The hour for starting was early, and Father Cyril went down to the barrier. A crowd of villagers surrounded the carts which were taking away their old friends and neighbours, probably for ever. There were nine women, the oldest, Matrona Ivanovna, nearly seventy years of age; and the youngest just over twenty, with her first baby, only two months old. Thirteen children were with them, either big boys and girls over ten years or babies under two years of age. All the children between those ages were left behind in Knishi. Six out of the nine were bereft of some of their children. One amongst them was bereft of all, and she sat in the cart, tearless and speechless, with a look of despair on her face. The others were weeping and lamenting, calling out the names of their little ones, and beseeching Father Cyril to take care of each of them. All except Tatiania, who sat still, with closed eyes, yet with an expression of secret satisfaction struggling against the sorrow of quitting her native village. Marfa gazed about her with bewildered and sombre eyes. All of them had been born there, and most of them had never been a day's journey from Knishi. They were passing out of a familiar and beloved world to enter into one of which they knew nothing. It would have been less strange to go to the City of God, whose pearly gates and streets of gold they had often dreamed about. In the crowd, watching their departure, there were brothers and sisters and other relatives who had not abandoned the Orthodox Church. The young wife who had a baby two months old had a father and mother gazing their last at her with tear-dimmed eyes. What crime had their child committed that she should be torn from them, with scarcely a hope she should ever see them again? Yarina was there, her heart aching for the mothers of the two children whom she had adopted, who were now holding their little ones in a last passionate embrace. "They shall be as my own," she cried, sobbing; "and when I know where you go, I will write to you about them." The last minute was come, and Matrona stood up in the cart where she was sitting, and looked round her with eyes dimmed with age. "I've lived here sixty-five years," she said, "and now I go away; and I shall never go to the well again, and never hear the church bells ringing. Tell me, have I done any one of you any harm? Have you aught against me? Have I ever refused to help when I could help?" "No, no, Matrona Stepanovna!" sobbed Yarina. And a shout of "No!" came from the crowd. "Then I bid you farewell comforted," said Matrona; "for this I know, that wherever they send us, we shall be in the hollow of God's hand, and no man can pluck us out of our Father's hand." "Come, we are all ready to start," said the officer who had come to convey the women and children to Kovylsk.