Michael and Sergius were saddened. The long march, which had now lasted many weeks, was not without its charm for them. They did not shrink from its hardships. True, they were often hungry and thirsty, but that was the common lot of poor travellers. They were dirty and in rags, that was little and inevitable. They marched barefoot, that was their custom in the summer. They were quite prepared to endure greater hardships than these. They were passing through strange scenery, which had great charms for them. Now winding through the gloomy shades of vast forests; then crossing steppes which seemed boundless; creeping along the margin of swift rivers, and being rowed across them on rude ferryboats; climbing up steep mountain-paths, and going down again into beautiful valleys. They marched from twenty to twenty-five miles a day; not often more quickly than at the rate of two miles an hour, on account of the convicts burdened with leg-fetters, the heavy waggons, and the women walking in the wake of the men. Ten or twelve hours a day they were out in the open air, with the bright, though burning, blue of the cloudless sky above them. Michael and Sergius, hardy as young bears, enjoyed these long marches. Besides all this, the enthusiasm of the Stundist band filled their hearts. The sober triumph of the men rose to rapture in the boys. Still, they could not shut their eyes to the grief and misery which perpetually surrounded them. The faces of the exiles, burnt to blackness by the sun, wore a look of stolid despair, into which they had sunk after the first rage and anguish at their position had subsided. Here was a small batch of human beings, some of them dangerous criminals, cut off from all association with the outer world by a living wall of armed soldiers, some of whom were irreclaimable brutes. As they marched on, their living prison walls moved with them, uttering stern threats and menacing oaths. Already each one knew all his comrades, and all that those comrades chose to tell. A profound and stupefying dulness fell upon them. Day after day they marched on like men in a dream; the only break in the monotony being the change of guards at various stages. To-day was like yesterday, and to-morrow would be as to-day. They knew, too, that, isolated and solitary as they were, there was another band of banished men and women, precisely like themselves, pacing the same road only a few days in advance; and that behind them, week after week, hearts as heavy and hard as their own were beating along the same dolorous way. For scores of years this sad procession had been passing along the Great Siberian Road. They had left traces of themselves, messages written on the dirty walls of the étapes, many of which were undecipherable from age.