"Yes, it is true," Mikail replied. "I never talk of her. I dare not even let myself think of her, it seems too great a happiness to be true; and something may occur, one never knows. Ah, Ivan, if it had not been for you what news would have been taken to her! Think of it, after her long journey out here; after waiting ten years for me, to hear that it was useless. I tremble like a leaf when I think of it. That night I lay awake all night and cried like a young child, not for myself, you know, but for her. She has taken a cottage already, and is furnishing it with her savings. She is allowed to write to me, you know, once every month. At first it was every three months. What happiness it was to me when my first five years was up and she could write once a month! Do you think I shall know her? She will have changed much. I tell myself that always; and I--I have changed much too, but she will know me, I am sure she will know me. I tremble now at the thought of our meeting, Ivan; but I ought not to talk so, I ought not to speak to you of my happiness--you, who have no friend waiting to see you." "I like to hear you talk of your wife, Mikail. My friends are a long way off indeed; but I hope that I shall see them before very long." "You think that you may be pardoned?" Mikail asked. "No, I mean to escape." "Ah, lad," Mikail said kindly, "I don't suppose there is ever a prisoner comes here who does not say to himself, I will escape. Every spring there are thousands who take to the woods, and scarce one of these but hopes never to see the inside of a prison again, and yet they come back, every one of them." "But there have been escapes, Mikail, therefore there is nothing impossible in it." "There are twenty thousand convicts cross the frontier every year, lad. There is not one man makes his escape in five years." "Well, I mean to be the man this five years, Mikail." "I would not try if I were you. Were you in on a life sentence for murder, or still worse, as a political prisoner, I would say try if you like, for you would have nothing to lose; but you have a good prospect now. I am sure you must have been a political, but now that you have been a wanderer you are so no longer. You have won the governor's good-will, and as soon as your time is up, perhaps before, you will be allowed to live outside the prison. If you go away in the spring you will, when you return as winter comes on, forfeit all this, and have to begin again. When you come out there will be my little hut ready for you, and such a welcome from my wife and me that you will forget how small and rough it is, and there you will live with us till your five years are up, and you can go anywhere you like in Siberia."