Among the group of convicts who marched up the valley in the gray wintry light of this particular morning was one whose figure had not lost its straightness, nor his face its look of conscious pride, in spite of the wretchedness he had endured for two long years. But his features were haunted, nevertheless, by an expression of suffering that might have defied recognition from any who knew Victor Sandoff in the days when he was the famous Inspector of the terrible Third Section. Two years had come and gone since his arrest and conviction—one year of monotonous journeying across Siberia, and one year of toil, day by day, in the gold placers of the Kara River. He had nothing to look forward to but a long vista of slavery—terminated, perhaps, by an unmarked grave among the Siberian hills, or at the best by a return to Russia in poverty, disgrace and degradation, to spend the remainder of his life shunned by all men. Strange irony of fate, that this man whose signature had sent many a poor wretch to Siberia, should come at last to the same place! Many of those by whose side he worked from day to day owed their arrest and conviction to him, but none knew him, nor did he know them. The gray convict garb makes its wearer only an indistinguished unit in the army of slaves. His thoughts—and terrible they must have been at times—Victor Sandoff kept well beneath the surface. His face was always grave, impassive, set in that rigid expression which sometimes awed his companions, and impressed even the rude Cossacks. On this morning his keen blue eyes had a far away look as he plodded over the frozen clods of snow, for it was two years to a day since the fateful 10th of January that had witnessed such a change in his life, and he could not help recalling the series of events that had wrought his undoing—the visit of Zamosc and Poussin, the interview with Vera Shamarin, and the abrupt entry of the gendarmes into his room with the terrible order of arrest. Thus absorbed he failed to note his surroundings—the squads of mounted Cossacks who galloped by or were seen at a distance, winding over some barren hill top, the eager mutterings of his companions, and the excited interest of the guards who had the convicts in charge. At sunrise that morning, while he was yet lying on his hard bed, half awake, half asleep, he had heard the dull boom of a cannon echoing through the valley, and now when a second report thundered among the hills, he glanced up, curious to know what it meant. A brief exchange of words between the Cossack officer and one of his men—who were marching close by—gave him the wished for information. “There goes another gun,” said the latter. “The fugitive must be still at large.” “They will soon capture her,” returned the other, with a harsh laugh. “It is seldom that a man gets five miles away from the valley—what can a woman hope to do?”