“Yes, almost immediately. By ill-luck a sentry noticed me and gave the alarm. It was an exciting moment as I made a dash for the forest and disappeared among the trees. Half-a-dozen soldiers pursued me, but only for a short distance, and apparently considering that they had a poor chance of capturing a fugitive in a forest, they returned to the prison for assistance. I concealed myself and waited. Presently about twenty mounted soldiers galloped past along the forest road. When they were out of sight I left my hiding-place and walked on. My position was, however, critical, therefore I returned to the Neva, as I could not lose my way beside the river. I soon came to the water’s edge. By the opposite bank were some islands and something like a lake or arm of the river, near which I could see what in the fog appeared to be masts. Close beside me on the bank sat a group of fishermen, and a little way off an old man was doing something to a boat. Having two or three roubles in my pocket, I went up and asked the old man to ferry me across the river. He consented, but asked in a conversational way why I wanted to go across. Remembering the masts, I replied that I had to go on board a schooner that lay in the distance. The old man looked at me suspiciously. “He asked who I was, and I told him that I was a working-man from Tichvin. The old man put on a very suspicious air and began a minute interrogation. I was at my wits’ end, and ready to make a dash for it; but that was out of the question: the fishermen were close by and would have caught me in five minutes. I resolved to take the bull by the horns, so I told the man that I had simply made up the former story, and that, in reality, I was an escaped political prisoner seeking a hiding-place. When the old man had asked me numerous other questions, he said: ‘Well, I won’t ferry you across myself, but I’ll tell my boy to. He’ll land you on the island, and you can stop there until to-morrow night. You’re all right so far. Only, look here, don’t you go telling anybody that you have to go to your schooner. In my young days there used to be plenty of schooners there, but for thirty years past there hasn’t been one near the place.’ “The old man then called a young fisherman, and told him to row me across to the island. On parting from the man who ferried me, I started to explore the place, which I found to be very marshy. The morning broke wet and cheerless, and I spent the day in a disused hut. When evening set in, it became too cold for me to spend the night shelterless, and as I was suffering severely from hunger, I wandered up and down the swampy forest looking for a village. By the time I succeeded in finding one it was quite dark. I knocked at a cottage door, but the people would not let me in. I went to a second and third cottage, but with no success. Finally I lost my temper, and addressing an obdurate householder, asked him where the _starosta_ lived.