Ambrose and Unnas, however, were not on that account obliged to starve. They found in a shed on the island a large amount of salt fish. The monks had speared salmon on the islands during the summer, and it sometimes happened that one or more of them, together with some of the servants, would remain in the gamme for several days. Pots and cooking utensils were to be found there, and neither Ambrose nor Unnas had any need to fear either cold or hunger for awhile; they could wait for Ambrose to recover his strength, and for the people who were spared to return. After a few days had passed, most of the fifteen absent monks did return, and found to their horror the monastery destroyed, and their brothers’ half-burnt corpses lying among the ruins. They had to live for the present in a ‘bathing chamber, situated a little way from the monastery,’ which had been spared, or perhaps had not been noticed by the marauders. At first they had enough to do in burying their murdered brethren and the servants. CHAPTER VIII. REUNION. Pilgrimages are very common throughout the whole of the Russian Empire. Men, women, and children travel in company, and move from monastery to monastery, or from one holy place to another, to perform their devotions in them. There are individuals, even among the womenkind, who spend the whole of their lives in pilgrimages, although they could be in possession both of house, and home, and fortune. An unaccountable impulse seems to force them on. They have scarcely returned home from one journey, and rested for a day or so, before they are off again to journey, in want and hardship, to a fresh place, where this or that saint is buried, or where there is some celebrated shrine, with relics of this or that martyr. Many of the pilgrims, even cripples who drag themselves along with great difficulty, make pilgrimages of this character in fulfilment of some vow, and in the hope that by fulfilling the vow they may be healed of their sickness. A pilgrim is accounted a holy person in the eyes of a Russian. No door, not even that of the richest, is closed against a pilgrim, and no voice is ever raised against one. On the contrary, it is esteemed a happy occurrence, and regarded as a good omen, for a pilgrim to cross the threshold of a house. People are anxious to give them lodging and to help them on their way to their destination. There is, probably, no one who has not some sin on his conscience, or who does not feel himself all the better for making some offering to the Church, and so obtaining the prayers of some holy person; or has not had a mass offered for the departed. If a person cannot travel as a pilgrim himself, he will send offerings by the hands of a pilgrim to the various monasteries, so that he may be prayed for at this or that holy shrine. A poor man will often spend his last kopeck with this object in view. And both the rich and the poor are fully persuaded that a pilgrim would rather die than deceive them.