Staggering to my feet, I rubbed my eyes, and then remembered the exciting events of the past few hours.
“The train! Where is it?” I inquired.
“How should I know?” he asked. “I leapt after you and it went on—to the devil most probably.” And he grinned. “But we’ve ourselves to look after now,” he continued. “See! our brothers of Tambov have not forgotten us!” and he pointed to a heap of clothes that lay upon the ground.
“You have found them, then?”
“Yes, they were concealed in the shed yonder. We took our leave of our Imperial Master just at the right spot.”
While he was speaking, he commenced to divest himself of his clothes, afterwards attiring himself in the worn and ragged dress of a moujik, finally enveloping himself in a polushuba, or outer garment of sheepskin, an example which I quickly followed. This completed, we burned our passports, and making up our clothes into a bundle, put several heavy stones in with them and sank them in a stream near by.
From servants of the Tzar’s household we were transformed into two poor peasants whose passports, signed by the Zemski Natchalnik, allowed us to leave our Mir and emigrate abroad in search of employment.
During the whole day we tramped along the white road that led across a barren desolate steppe, subsequently arriving at Arkadak, a quaint rural town, where we were sheltered for the night by the village pope, who was a member of our Organisation. Facilities for our escape had been well arranged by the Tambov Circle, for on our departure on the following morning we found a country cart awaiting us at a lonely part of the road, and in it we were driven along the Koper valley and through the fertile country of the Don Cossacks to Filinovskaia, a small station on the Tzaritzin-Lipetsk railway.
This being one of the trunk lines, running right across the Empire, we were enabled to travel direct to Dunabürg, thence to Vilna, afterwards crossing the frontier at Wirballen and reaching Königsberg, where we at once took passages as emigrants for England.