te autumn
and early spring (they stopped in winter quarters in the coldest
months), they often floundered along through mud nearly knee deep. Often
the mud was frozen in the morning and their feet would break through.
Perhaps their shoes were completely worn out, but no mercy was shown
them and they had to make their way barefooted.

There was one thing the guards could not do, however, and that was to
keep them still. As they went on their way they kept up a kind of a wail
that was said to be the saddest chant that human ears ever heard. For
miles and miles this mournful wail could be heard by the few people who
lived in villages along the way. Sometimes, however, these villages were
fifty or a hundred miles apart. But this wail was kept up continually.
Every plan imaginable was used to stop it, but this could not be done
and the guards and officers grew accustomed to it and let it go. No
wonder that even yet in Siberia the call of the milkmaid is something
like the wail of the exiles.

One of the most thrilling events during the war was the opening of the
Siberian prison doors in the spring of 1917, when more than one hundred
thousand exiles walked out as free men and women. In the great Irkutsk
prison a company of men were watching some of their fellow prisoners
being flogged when a man appeared at the door saying: "Russia is a
republic and you are all free." Instantly all was excitement. The
officers fled for their lives. Even the prison blacksmiths fled, for
they had welded the shackles on thousands of prisoners and they feared
vengeance. Other smiths were pressed into service and were compelled to
work all night long cutting these iron chains. Many were chained to
wheelbarrows and of course could not get away until their irons were
broken. A committee of public safety was formed at once and precautions
taken. A banquet was prepared in the dismissed governor's palace and
sixty men whose chains had not been cut loose sat down at the table with
their chains rattling.

In one place the priest, while performing his duties in the church,
heard the news and announced it. Fifty men rushed out to kill the local
police captain who had been a regular tyrant. As they came to his home
they were met by the captain's ten-year-old daughter, who stood in front
of her father and calmly said: "You will have to kill me first," and
thus she saved his life.

In five days after the revolution, six thousand exiles had reached
Irkuts