'That is not so very long; there are people who have lived here for over 20 years, and I met an old man from Vilna in the road, who had been here close upon 50 years. Those have really been a long time.'

But the Jew snubbed me. 'As to them, I can't say. I only know that I have been here a long time.'

'You must certainly live quite alone, if the time seems so long to you?'

'With my wife and child—my daughter. I had four children when I set out, but, may the Lord preserve us, it was such a long way, we were travelling a whole year. Do you know what such a journey means, Sir?... Three children died in one week—died of travelling, as it were. Three children!... An easy thing to say!... There was nowhere even to bury them, for there was no cemetery of ours there.... I am a Husyt,' he added more quietly. 'You know what that means Sir?... I keep the Law strictly ... and yet God punishes me like this....' He grew silent with emotion.

'My friend,' I tried to say to console him a little,—'no doubt under such circumstances it is difficult to remember that it makes no difference; but all earth is hallowed.'

But the Jew jumped as if he had been scalded.

'Hallowed! how hallowed! In what way is it hallowed! What are you saying, Sir? It's unclean! It's damned!... Hallowed earth?... You must not talk like that, Sir, you ought to be ashamed! Is earth hallowed, which never thaws? This earth is cursed! God doesn't wish human beings to live here; it wouldn't have been like this, if He had wished it. Cursed! Bad! Damned! Damned!'

And he began to spit about him, and stamp his feet, threatening the innocent Yakut earth with tightened lips and his shrivelled hands, and muttering Jewish maledictions. At last, exhausted by the effort, he fell rather than sat down at the table beside me.

All exiles, without regard to religion or race, dislike Siberia: evidently a fanatic does not learn to hate it half-heartedly. I paused until he had calmed himself. Educated in a severe school, the Jew quickly regained his self-possession and mastered his emotion, and when I gazed questioningly into his eyes the next moment, he immediately answered me:

'You must pardon me; I do not speak of this to anyone, for to whom should I speak here?'