ds of blue whirling smoke;
the birch-trunk over which the sparks danced, contracted itself as
though in a spasm, till it finally flared up in a sheet of fire, and the
solitary man felt ever more painfully conscious that he too was every
one's enemy, and was only tolerated in this wilderness like those
creatures whose howling so strangely thrilled his heart. The darkness
which seemed to press from all sides on the fire looked between the grey
pine-trunks on the gloomy face of the convict, and listened to his
moody murmuring.

IV

Ivan the Runaway wandered farther through dark forests over waste silent
stretches of land and wide moors where his step left behind it little
cold pools in the spongy ground, and where the wildfowl gathered on the
mossy hillocks and chattered cheerfully in the sunshine. At last he came
across traces of human existence. It was true that from the pine-tree
which he climbed up he could perceive in the grey plain enclosed by
woods neither cottage roofs nor smoke, though it was such a clear day
that the streamlets which ran between the hillocks shone brightly and
dazzled his eyes which were accustomed to the darkness of the forest.
But yet the district seemed to be inhabited. A firm yellow road wound in
a broad semicircle round the moor. The ruts left by the cart-wheels of
the previous year crossed each other distinctly, but no new wheels had
ground the dry clods of earth into dust. Probably the road was seldom
used; at any rate the fugitive sat for hours in his tree, without
hearing in the distance the creaking of the ungreased axle of a
peasant's cart.

From the road there branched off a path which seemed to lead to a
distant village. Ivan was heartily tired of his diet of wood-game, and
began to consider whether he could venture into a village to buy bread.
In the pocket of the murdered huntsman he had found a rouble-note and
some silver coins. It was true that his hair had not grown again the
normal length, but he could tie a piece of cloth round his half-shorn
skull; and need not take it off when he entered a shop. "One buys what
one wants, and goes one's way, that is all," he said to re-assure
himself, for he felt a nervous antipathy to meeting any one, just as a
wolf fears every yelping cur as soon as he wanders by mistake into a
village.

At last he determined to go on quite slowly so as to reach the village
under cover of the approaching darkness. With this idea he turned into
the p