"But she will rouse the neighbours to seek you!" cried Yarina. "They will come at once to search the river banks. And who knows! Okhrim squints askance at me, as if he suspected me of being one of you. He can't bear my adopted little ones. They may search my house, and all over the place. Michael, you and Velia must get away to the forest at once." The village was already sinking into stillness and darkness, except the inn, where the window was still lit up. But they avoided the street as much as possible, and stole along little by-paths familiar to them. It was not so late that the watch-dogs were in full vigilance, and they only growled a little in the fold-yards. The sky was full of stars so bright as to cast their shadows before them as they stepped southwards. All the pleasant yet weird sounds of night accompanied them; the shrill sighing of the wind across the stubble of the cornfields; the drowsy twittering of the birds, roused a little by their passing footsteps; the melancholy cry of the owls flitting past them in pursuit of the night-moths; the bats were zig-zagging through the sweet air, especially over the ponds, and a thin white mist hung all over the land. Michael and Velia walked on hand in hand, almost speechless, but immeasurably happy. It seemed to them as if they were wandering in some utterly strange country, and, exhausted as they were with the perils and the strong emotions of the last few hours, they only felt a joy beyond words. CHAPTER XXXI RESCUED THE forest was dark with a blackness that blotted out every object. But here they were absolutely safe till morning. There was not a man in Knishi who would dare to enter it. Michael lighted Yarina's lantern, and guided Velia to the hut. His dreamy joy was changing into a clear, rejoicing triumph over the success of his perilous undertaking. He had rescued his sister, and the rapture of a saviour was his. True, there were perils ahead, but none like those through which they had already passed. He made Velia lie down on his bed of dried leaves, but he slept little himself, his brain was too busy with exciting thoughts. All the past events crossed his memory—the happy life for a few years in Knishi, whilst the spirit of persecution slumbered a little; the goodness of Father Cyril, and the opposition he made to further persecution; the secret meetings for worship held in this haunted hut; the long fatal journey to Siberia; and the condition of the exiles, when he left them, just before the close of winter. All that was in the past, but it is a past which will never die out of his memory, and which will come back to him in every hour of quiet thought.