ing of a chain. A dark mass rolled towards the wood.
The soldier aimed hastily, a flash cut through the darkness, and the
echoes of the shot woke the forest; a cry died away in the distance.

"Ivan the Distant is hit," said Ivan the Forgetful, and darted blindly
forwards at random into the mysterious realm of the aged giant trees
which towered like shadows in the darkness of the night. Shots and cries
echoed behind him. The wood seemed to grow alive; it clutched at him
with hard horny hands, it seized the skirts of his coat and dug sharp
claws into his trembling body, it threw obstacles in his way so that he
stumbled, it drew the ground from under his feet so that he fell into a
depth; wet grass sprinkled his face with dew, and he found that he had
fallen down a steep declivity. He recovered from the shock and saw that
his fall had been arrested by the projecting stump of a tree. He raised
his head and listened. There was deep darkness and silence above him and
beneath him; only from time to time he saw the faint reflection of a
flash and heard the rolling echo of distant shots. Ivan climbed
carefully lower down and crawled farther on, looking round him on all
sides like a beast of prey and disregarding the pain of his torn hands
and knees. "It is all up with Ivan the Distant," he said to himself. "He
had no luck." And he crept on farther and farther, without knowing
whither, into the impenetrable darkness of the warm spring night.

III

O Liberty! With a thousand tongues she spoke to him, with a thousand
tones and colours she greeted the fugitive everywhere. For two weeks he
saw nothing overhead but the immense expanse of blue sky, against which
the branches with their reddish opening blossoms showed in delicate
relief. It seemed as if there were no such things in the world as gloomy
walls and rusty prison bars. Only in his dreams at times the fugitive
still heard the clanking of chains and the rattling of locks; then he
awoke in terror to see above him the starry sky of night and the waving
pine-tops. He would lie for hours without moving, listening to the
solemn sound of the wind roaring through the forest. O Liberty!

He did not know how many versts he was from the great high road, along
which he had been driven together with the whole herd of prisoners. At
first he had come across clearings and settlements in the forest, seen
the smoke of chimneys from a distance, and made a wide detour. It was
only at night t