Colonel Zazarin troubled them little. He was not their immediate official head, and only came in contact with them by a descent from his pedestal. They had shown him as plainly as they dared, when he did call upon them, that he was not wanted, and by degrees his visits fell off. Then, too, he had had a great scare with the typhus, and he still deemed it good for his health to keep aloof from prisons and prisoners as much as he possibly could. So all through that winter the heart of the stove glowed warmly, and the samovar was always on the boil. And Hope Pavlova baked incessantly, and was busy and happy from morning till night, but happiest at night when her little house was packed like a biscuit-box with less favoured folk, whose faces smiled at sight of her in spite of all their woes. So radiant was she then that they wondered at her new rich beauty, and discussed among themselves what had come to her. And over their tea and cakes, to which some of them had been looking forward with keen anticipation all through the long cold day, they talked and talked--these victims of great ideas, and very harmless victims, most of them--and sometimes they laughed and sometimes even sang. A smaller sphere could hardly have been found, nor a narrower, nor a gloomier. But these two, by the wealth of love that was in their own hearts, and by the beauty of life that had come to them through their love, touched all these smaller lives with the gladness of hope, and strengthened them for the sorrows they had to bear. It was in those long winter days and nights that Hope undertook to introduce her husband to the peculiarities and beauties of the English language, which she herself, as her mother's daughter, spoke with ease and fluency. He was an apt pupil, and made rapid progress, and many a hearty laugh rose over their lessons and his first barbarous attempts at pronunciation. That was how, thanks to her stringent drilling, he came, in later days, to speak English like an educated Scotchman, an accomplishment which any man may be proud of, and which stood him in good stead when the time came. Yes, winter at Kara is a hard and bitter time at best, and for some a time of dull anguish and black despair. To such, as far as they could get at them, Hope and Pavlof became minor providences, where the major came like to be forgotten or abjured through utter hopelessness and misery. They cheered, and comforted, and fed starved souls and bodies alike, and shared to the full their own overflowing happiness with those who had none, and felt the richer for all they gave. CHAPTER XXII HOW THE CUP SPILLED So the winter waxed and waned, and the skies began to brighten to the spring. The snows disappeared, except on the hills, the roads were knee-deep tracts of mud, and Colonel Zazarin, having escaped the typhus, was down with typhoid, and was a very sick man.