d, heard the familiar calls
of the warders through the cold winter air, and felt the heavy butt end
of the musket fall on his bowed back. On such occasions when he awoke,
it was a long time before the quiet breathing of Anjuta and the bear's
peaceful snoring restored him to a sense of reality. He generally spent
the remainder of such a night on his bear-skin outside the narrow hut,
enjoying the consciousness of freedom that came with the balmy coolness
of the forest and the distant murmur of the stream. The next day he was
generally in a specially good humour, played with Anjuta, and listened
to the thousand voices in which the primeval forest revealed to him its
secrets.

He never thought of the morrow; his adventurous and uncertain gipsy life
had taught him to prize to-day. So long as the sun shone, the pot boiled
merrily on the fire, and his child laughed and clapped her hands--what
more did he need? And what could the obscure future bring him, but at
the best a succession of similar days, and at the worst the dungeon and
the knout.

But in August there came a bad time. The clouds almost touched the tops
of the forest-giants, from whose bark the rain trickled down in large
cold drops; the birds were silent and the beasts crept into their lairs.
The little bear rolled himself up in his skin and growled
discontentedly. The old man and the child sat, huddling close together
in the dry hut and whispered to the accompaniment of the howling of the
wind and the pouring of the rain.

"When the black-berries are ripe, the thrushes will come from
everywhere, and I will catch you a pair," he promised the delighted
child. "But what will you do with them?"

"I will have fine games with them--but then I will let them fly;
thrushes do not like cages, do they, Grandfather?"

"Who would like a cage? Listen, Anjuta; you are a good child. Will you
come to Grandfather, if he is ever put in a cage?"

The child laughed aloud and clapped her hands. "But, Grandfather, you
are not a bird."

"There is another kind of cage which is not for birds----Ah, what do you
understand about it?"

Presently the sun shone again and it was cheerful in the forest. The
days passed monotonously but happily. Gradually the nights began to grow
cold. In the evenings the sun no longer sank in a golden mist, but
glowed with an angry red, and descended constantly more often
surrounded by thick clouds, through which it looked out like a
blood-stained eye.