Wintry weather set in before they reached the Shilka. Navigation was over for the season, and the river ice was not yet solid enough for travel. So they took the rough mountain road on foot, men and women--no children now, for which Hope was most devoutly thankful--and tramped doggedly on through the pines and firs, with the keen winds whipping their faces, and the snow wreaths laying pitfalls for their stumbling feet wherever a mountain stream had overflowed the path. It was a terrible experience, but even the Kara Road has an end, and it was with a heart beating furiously with many emotions that Hope Palma saw at last the scattered buildings of Ust Kara lying in the white basin of the hills. Would she find Serge alive? And if alive, in what state of misery? Anything might have happened in the eighteen months since he was taken from her. Would Colonel Zazarin recognise her? Would he dare to continue his attentions, to the annoyance of her husband and herself? His presence there would quadruple all her fears and troubles and all Serge's difficulties and hardships, and yet any resentment of his insidious friendliness might lead to disaster. She judged him utterly unscrupulous, and they were as absolutely in his hands, for life or death, as rats in a trap. It was surely a malign fate that threw him across her path again. But she was growing hardened to the blows of misfortune. Hardened?--hardened to the blows maybe, but softened by the sore heart-bruising, and wishful only to salve her wounds with the balm and oil of service, and ready to leave the rest in higher hands. For all her thinking in all these years had only brought her at last to this--that life, with all its crying wrongs and unattainable rights, is past any human understanding, and that he or she who has looked upon these things, and known the agony of them, must take one of two courses--either abandon hope altogether, or rest it implicitly beyond the power of man. It was the following day before they reached the Lower Diggings and trooped wearily into the great stockade of the prison, where the Governor and several officials stood awaiting them. The roll was called over, the convicts detailed to their various homes of unrest, and Colonel Zazarin approached the group of forlorn women who had accompanied their husbands or come to join them. One by one they were dealt with and told where to go, and Hope's heart came near to suffocating her as he approached her last of all. "So you dared this terrible journey after all, Madame," he said courteously enough. "He should surely be a good husband for whom a wife undertakes so much." She bowed silently, and he continued-- "It was not out of any discourtesy that I left you to the last, but that I might have the pleasure of conducting you myself. If you will follow me I will take you to your husband," and she followed him in silence. He led her out of the big prison gate and down the valley.