their flags floating from the masts. Alas! alas! on
every wharf a Russian sentinel mounted guard day and night,
challenging every one who passed, and on the deck of each ship there
was another. In vain he risked the consequences of dropping his
character of an ignorant Siberian peasant so far as to speak to a
group of sailors, first in French and then in German; they understood
neither: the idlers on the quays began to gather round in idle
curiosity, and he had to desist. In vain, despite the icy coldness of
the water, he tried swimming in the bay to approach some vessel for
the chance of getting speech of the captain or crew unseen by the
sentinel. In vain he resorted to every device which desperation could
suggest. After three days he was forced to look the terrible truth in
the face: there was no escape possible from Archangel.

Baffled and hopeless, he turned his back on the town, not knowing
where to go. To retrace his steps would be madness. He followed the
shore of the White Sea to Onega, a natural direction for pilgrims
returning from Solovetsk to take. His lonely way lay through a land of
swamp and sand, with a sparse growth of stunted pines; the midnight
sun streamed across the silent stretches; the huge waves of the White
Sea, lashed by a long storm, plunged foaming upon the desolate beach.
Days and nights of walking brought him to Onega: there was no way of
getting to sea from there, and after a short halt he resumed his
journey southward along the banks of the river Onega, hardly knowing
whither or wherefore he went. The hardships of his existence at
midsummer were fewer than at midwinter, but the dangers were greater:
the absence of a definite goal, of a distinct hope which had supported
him before, unnerved him physically. He had reached the point when he
dreaded fatigue more than risk. In spite of his familiarity with the
minutiae of Russian customs, he was nearly betrayed one day by his
ignorance of _tolokno_, a national dish. On another occasion he
stopped at the cabin of a poor old man to ask his way: the gray-beard
made him come in, and after some conversation began to confide his
religious grievances to him, which turned upon the persecutions to
which a sect of religionists is exposed in Russia for adhering to
certain peculiarities in the forms of worship. Happily, Piorowski was
well versed in these subjects. The poor old man, after dwelling long
and tearfully on the woes of his fellow-believers, lo