Frequently the recaptured _brodyaga_ is sentenced to only a few years’ penal servitude, when he was originally sentenced for a much longer period, and thus escape not only gives him freedom for a time, but considerably lessens his punishment even after a second or third trial. This is the result of the impossibility of establishing the identity of persons arrested without passports, but the difficulty has largely disappeared in recent years with the more systematic methods of photographing the convicts. The _brodyagi_ were Ishmaelites against whom every hand was turned. The people of Siberia showed them little mercy and constantly hunted them down simply to rob them of anything they possessed. It was better than chasing an antelope, they said; the beast had only one skin, the convict had two; his coat, his shirt, boots and clothes, and something in his pockets. Again—quoting from Deutsch—there was the case of a tramp who had engaged himself as a labourer during the winter months. When paid his wages, a mere pittance, he wandered forth; his late master pursued him, shot him from behind a bush and repossessed himself of the money. The Siberian woods held many unrecognised corpses, about whom no questions were asked. Life is cheap in the great convict land. With the advent of spring, when approaching summer renders life in the woods bearable, the “free commands,” comprising persons sentenced to simple banishment or conditionally released, begin to overflow into the forests, and a constant stream of fugitives bent upon changing their lot sets westward. The signal for the start is the first note of the cuckoo; hence the prison synonym for an escape is “to go to General ‘Kukushka’ for orders.” They pass around Lake Baikal, climbing the high, barren mountains that surround it, or they cross it on a raft or empty fish cask. Their fires are to be seen in the distance guiding the hunters who are out to avenge some new outrage of the runaways.