Peter had worn his last year’s one out from much reading of it by the fire of nights with his father. And now the new one from Moscow was two months late. That was why Peter watched so anxiously every morning for the mail-sledges from Irkutsk, which was on the Petersburg side of Lake Baikal. So this morning he was pegging away fast with his hammer, his father working near by and whispering to himself, a way he had when busy. The candle was still guttering between them, the fire in the pit was smoking comfortably, and the old brass samovar was singing merrily on a shelf. Peter leaned over from his bench every few minutes, to blow a hole in the frost on the windowpane, and look up the Sofistkaya in the direction of the post-house. But he could not see far yet, from the fog, though he did see the column of unfortunates going out into the wilderness with the Cossack soldiers. Peter rather feared the Cossacks. They were “free men”—big swaggering fellows with blue breeches and yellow stripes on their tunics and some of them with colored tops in their tall _shlapkas_—round caps of fuzzy wool. And though Peter feared the Cossacks, he was also proud of them, for they were a part of Holy Russia and the power of the Czar flashed from the points of their lances as they galloped over the plains. And the Czar was Ataman of all the Cossacks, just as he was Emperor of all Russians. And there were more Russians in the world than all other peoples put together, counting the barbarians of far lands across the seas. Peter longed for the day when he would be big enough to become a soldier of majesty, and wear on his cap the little oval button—“The Eye of the Czar.” Then he would know all things. His father always smiled sadly at such ideas. “Peter Petrovitch Gorekin, a soldier of the Czar!” Peter’s father would say. “A soldier against the people, a soldier to bind our chains the tighter! Oh, Peter Petrovitch! The day will come when your eye will see and understand!” Which was a surprising thing for Peter’s father to say, for Peter could see well enough with his eyes, except when the smoke from the fire-pit blew down the stone chimney and got into his eyes while he was reading from the almanac and learning new words. Peter’s father was most anxious for Peter to learn to read as well as the priest—yes, even as well as Michael Alexandrovitch Kirsakoff, the Colonel Governor. Peter could have made many kopecks in the evenings, helping to skin sheep for the butcher, but Peter’s father insisted upon lessons with the almanac by the fire. “The labor of a man’s hands can be forced to do the will of a master,” his father would say gravely, “but the labor of a man’s head is his own, and no man can control it.” Peter could not understand that, because it was impossible to drive pegs with one’s head—it could only be done with hands and the hammer. And his father worked with his hands, too, and never did a thing with his head, or so Peter supposed.