Had his troubles been beyond endurance or had he been unable to bear the sight of human wickedness and human misery? Or was it the separation from his home, from those dear to him, that had broken him? Dominated altogether by these thoughts, I returned to the town without paying heed to anything around me. I was walking fast, almost at a run, when a long-drawn call coming from somewhere close by struck upon my ear: 'Kallarra! Kallarra!' At first I neither understood the call nor whence it came, but on frequent repetition it dawned upon me that it proceeded from the bushes at a little distance in front of me, and that it was meant to be the Yakut call 'Come here, come here, brother!' I even divined, as I came nearer, what manner of man it was that was calling. No Yakut, no Russian, be he a native or a settler, could have mispronounced this Yakut word so badly; it should have been 'Kelere!' Only my countrymen, the Masurs, could do such violence to the beautiful, sonorous Yakut language. During my long sojourn in Yakutsk I have never met a Masurian peasant who pronounced this word otherwise than 'Kallarra'. Indeed, there he was, behind the bushes beyond a bridge spanning the marsh or dried-up arm of the Lena--a man in the ordinary clothes of deported criminals; he agitated his arms violently, and continually repeated his call 'Kallarra'! This was addressed to a Yakut who became visible on the outskirts of the brushwood, but it was in vain, for the wary Yakut had no intention of drawing nearer. The caller must have realized this, for when he arrived at the bridge he called once more 'Kalare! you dog!' Then he ceased and only swore to himself: 'May you burst, may you swell, you son of a dog!' When he noticed me, he stood still. I came up to him and greeted him in Polish, 'Praised be Jesus Christ!' The peasant could not get over his amazement. 'Oh Jesus! where do you come from, sir?' he cried. We soon made friends. He lived somewhere in an uluse,[1] and had gone into the town to hire himself out for work in the gold mines; he had secured work and was to start at once, driving a herd of cattle to his new abode. He was grazing them when I met him, and as some of them had gone astray, and he was unable to drive them all across the bridge singlehanded, he was waiting for someone to come along and help him. I gladly lent him a hand, and when the herd had been got across the bridge and was quietly going along, we began to talk. I asked him with whom he was lodging. [Footnote 1: A settlement consisting of several yurtas.] 'With Kowalski,' he said. I knew all the Poles in Yakutsk, but I had never heard of Kowalski. 'Well, I mean Kowalski the carpenter.' Still I did not know whom he meant. 'Who are his friends? whom does he go to see?' I inquired. 'He is peculiar. They all know him, but he does not go to see them.' 'How do you mean: he does not go to see them?'