If Misheka protests against the complicated conditions of life to which he cannot entirely submit, it is rather by instinct than through reason. He is attracted by something invisible, something distant and strange, to the repugnant world which surrounds him. As a postillion of the State he has frequent communications with the distant world which glows vaguely on his mental horizon. Everything displeases him: both the savage country in which he has to live, and the world of stupid, degenerate, and miserable postillions whom he mercilessly criticizes. His random attempts to get away fail. Despairing, he becomes an accomplice in a crime so that he can leave this solitary place and go where his restless soul leads him.
At the side of Misheka we have the tragic figure of Ostrovsky, who is the exasperated victim of the evil all around him.
The author and the travelers, driven by Misheka, have seen the burning of Ostrovsky's house, which the latter burned himself so that no one could profit by it. This action strikes Misheka as wonderful.
"He begins to tell the story of the fire. Several years before, Ostrovsky had been deported for having given up the orthodox faith. His young wife and child followed him. They had been given a plot of land in a broad and deep valley, between two walls of rock. The place seemed fertile. It was not hard to sell wheat to the miners and Ostrovsky worked diligently and steadily. But the inhabitants had kept something from him: although the wheat grew in the valley, it never ripened, because each year, without fail, in the month of July it was destroyed by the cold winds from the northeast."
The first few years Ostrovsky attributed his failure to chance. He carefully cared for his crop in the hopes of a better season.
Alas, his wife died of sorrow, and autumn brought him nothing but straw. Ostrovsky, without weeping, dug a grave in the frozen ground and buried his wife. Then he asked permission to go to the mines, and borrowed some money for the trip from his neighbors. The latter gladly loaned it to him, thinking thus to get rid of him and to get the profit of his house and goods. But Ostrovsky fooled them in their naïve simplicity; he heaped up all of his possessions in his little cottage and then set fire to it. He no longer thought of justice; he was nothing but a despairing man.
The patriarch of the village in which he had taken refuge tried to recall to him the faith for which he had been exiled:
"Do you remember," answered Ostrovsky, "the first visit I paid you to ask for advice? Ah, so you have forgotten that and you speak of God.... You are nothing but a crafty dog! All of you are dogs! There is nothing here but woods and rocks, and you are all just as insensible as the very rocks that surround you.... And your cursed land, and your sky, and your stars...." "He wanted to say something more, but he did not dare blaspheme, and there was silence again in the little cottage...."
This Ostrovsky is among the very best of Korolenko's heroes. The sight of this despairing and lonely man, who wanders about in the Siberian forests with his little daughter, calls louder for justice than all the speeches in the world.