"The fugitives will eat us up," says Roslavl in terror.
But the wave of fugitives comes on and on, and a stench is given forth from it. Here the great river stops, and its waters turn round and round, like a whirlpool. Roslavl is overwhelmed; the tide rises above its head.
The reason?—the railway. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people will remember with horror the desolation of Roslavl. Here is enacted a dreadful scene: "The completion of the process"—the fugitives giving up their horses. First they were as "gipsies," but now they have turned into a Khitrof market.[4] Numbers of the fugitives, the great majority of them, having exhausted their last strength and reached the railway.
Have the last thing to do as peasants. They sell their horses. And thence go onward—in the train. Waiting in an open-air camp in Roslavl for a week or so, until they are given places. And with what desperation do they cling to the possession of their horses.
II—STORY OF THE PEASANT—AND THREE MOTHERLESS CHILDREN
Here I made the acquaintance of a fugitive—a bitter man. His wife died two weeks before the final ruin and he has three children, two very young, and a baby. He had owned some land and was a farmer. He had paid 12,000 rubles for it. The payment had been spread over seven years and all had been paid. He had only just begun to make a living. And now "this had happened." He had managed to bring away all his cattle. And four horses. He had gone a long way.
But in Minsk province, where a continuous marsh extends for tens and tens of versts, an order had come to clear the high-road, and the cattle had been driven on to the marsh.
"My little son," said he, "who had gone on in front with the cattle, ran back to meet me at a turn of the road, crying, 'Daddy, Daddy, the cattle are all drowned in the marsh.' I ran to him. The herd of cattle were twisting and writhing in the bog. Bellowing. And among them I saw mine."
He spoke sadly but calmly about the death of his wife, about his land that had "cost so much money."