He did not seem old; on the contrary, he looked strong and muscular. He was delirious, apparently reliving his recent past, while a look of distress disfigured his face. Fate had played him a sorry trick. He had tramped thousands of versts through the Siberian forests and mountains, had suffered countless dangers and privations, always urged onward by a consuming homesickness, and sustained by one hope--that he might live to see his native place, and be once more with his own people, if it were but for a month, or even a week. Then he would be resigned, even if he had to go back again. But it chanced that when only a few hundred versts from his native village he had been recaptured, and confined in this prison. Suddenly his mutterings ceased. His eyes dilated, and his breathing became more even--Brighter dreams flitted across his fevered brain--The forest soughs--He knows it well, that soughing; monotonous, musical, and powerful--He can distinguish its various tones; the language of each tree: the majestic pine, dusky green, rustling high overhead--the whispering cedars--the bright, merry birch, tossing its flexible branches--the trembling aspen, fluttering its timid, sensitive leaves--The free birds sing; the stream rushes across the stony chasm; and a swarm of gibbering magpies, detectives of the forest, are soaring in the air over the path followed by the vagrant through this almost impenetrable thicket. It seemed as if a breeze from the free forest were wafted through the prison cell. The invalid sat up and drew a long breath, gazing intently before him, while a sudden gleam of consciousness flashed into his eyes--The vagrant, the habitual fugitive, beheld before him an unaccustomed sight--an open door? In his frame, enfeebled by disease, a powerful instinct sprang to life. His delirium either disappeared, or centred itself on one idea, which, like a ray of sunlight, illumined the chaos of his thoughts. Alone! and with an open door! In a moment he was on his feet. It seemed as if the fever had left his brain, and was only perceptible in his eyes, which had a fixed and menacing expression. Some one had just come out from the church, leaving the door ajar. The strains of the harmonious singing, subdued by the distance, reached the ear of the vagrant, and then died away. His face softened, his eyes grew dim, and his imagination reproduced a long cherished scene: A mild night, the whisper of the pines, their branches swaying above the old church of his native village--a throng of countrymen; the lights reflected in the river, and this same chant--He must make haste with his journey, that he may hear this at home, with his family! All this time, in the corridor, near the church door, the overseer prayed devoutly, kneeling, and touching his forehead to the ground.