On the morrow he lost his way, and after wandering about almost the whole of the day, he found himself at nightfall on a road which fortunately happened to be the right one. Seeing a small house not far from a hamlet, he resolved on asking shelter there: it was not denied him. He gave himself out for a workman seeking employment in the iron works of Bohotole, in the Oural. He played his part to the best of his ability, but was thought to be too well clothed and furnished with linen for a workman, and was woke from his first sleep by peasants asking for his passport. With the greatest coolness he showed them the pass ticket, the only one he had left; fortunately the sight of the seal was sufficient for these self-appointed gendarmes, who begged his pardon for having taken him for an escaped convict.
“The rest of the night I spent very quietly, and the next day took leave of those whose hospitality was so near growing fatal to me. This incident carried a sad conviction to my mind that I could never ask shelter for the night of any human being without exposing myself to the greatest risks, and the Ostiake bed must be, until further notice, my only place of repose. I had, in short, to put up with this Ostiake style of sleeping during the whole of the time I was crossing from the Oural mountains to Veliki-Oustioug; that is, from the middle of February to the beginning of April. Three or four times only dared I beg hospitality for the night in some isolated hut, worn out by fifteen or twenty days’ march in the forest, almost exhausted, and scarcely knowing what I did. Every other night I was satisfied with digging out a hole to lie in, and by degrees became accustomed to that way of sleeping. Sometimes at nightfall I even found myself going towards the thick part of the wood, as to a well-known inn; at other times I confess this savage kind of life became intolerable to me. The absence of any
[Illustration: The sight of the seal was sufficient.]
human habitation, the want of hot food, and even of frozen bread, my only nourishment for whole days sometimes, made me face in all their terrible reality those two hideous spectres called cold and hunger. In moments like these I dreaded specially the fits of drowsiness that suddenly came over me, for they were evident invitations to death, against which I fought with the little strength I had left. And now and then the craving for hot food became so strong in me, that it was with the greatest difficulty I resisted the temptation of begging in some hut for a few spoonfuls of the root soup of Siberia.”