The question how to escape did not leave me for a moment. The only people from whom I hoped to get the necessary information were the Orloffs, who lived in the village of Ribinskoye, the nearest to ours, and I decided to make my way in that direction. I was afraid to ask the peasants for aid, notwithstanding their sympathetic attitude. Besides, I knew that if the authorities found out that somebody had driven me to Ribinskoye the poor peasants would be held responsible for my escape. There was one way left to me, and that was to walk the distance of twenty-eight miles which separated the two villages. The road to Ribinskoye I knew well enough.

On the second day after my return from Irkutsk I got up at daybreak, dressed as warmly as I could, and with a few pieces of bread tied in a handkerchief set out in the direction of Ribinskoye. The whole village was fast asleep, but the very huts seemed to watch my steps. Every sound made my heart beat faster, and I looked around expecting to see somebody running in pursuit. Soon I came to the end of the village. The smooth, silvery road stretched before me. I straightened up, drew a full breath of clear, frosty air, and quickened my pace. My fear had disappeared. Calmly I looked at the snow-covered forest which stood on both sides of the road, and I walked faster and faster, dreaming of freedom for myself and my country.

I don’t know how long I walked thus. I only remember that a sharp pang of hunger interrupted my dreams, and I began to consume one piece of bread after another, without slackening my pace. Suddenly I heard the clatter of horse’s hoofs behind me. Without stopping to think for a second, I turned to the forest, but the sleigh was near me before I had time to get under the cover of the trees.

“Where are you going?” a voice called to me. I turned around. It was a peasant who lived in a neighboring village. He knew me well.

“I am going to Ribinskoye,” I replied indifferently, “and have no money to hire a sleigh.”

“Get in,” he said. “I am going there, too, and will give you a lift.”

A few hours later I was at the house of the Orloffs. The tiny arms of their child embraced me.

“I won’t let you go away from us no more,” he said, patting my cheek.

The cold in the house was fearful. The wretched poverty in which the Orloffs lived astonished even me. A rickety table, two broken chairs, and an ancient wooden bed which squeaked and lurched every time one sat down on it made up all their possessions.

When I told them that I had decided to escape they were glad for me.

“I don’t see how we can live here,” said Mrs. Orloff. “The child is growing; he will soon be three years old. We can not earn anything here. The money which I get from home is hardly sufficient to pay rent and buy fire-wood.”

She looked haggard and worn, and it seemed to me that tuberculosis had already laid its stamp on her beautiful face.

Mr. Orloff hastened to change the conversation.

“Yes,” he said, “now, after the ‘Bloody Sunday,’ we must give up the delusion that we can bring about better conditions by peaceful propaganda. We must fight tyranny with its own weapons. Such outrages of the Government can be responded to only by bombs and bullets. Eh, if we could only get out of here!”

He paced the room, hardly able to control his emotion.

“How can you escape with the child?” I said. “You will be recognized immediately.”

“Yes, this is the only thing which keeps us back,” answered Orloff dejectedly.

I looked sorrowfully at these young people who were deprived of everything in life and whose only child hindered them from making an attempt to regain their freedom. A slow death from hunger and cold awaited them. I looked at the innocent little child who was slowly wasting away before the very eyes of his parents, and a happy thought struck me.

“Listen,” I turned to the Orloffs. “I will take your child with me, and you will escape later. The police will look for me _alone_ and for you _with a child_, and this change of parts will save us all.”

For a moment their sad faces brightened with hope.

“Bória,” I said to the boy, “do you want to go to Grandma with me?”

“Yes, I do,” he replied with a determined look. “I shall go, and Mamma shall go, and Papa shall go. I don’t want to be here; it’s cold here.”

In a few hours the affair was settled. I was to take the child to its grandparents in Vilna, and the Orloffs were to escape after receiving word from me that everything was “all right.”

In the evening Mr. Orloff found a peasant who agreed to drive me to the next village, a distance of forty miles, for three rubles. The following day we spent in making warm clothes for the child and preparing for the long journey. As soon as it grew dark the driver came to call me.

The mother embraced her child and me for the last time.

“I entrust him to you,” she said, weeping bitterly. “He is all I have in this life.”

“_Mámotchka_, don’t cry. I don’t want you to cry. Better come with me to Grandma. I don’t want to leave you here.”

He brought his mother’s coat and tried to put it on her.

“Hurry up, hurry up,” urged the driver. Mr. Orloff took the child in his arms, kissed his weeping wife, and we went out. The night was still and cold. Heaps of snow covered the ground. We walked rapidly, and the frost squeaked under our feet. At the end of the village stood our sleigh. The horses impatiently dug the snow with their hoofs. I sat down, Mr. Orloff put the child in my lap, kissed him once more, gave my hand a tight squeeze, and we started.

The sleigh glided swiftly over the smooth road. The horses ran, and the driver hummed a tune. I pressed the child in my bosom, and listened to his regular breathing. Soon the driver got out of the sleigh and ran alongside the horses trying to warm himself. I did not move, being afraid to disturb the child, who was sound asleep.

At four o’clock in the morning we arrived in the village, and knocked on the door of a peasant hut. We were admitted. To all questions where I came from and where I was going, I replied in a plaintive voice that the child had been left an orphan and I was taking him to his grandparents in Russia.

After an hour’s stay in the hut, during which I warmed my frozen limbs and fed the child, I decided to go farther. My plan was to drive as far as Krasnoyarsk, to hide in that city so long as it was necessary for the hue and cry caused by my escape to subside, and then proceed to Vilna by railroad. My host readily consented to take me to the next village.

“Give three rubles, and I’ll drive fast,” he said.

At six o’clock I sat again with the child in my lap, and we renewed our journey over the endless road which ran through the Siberian _taigá_.[19] In the afternoon we came to the village. From there an old peasant drove me farther. He charged me only one ruble, saying that I was going far and needed the money.

For two days and three nights we rode thus, stopping only to warm ourselves and change horses. I hardly slept all this time. Sitting in the sleigh and listening to the roar of the wind in the taigá I wondered if we would ever reach Krasnoyarsk alive.

In the morning of the third day the child became sick. He cried, and complained of pain in his body. The severe cold, lack of warm food, and constant sitting in the sleigh had proved too much for him. I had to stop for a whole day. My anxiety knew no bounds. To the worry over the child’s sickness was added the fear that the police might overtake me. Toward evening the child felt better, and we set out again.

At last there remained only about ten miles to Krasnoyarsk. I was beginning to think myself out of danger, when in the middle of the day, on the road to Krasnoyarsk, I heard behind me the voice of our uryádnik. “Stop, stop! Whom are you driving?” he shouted to my driver. My blood grew cold. Instinctively I hid my face behind the child’s back. I heard the footsteps of people near me, but saw nothing.

“A woman with a child,” said one of them. “Go ahead!”

I hugged and kissed the child who had saved me from certain arrest. I promised the driver _na vódku_[20] and he let the horses go at full gallop.

Finally we arrived in Krasnoyarsk, and stopped at a hotel. I felt sick. All my body was aching from the long ride. The child had grown terribly thin, and his dear little face showed traces of hunger and cold. Both of us needed a good rest, but I had spent more money than I had intended, and owing to lack of funds, I could not stop at Krasnoyarsk for long. Having paid all the money I had for a second-class railroad ticket to Vilna, I left the city after a twenty-four hours’ stay at the hotel.

The long journey from Krasnoyarsk to Vilna passed without any serious incidents. The child proved the best protection from the searching eyes of the police and gendarmes. The spies who swarmed at every big station did not pay the least attention to me. They evidently could not think of such a combination. When we came to Chelyabinsk—the border line between Siberia and European Russia—and had to change trains, our car was suddenly locked, and the passengers were let out singly and their passports examined. I held the child in my arms, and the gendarmes passed me without a question.

On the fifth of March I came to Vilna, and delivered the child to its grandparents. I sent a telegraphic message to the Orloffs telling them that their child was safe. Being only a short distance from my home, I decided to see my parents. I ran a terrible risk, as my parents must have been shadowed by the secret police, but my love for them proved stronger than all considerations of prudence and safety. That very day I despatched a comrade with a letter to my parents, and in the evening they came to me. The joy of our meeting seemed to make us forget all the past sorrows and sufferings.

“I will not give you any more to _them_,” mother repeated over and again, without even attempting to dry the tears which ran in streams down her face.

Father took out fifty rubles and said to me:

“This money I borrowed. Take it and go abroad. There you will be safe from all the horrors which you have lived through.”

“Father, I can not do that. The thing which was done to me and thousands of others can not go unpunished. I can not let it go.”

My father took my head in his hands and looked with his soft eyes straight into mine.

“O, God! what have they made of you? You do not even cry, and there is so much hatred in your eyes, even at the sight of your old parents.”

“I can not, I can not,” I kept saying. The hands of my father tenderly pressed me closer and closer to his breast.

“Look,” he said with tears in his voice, “how gray the three years of your imprisonment have made me. What will become of us if you are imprisoned again?”

“Father, dear Father, listen to me. It is beyond my strength to endure the suffering and persecution to which you and millions like you are subjected. I can not bear it. And to put an end to it we must be strong, and must fight. I will go and _kill_ the murderers and tyrants, and hundreds will follow my example. And if I die....”

My father drew back, and stood staring at me in speechless terror. My mother ceased crying. Unable to stand the ordeal any longer, I threw myself on the bed, hid my face in a pillow, and wept for a long, long time, sobbing like a child.

On the next day Father and Mother went to the railroad station to see me off. I boarded a train for Minsk. From there a Jewish contrabandist directed me to the Austrian border. After hiding for three days in a small frontier town, I safely crossed the border into Brody.

Footnote 9:

Overcoat.

Footnote 10:

Provision-money.

Footnote 11:

Cell.

Footnote 12:

Convicts who are being transported.

Footnote 13:

_Siberia and the Exile System_, Vol. I, p. 87.

Footnote 14:

Sleeping-platforms.

Footnote 15:

Springless wooden carts.

Footnote 16:

Chief of village police.

Footnote 17:

Head-man.

Footnote 18:

Cossack whips.

Footnote 19:

Forest.

Footnote 20:

Drink-money.