* * * * * * * The dawn trod gently down the lanes of darkness. The light grew clearer and the candles became dim and useless. The outlines of the furniture crept out of the net of shadows. Through the blue mist outside the snow, valley, forest, and fields were faintly visible. From the right of the horizon dawn's red light flushed the heavens with a cold purple. Polunin drove along by the fields, trotting smoothly behind his stallion. The earth was blue and cold and ghostly, a land carved out of dreams, seemingly unsubstantial and unreal. A harsh, bitter wind blew from the north, stirring the telegraph-wires by the roadside to a loud, humming refrain. A silence as of death reigned over the land, yet life thrilled through it; and now and then piping goldfinches appeared from their winter nests in the moist green ditches, and flew ahead of Polunin; then suddenly turned aside and perched lightly on the wayside brambles. Night still lingered amid the calm splendour of the vast, primeval forest. As he drove through the shadowed glades the huge trees gently swayed their giant boughs, softly brushing aside the shroud of encompassing darkness. A golden eagle darted from its mist-wreathed eyrie and flew over the fields; then soared upwards in ever-widening circles towards the east--where, like a pale rose ribbon stretched across the sky, the light from the rising sun shed a delicate opalescent glow on the snow, which it transformed to an exquisite lilac, and the shadows, to which it lent a wonderful, mysterious, quivering blue tint. Polunin sat in his seat, huddled together, brooding morosely, deriving a grim satisfaction from the fact that--all the same--he had not broken the law. Henceforth, he never could break it; the thought of Kseniya Ippolytovna brought pain, but he would not condemn her. At home, Alena was already up and about; he embraced her fondly, clasped her in his arms, kissed her forehead; then he took up the infant and gazed lingeringly, with infinite tenderness, upon her innocent little face. The day was glorious; the golden sunlight streamed in through the windows in a shining cataract, betokening the advent of spring, and made pools of molten gold upon the floor. But the snow still lay in all its virgin whiteness over the earth. A YEAR OF THEIR LIVES I To the north, south, east, and west--in all directions for hundreds of miles--stretched forests and bogs enveloped in a wide-spread veil of lichen. Brown-trunked cedars and pines towered on high. Beneath there was a thick, impenetrable jungle of firs, alders, wild-berries, junipers, and low-hanging birches. Pungent, deep-sunken, lichen- covered springs of reddish water were hidden amidst undergrowth in little glades, couched in layers of turf bordered by red bilberries and huckleberries.