Paraska, too, was gone. She threw her apron over her head, and ran away to the little room that had been made for her in a corner of the granary. She was the wife of Demyan, a Stundist, who had been sentenced to exile at the same time as Paul Rodenko, to whom the farm at Ostron belonged. He was now living at Irkutsk, in Eastern Siberia, thousands of miles away. When he went away, she had chosen to stay behind with her two babies, who were too young to bear the privations and perils of the long journey, made chiefly on foot. But when her children were four and five years of age, they had been taken from her by the Church authorities, to be brought up in the Orthodox faith, and she had never been able to find out where they were. Catherine Ivanoff had taken the broken-hearted mother, penniless and friendless, and almost maddened, into their house, and treated her as an old and cherished friend. But the forlorn woman was a prey to grief, and went through her daily life almost speechlessly. "Let us run after Paraska and speak to her," said Velia. Up the rude ladder and across the granary floor they ran to Paraska's little room, but so piteous were the sobs and cries they heard beyond the closed door, that they crept quietly away again. Yet, in spite of all, that evening was a very happy one. Alexis sat by the great stove, for it was still cool at night, with Velia on his knee, and his right arm round his son. Michael had much to tell them, and they had a thousand questions to ask. They did not avoid talking of the mother, whom they spoke of not as one dead and lost to them, but only as having reached the end of a journey, and entered the heavenly home before them. To Michael and Velia, if not to Alexis himself, heaven was as real as if it had been another land on the face of this earth. They seemed to know as much about it as they did of Siberia, or the Transcaucasus, whither so many of the Stundists had been banished, and where they might go themselves some day. Only there was this difference: they had no doubt of going to heaven, and they were not sure of going to Siberia. CHAPTER IV ESTRANGED FRIENDS MICHAEL was resolved not to let the coldness of his old friends and comrades separate him from them. True, they looked upon him as a heretic, but he had been that before he went to Scotland—that was no new thing. Of course, there was his chief friend, Kondraty's son, Sergio, a heretic like himself, whose friendship was as close and dear as ever. But Michael had been on good terms with all the village boys, and he knew they would listen with delight to the story of his travels, nee, would go into a rapture of joy over the treasures he had brought home. There were at least a dozen pocket knives, which his Uncle Sandy had bought to be given away among the lads of Knishi. He was eager to renew the good understanding and comradeship which had been broken off a year ago.