When the midday halt was called, the food collected by the way was divided among them all. A rough sense of fairness and comradeship prevailed among this band of murderers, robbers, and criminals of various kinds and degrees; besides the political prisoners and persecuted Stundists. They slept under the same roof, and traversed side by side the same road; their lives were absolutely similar, as far as the Government could make them. The autumn came, and with the rain the dust disappeared. For a short interval the long-drawn-out pilgrimage was more endurable. The weather was still warm, and the sunshine was soft and genial. The leaves were still upon the trees. The vast, unfenced cornfields were bare. Innumerable flocks of birds fluttered over the stubble, feeding on the grain which had been too ripe to carry. In the villages the gifts were more bountiful with the abundance of the harvest. Flowers lingered in dells and hollows, where the frosty night-breeze passed above them. The convict band felt this cheering change. There was a less languid stepping out, and they were better fed. The children began to laugh and play again; and even the women looked less wretched and exhausted. But the autumnal rains grew heavy and persistent, and still the endless journey continued. The shoes provided for the convicts had fallen to pieces a week or two after they started; and they had tramped barefoot through the hot dust. One shirt of coarse linen was given to them once in six months; these were in rags. Their coats and trousers were also of grey linen, and were equally tattered. The voluntary exiles were scarcely better off, though they wore their own clothes. But each was allowed only a small bag for carrying all the possessions they wished to take with them into exile. Many of them had sold what they could spare for food. Under the pitiless rain, drenched to the skin, they travelled on, the chilly breeze benumbing their ill-fed and emaciated bodies, and the mud, half-frozen, oozing through their worn-out shoes. Nor was there much relief when they gained the shelter of an étape, for they could not dry their saturated rags, nor had they any change of clothing. They must sleep as they were on the wooden platform, in their drenched and dirty garments; the natural warmth of so many closely packed human beings producing a malarious steam, added to the already foul air. Shivering with cold, yet seething in a reeking atmosphere, the miserable creatures could not rest in sleep. [Illustration: THE PROCESSION CRAWLED ACROSS THE SNOWCLAD PLAINS.]