od!

[Illustration]

_THE LUCK OF IVAN THE FORGETFUL_

[Illustration: "A strange sight brought her to a standstill."]

_THE LUCK OF IVAN THE FORGETFUL_

I

The old convict spent the whole day walking up and down the prison
courtyard, wearing a gloomy expression and sunk in deep meditation like
a man trying to recollect something which he had long forgotten. He was
entered on the roll of prisoners as Ivan the Forgetful, but his
fellow-prisoners nicknamed him "Ivan the Runaway," because of his
numerous attempts to escape. No one spoke to him, for all knew that
nothing could be got from him but words of abuse and gloomy looks. On
this particular day Ivan the Runaway was in a specially bad humour.

The spring had arrived in the previous night, and the mounds of snow at
the corners of the grey towers, which in winter were so hard that the
prisoners could amuse themselves by climbing on them, were now as full
of holes as a sponge and discharged dirty-looking rivulets into the
pools near them.

The sky was so warm and bright, and the wind blew so softly that a
strange giddiness seized the old man, and the thick walls with the
iron-barred windows seemed to him more hateful than ever. He was taken
back to his cell; the key turned creaking in the door; he felt as though
something in his heart were turned round with it, and his expression
became more gloomy and morose than ever; he looked at the door like a
hunted wolf. Ah, if he could only grip the warder's throat!--one squeeze
would finish the business! The convict went to the window, and laid his
hot face against the cold rusty iron bars. He could not gaze long enough
at the deep blue sky behind them, and dreamt of dark forests, wide
fields and majestic rivers rolling freely along. Just then a little
cloud rose and hung motionless in space; rosy lights passed over it and
its edges glowed like fiery gold. "The sun is setting," thought the
prisoner, and lingered by the window till the little wandering cloud
turned pale and was lost in the darkness, and the first star began to
tremble in the sky. Ivan the Runaway went to sleep, but in dreams he
heard the tops of the pines whispering, and the fir-cones dropping on
the soft soil of the forest; he heard invisible wings beating and the
stream fretting against the gnarled roots which barred its way to
liberty.

II

The first thunderstorm, the harbinger of spring, has aroused the earth
from her light slumbe