I'm thinkin'!"

VI

NORTH TO THE ARCTIC

_At home 'tis sunny September,
Though here 'tis a waste of snows,
So bleak that I scarce remember
How the scythe through the cornland goes_.

_With an aching heart I wander
Through the cold and curved wreaths,
And dream that I see meander
Brown burns amid purple heaths_:

_That I hear the stags on the mountains
Bray loud in the early morn,
And that scarlet gleams by the fountains
The red-berried wild-rose thorn_.

"It was bad enough in the Free Command," said Constantine, leaning back
in his luxurious easy-chair and joining his thin fingers easily before
him as though he were measuring the stretch between thumb and middle
finger. "But, God knows, it was Paris itself to the hell on earth up at
the Yakut Yoort."

It was a strange sentence to hear, sitting thus in the commonplace
drawing-room of a London house with the baker's boy ringing the area
bell and the last edition of the _Pall Mall_ being cried blatantly
athwart the street.

But no one could look twice at Constantine Nicolai and remain in the
land of the commonplace. I had known him nearly two years, and we had
talked much--usually on literary and newspaper topics, seldom of Russia,
and never of his experiences. Constantine and I had settled down
together as two men will sometimes do, who work together and are drawn
by a sympathy of unlikeness which neither can explain. Both of us worked
on an evening paper of pronounced views upon moral questions and a fine
feeling for a good advertising connection.

We had been sitting dreamily in the late twilight of a gloomy November
day. Work was over, and we were free till Monday morning should call us
back again to the Strand. We sat silent a long while, till Constantine
broke out unexpectedly with the words which startled me.

I looked up with a curiosity which I tried to make neither too apparent
nor yet too lukewarm.

"You were speaking of the time you spent in Siberia?" I said, as though
we had often discussed it.

"Yes; did I ever tell you how I got away?"

Constantine took out his handkerchief and flicked a speck of dust from
his clothes. He was an exception to the rule that revolutionaries care
nothing about their persons--Russian ones especially. He said that it
was because his mother was an English-woman, and England is a country
where they manufacture soap for the world.

"Yes," he continued thoughtfully, "