"You can escape if you will, Paul Ivanuitch," he said, laying his hand eagerly on Pavlof's arm. "Promise me that you will escape and tell her all this." "I would do much to be of service to Hope Ivanovna, Serge Petrovitch. I will do what I can." "Ay!--I remember," said Palma, looking at him thoughtfully. "Well, I can trust you, Paul Ivanuitch. I would trust you with my life." "You may trust me, Serge Petrovitch. A man has but one life and he can put it to no higher use than the service of his friends." And thereafter Palma suffered more cheerfully, in the thought that sooner or later Hope Ivanovna would hear news of him and the assurances of his endless love and devotion. Perhaps the most visibly cheerful member of all their company was old Gregory of the barrow. In his former estate he was lowest of the low, and of no account. Here, through the fewness of his wants and the consequent equanimity and cheerfulness of his bearing, he walked head above his fellows, and became a dispenser of largesse. He persisted in keeping as near to Pavlof and Palma as he could manage it, and wherever he might start in the line, before long the squeak of his barrow and the clink of his chains were heard just behind them. "Hi! You're in a mighty hurry to get there, Old Squeaky Barrow," some would growl, as he pushed past them. "All right! All right!" he would chirp, with a face like a winter apple. "I like to be in good company, and these two barins are for me." His barrow was rarely empty, and its most frequent occupant was the small girl with the slate-blue cat to whom he had given rides in the prison yard at Tomsk. She flatly refused to ride in a teléga among strange people. She toddled along holding by her grim-faced father's hand, and clasping her cat with the other arm until she was tired, and then climbed up into Old Gregory's barrow or her father's arms, and prattled away to one or other as merrily as though life were one long picnic, and convicts and prisons were not. And when "Little Darling," as old Gregory called her, was walking on her own account, or being carried by her father, the squeaky barrow was still never empty. Now it held some other tired child clasping a bunch of flowers; now the impedimenta of some weary mother. And as to largesse, he was for ever giving away bits of brick tea to the women who had children, and scraps of food to the children themselves. "It doesn't take much to keep me alive," he chirped, when they wondered at him. "You see, when one hasn't been used to much one doesn't need it. Yes! Yes! Yes! Take it, take it! I don't want it."