Young Alexis celebrated his thirteenth birthday on the eve of departure. The family attended a special service and afterwards offered up the customary prayers for a safe journey. They were going into the unknown. Here in their own familiar surroundings life had not been so terrible towards the end of their captivity. What had the future in store? The war was still in progress. They could not leave the country. Perhaps when peace came, some quiet refuge would open its gates, and they could live happily together. The girls and the boy were delighted like all young things over the prospect of a journey. Alexis and his sisters had quite recovered from their illness. At midnight of the 13th August Kerensky came to the palace, assembled the soldiers who had been selected to escort the family, and made them a speech. “You have guarded the Tsar’s family here,” he said, “you also will have to guard them in the new place where they are going by order of the Council of Ministers. Remember, one does not hit a man who is down. Bear yourselves like men, not like cads.” He then entered the palace. The ex-Tsar’s only brother, the Grand Duke Michael, had been permitted to come to say good-bye. Kerensky gave him ten minutes with Nicholas, remaining in the room with them. The brothers were never to meet again. Michael did not see any other member of the family. Learning that the Tsar’s family was to be removed from Tsarskoe-Selo the men employed at the railway station refused to let out the engine. All night the exiles waited for the train. It came at six o’clock in the morning. CHAPTER VI EXILE IN SIBERIA The period between autumn, 1917, and the following spring furnishes much material for this tragic history. It was during their exile in Siberia that the fate of the Romanovs was decided--not in the Urals. It was at Tobolsk, in the close intimacy that misfortune naturally brings, that the true character of each captive, high and low, asserted itself. Thus, invaluable _data_ has been obtained for the historian. At first the captives enjoyed the respite of remoteness from the storm centre of Petrograd. But many circumstances gradually impaired this advantage. They began to suffer privations even before the Reds captured the government. The remittances promised by Kerensky did not arrive. After the Bolshevist usurpation, the captives were allowed starvation rations, and had to eke out their livelihood by needlework, drawings, etc. Then the boy fell ill with one of his periodical attacks, aggravated by the exhausting effects of the Siberian winter and inadequate diet.