'I thought you knew what the life was like that I have lived for three years, but I see you don't know it; when I realized this I tried... I... well, I tried while you were eating and drinking to swallow a small piece of bread... just a tiny piece of bread... but I cannot do it... I cannot! You see, for three years... three whole years I have tasted no salt... I ate all my food without salt, and this bread is rather salt--very salt in fact, it is burning and scorching me, and probably all the other things are also very salt.' 'Certainly, some were even salted too much in our haste and eagerness,' I answered simultaneously with the student. 'Well then, eat, beloved brothers, eat, but I cannot eat anything; I shall watch you with great pleasure--eat, I beg you fervently!' and with hysterical laughter and tears he sank back into his seat. Now we understood this laugh which was like a spasm.... Not one of us was able to swallow the food which he had in his mouth. The misery of the existence of which we had longed to know something had lifted the veil off a small portion of its mysteries. We all dropped our spoons and hung our heads. How vain, how small appeared to us now the trouble we had taken about the food, how clumsy our childish enjoyment! And while we looked at the ravaged face of our brother, convulsed with spasmodic laughter and tears, a feeling of horror seized upon us.... We felt as if the spectre of death had risen from a lonely yurta somewhere behind the lost town of Zaszyversk and was staring at us with cold glassy eyes.... A dead silence brooded over the frightened assembly. KOWALSKI THE CARPENTER A SIBERIAN SKETCH BY ADAM SZYMINSKI I made his acquaintance accidentally; the chance which led to it was caused by the peculiar conditions of the Yakut spring. My readers will probably only have a very imperfect knowledge of the Yakut spring. From the middle of April onwards the sun begins to be pretty powerful in Yakutsk; in May it hardly leaves the horizon for a few hours and is roasting hot; but as long as the great Lena has not thrown off the shackles of winter, and as long as the huge masses of unmelted snow are lying in the taiga,[1] you can see no trace of spring. The snow is not warmed by the earth, which has been frozen hard to the depth of several feet, and this thick crust of ice opposes determined resistance to the lifegiving rays, and only after long, patient labour does the sun succeed in awakening to new life the secret depths of the taiga and the queen of Yakut waters, 'Granny Lena', as the Yakut calls the great river. [Footnote 1: Primaeval forest.]