and sometimes Peter never 
 set eyes on him for months. And when he did come 
 back, if the house on wheels could have talked, it 
 would have had strange stories to tell. 
 
 For wherever Stepan heard of raidings by the bloody 
 fangs, there he went. And whenever he could come 
 across them, he fought them, with gun and spear and 
 axe, as no man ever fought them before. 
 
 And the Katias and Katenkas and Stepans of the 
 marches would have fled if they had seen him then. 
 For he fought as one possessed Berserk he fought, 
 with wild shouts of laughter and derisive cries, while 
 he shore through bristling ruffs and gnashing teeth 
 and eyes like hungry devils, as they leaped at his 
 throat. And he felt once more the fierce lust of slaughter 
 and the mad thrill that ran through leg and loin as they 
 tightened to the fight, through hand and arm, through 
 muscle and sinew, right up into his brain, and he lived 
 life at its keenest in the face of leaping death and felt 
 the deaths die out close under his hand. 
 
 350 
 
THE LONG ROAD 351 
 
 At such times he was scarcely human, but it made 
 for quietness at other times. For, once his rage was 
 spent, he was all man again; and he came back to 
 Peter Krop, scarred and torn on the outside, indeed, 
 but gentle and kindly within. And all the spring and 
 summer and autumn they jogged quietly along their 
 accustomed rounds, and the village folk welcomed 
 them everywhere, and all the little Katias and Katenkas 
 and Stepans ran to meet the house on wheels with open 
 arms and shouts of happy laughter. 
 
 Time came when Peter Krop received his call, and 
 when he lay dying in the old house on wheels which 
 had known Katia and little Katenka and Baby Stepan, 
 he gave Stepan his blessing, and told him where his 
 money was bestowed and how to lay hands upon it. 
 
 "You will not make it grow," he said, smiling a 
 little sadly at the thought. 
 
 "Yea, but I will, Peter Petrovitch." 
 
 "Ay, I know in your own way. And you might 
 so easily make twenty, thirty per cent on it." 
 
 "I will do better than that." 
 
 "Well, it is yours, my son. Do with it as you will, 
 but you will never be a rich man." 
 
 "I am richer than most already, and now I shall be 
 richer still." 
 
 But old Peter knew in what his riches consisted, and 
 he only smiled and shook his head at such unbusiness- 
 like notions. 
 
352 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 "Do with it as you will," he said again. "I thank 
 God who brought us together. Lay me by your wife 
 and the little ones on the hillside by Chernsk. Per- 
 haps, in the mercy of God, we shall all meet 
 again." 
 
 And Stepan buried him there as he had wished, with 
 the two wolves gambolling in the first thin flurries of 
 the winter's snow as mourners. 
 
 He fought their kinsfolk of the steppes more fiercely 
 than ever that winter, but left themselves in charge of 
 Gnut of the hut on the river bank, with strict injunctions 
 to feed them nothing raw and to see that they got no 
 fishbones. 
 
 And in the spring, with cooled blood and clear eyes, 
 he journeyed to Krasnoiarsk and bought him bells, a 
 deep, clear " crimson" in the middle, which he called 
 Katia, and two silvery chimers at the sides, which he 
 called little Katenka and Baby Stepan, and when the 
 sound of them rang out, sweet and plaintive along the 
 steppes and up the valleys, all their little namesakes 
 ran out to greet them and him with open arms and 
 shouts of merry laughter. 
 
 As Peter Krop had foretold, he did not make the 
 money grow as Peter himself would have done, but, as 
 he had foretold himself, he reaped a mighty harvest of 
 a different kind, cent per cent and more, in the joy of 
 giving, and never regretted the other. 
 
 The mothers used laughingly to tell him that he was 
 
THE LONG ROAD 353 
 
 growing closer in his dealings as he grew older. But 
 that, he told them, was for their good, since, unless they 
 paid proper prices, they would never know the value 
 of money. And if he took with one hand he gave 
 with the other to those who could not buy. 
 
 When the Katias and Katenkas grew up to years of 
 indiscretion, and married the Stepans who could barely 
 support them, there came simple additions to the 
 meagre furnishings of the callow nests, from the same 
 open hand that had furnished shoubkas and capotes 
 and shoes to growing boys and girls. 
 
 When the never-failing babies came, from the same 
 
 observant hand came cradles and gear, and the babies 
 
 were naturally all Katias and thereby all Katenkas 
 
 - or Stepans. So that all that country side is full of 
 
 Katias and Stepans to this day. 
 
 And that which had been imposed as a curse distilled 
 itself in blessing, and Stepan Iline through strait doors 
 entered into a wide place. 
 
 While he lived he was an institution. When he died 
 he became a legend. 
 
 Never once did he set foot in Irkutsk after Katia 
 joined him, and never once did he remain longer than 
 ten days in any one place, except that time when they 
 were snowed up in the hills beyond Chernsk, and again 
 during that blank space when he lost count of time and 
 lived alone on the great moss-land and among the 
 wanderers of the twilight woods. 
 
 2 A 
 
354 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 He died, as he had lived, on the road. And, literally, 
 on the move. 
 
 For one day the sweet-toned bells rang out his 
 coming, and the children ran to greet the white-haired 
 old man with open arms and shouts of merry laughter, 
 and for once he did not answer them. They trooped 
 along beside the house on wheels in murmuring sur- 
 prise, till their elders came, and stopped the horses, 
 and climbed inside, and found him lying dead, with a 
 smile on his face, and, in the breast of his sheepskin 
 coat, a little white owl, which blinked feebly and 
 pecked remonstratively at those who, for his own good, 
 drew him gently out. But the wolves which used to 
 frolic in front of the horses were gone, and they were 
 never seen again. 
 
 He had turned his horses toward Chernsk when he 
 felt the end coming, and they buried him out on the 
 hillside by the side of those he loved. 
 
 But the little white brother lived on in that village 
 for many years, cared for by all, and died at last full 
 of wisdom and honour. And the boy who would have 
 dared to throw stick or stone at Stepan Iline's little 
 white owl would have repented the deed in sackcloth 
 and ashes, and would not have sat down in comfort for 
 very many days. 
 
 And the mothers of that country still tell to wide- 
 eyed little Katenkas and Stepans the stories they heard 
 from their mothers, which they again heard from their 
 
THE LONG ROAD 355 
 
 mothers, and they from theirs as far back as you 
 please of the strange, good Stepan Iline, who travelled 
 the land in a house on wheels, with two gaunt brown 
 wolves bounding before him, and a little white owl 
 on its perch inside, and never stopped anywhere, yet 
 brought a blessing wherever he went. 
 
 And sometimes, when the wind is howling round the 
 wooden roofs, little ears are on the strain, and little 
 fingers go to little lips, and little hopeful voices say, 
 "S-s! I hear the bells of Stepan Iline!" and they 
 wish they had lived in the times when his bells rang 
 out along the steppes and all the children ran to meet 
 him. 
 
 For the very earliest thing they remember, when they 
 were nothing but little round bundles, with little round 
 buttons for noses, and little blue dots for eyes, was 
 this : 
 
 Whisht, Baby ! Whisht ! 
 
 Quick below the cover ! 
 
 Down into your nest, my bird ! 
 
 And don't you dare peep over! 
 
 For the gray wolves they are prowling, 
 
 They are prowling, they are prowling. 
 
 And the snow wind it is howling, 
 
 It is howling, it is howling. 
 
 Hark! Hark! - 
 
 Out there in the dark 
 
 Ow ooh ! Ow ooh ! 
 
 S-s-s-s-s-seee oo ooh ! 
 
 And the wolves they are lean, 
 
 So-o-o lean, so-o-o lean ! 
 
356 THE LONG ROAD 
 
 And the wind it is keen, 
 
 So-o-o keen, so-o-o keen ! 
 
 And they seek little babies who aren't sleeping ! 
 
 But lie you still, my Baby dear ! 
 
 Lie still, lie still, and maybe you'll hear 
 
 Hark! Hark! 
 
 Out there in the dark, 
 
 The silver bells and the golden bells, 
 
 The swinging bells and the singing bells, 
 
 The bells that are heard but never are seen, 
 
 The wind and the wolves, and the bells in between, 
 
 The bells of Iline, 
 
 Good Stepan Iline, 
 
 The bells of good Stepan 
 
 Iline! 
 
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 ii 
 
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 14 
 
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