"I never heard of such a thing," the other said. "They have to work; they wash and mend our clothes, and scrub the floors, and help the cooks, but that is all. After working for a certain time, according to the length of their sentence, they are allowed to live out of prison, and after a still further time are at liberty to settle down anywhere in Siberia they choose." "Have you been here long?" Godfrey asked. "I have been here three years," he said, "and I should be out by this time if I had not run away last year." "How did you get on?" "I got on well enough till the cold weather came. There are plenty of berries in the woods, and besides we occasionally came down and stole things from the carts waiting at night at the post-houses. We got a chest of tea once, and that lasted us all through the summer. There were ten of us together. Besides that, the people all along the road are very good to escaped prisoners. They dare not give them anything, because, if it were known they did so, they would be severely punished; but on the window-sill of almost every house is placed at night a plate with food on it, in case any wanderer should come along. Of course when winter came I had to give myself up." "Do you think escape altogether is possible?" "I don't say that it is not possible, for some have done it; but I suppose for every one who has tried it, hundreds have died. There is no living in the mountains in winter. Men do get free. There are a great many private mines, and in some of these they ask no questions, but are glad enough to engage anyone who comes along. After working there as a free labourer for a couple of years it is comparatively easy to move somewhere else, and in time one may even settle down as a free labourer in a town; but there is no getting right away then, for no one can leave Siberia without a passport giving particulars of all his life. "You are not thinking of trying, are you? because, if you will take my advice, you won't. It is all very well to go out for a summer holiday, but that is a very different thing from attempting an escape. I was a fool to try it, but I had such a longing to be in the woods that I could not help it. So now I shall be obliged to work here for a couple of years longer before I can live outside the prison. I am here for knocking down my colonel. We were both in love with the same girl. She liked me best, and her father liked him best. He was a tyrannical brute. One day he insulted me before her, and I knocked him down. I was tried for that, and he trumped up a lot of other charges against me; and there was no difficulty in getting plenty of hounds to swear to them. So you see here I am with a ten years' sentence. I don't know that I am not lucky." "How is that?" Godfrey asked.