"Not the least in the world," Alexis said quietly. "But where do you propose to go?" "I have not settled yet. It seems to me that any one with pluck and energy ought to be able to make his way out of this country somehow; besides, from what I hear great numbers do get away, and take to the woods." "Yes, but they have to give themselves up again." "That may be; but I hear also that if they give themselves up a long way from the prison they escape from, and refuse to give any account whatever of themselves, they are simply sent to prison again as vagabonds. In that case they are treated as ordinary convicts. Now from what I hear, an ordinary convict is infinitely better off than a political one. Of course you have to associate with a bad lot; still that is better than almost solitary confinement. The work they have to do is not hard, and if they are well conducted they are let out after a time, whereas there is no hope for a political prisoner. At any rate, even if I knew that if I was retaken I should be hung at once, I should try it." "But the distance to the frontier is enormous, and even when you get there you would be arrested at the first place you come to if you have no papers; besides, how could you get through the winter?" "I should get through the winter somehow," Godfrey said stoutly. "There are hundreds and thousands of people in scattered villages who live through the winter. Why shouldn't I? I would make friends with the natives in the north, and live in their huts, and hunt with them. But I am not thinking of that. The distance is, as you say, enormous, and the cold terrible. My idea is to escape by the south." "It is a desert, Godfrey." "Oh they call it a desert to frighten people from trying to escape that way. But I know there is a caravan route by which the teas come from China; besides, there are tribesmen who wander about there and pick up a living somehow. I don't say that I am going to succeed; I only say I am going to try. I may lose my life or I may be sent back again. Very well, then, I will try again some other way. We are not far from the Chinese frontier here, are we?" "No; the frontier is at Kiakhta, not more than three or four hundred miles away." "What are the people like?" "They are called Buriats, and are a sort of Mongol tribe, living generally in tents and wandering with their flocks and herds through the country like the patriarchs of old."