"Nothing, nothing!" replied the convict sadly. "We have days to travel yet before we reach any hospital. If I were her mother, I'd pray God night and day to take her to Himself soon, rather than leave her alone in a prison hospital. Soon! O Mother of God! Soon! This misery is more than a child can bear." The halt came to an end too quickly, and clouds of dust rose again, hanging over and travelling along with the melancholy procession. Michael and Sergius fell back to their own places, panting with the intense heat and suffocating air. But what was their suffering compared with that of the women and children, especially those who were ill like Marfa! "Michael," said Sergius, "do you know how far we have to march like this?" "More than two thousand miles," answered Michael; "father told me last night, when I was thinking of Marfa. We are to go at a rate of about one hundred miles in six days. We can't get to the end before next February, or perhaps March, if the winter is a bad one and we are detained on the road." "Marfa can never live through that!" exclaimed Sergius. "No," replied Michael. "Nor little Clava," Sergius continued; "she's too young and too tender! Oh, Michael! If we'd only left her with Father Cyril!" "But you forget," said Michael, "your mother refused to come without her." They walked on in silence for a few minutes; and then Sergius spoke under his breath, with a faltering voice. "Michael," he said, "I feel it would do me good to curse the archbishop and the consistory." "So do I!" exclaimed Michael. The two boys halted, gazing into each other's faces, till a sharp cry of command brought them back to recollection. "No, no! It would grieve my father!" said Michael. "And mine!" Sergius added. Again they marched on silently, each pondering in his own heart the temptation that had just assailed them. "You could not have stayed behind in Knishi," said Michael at last; "you must have starved, all of you, or given up your religion. Even if we all die, it will be better than that." "Yes," answered Sergius; "father was reading to us last night, and he made me learn the verses. I was glad to learn them, for the Apostle Paul said them about himself: 'Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeyings often, perils of waters, perils of robbers, perils by my own countrymen, perils by the heathen, perils in the city, perils in the wilderness, perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness!' We've suffered nothing like that yet, Michael." "No, but we may do, if we live to be as old as he was," said Michael. "And oh," continued Sergius, with a sob, "the Apostle Paul hadn't got his mother and his little sisters with him!" CHAPTER XXI MARFA'S FUNERAL