H. De Vere Stacpoole

“ The same old woods, the same sky, the same night, but across the arch of the sky to-night, of all nights that ever shone on this world of snow and wrong and regret and exile, there is written in letters of fire, leaping like the stars, the words, "Russia is free! Russia is free!" The chains of the people are broken, and God has come to rule. ”

“ Here the stars beckon, and all nature talks to the heart in the alphabet of the deaf and dumb.
All things go forward, pressed by a tide that has its ebb and flow. It is useless to hate the ebb or love the flow; and look, if you doubt, out of the silence, which is the world beyond this silence, a hand has reached and written those words across the sky, "Russia is free!" ”

“ The drum that rouses us to work or brings us to meals is beating; Chicherin is the drummer, and we are huddled together, making our last preparations for departure. Guards, exiles, all of us, are off, taking everything. For Berizov? Never. West.
The sun is rising in the west, which has so long risen in the east. Across the Urals and beyond, on foot, on our hands and knees, anyhow; beyond.
Sledges packed with provisions, the axes we have laid to trees, the rifles that have been leveled at our hearts—everything goes with us but the agricultural implements we have used and shall use no more. ”

“ Katkoff says it is the eighth pass of the Urals, that a few men who know the hills use it, but mostly foxes and wolves.
Now the summit of Toll Poss shows clearly away to the south; we are on the top.
A vast rock, which we climb in turn, gives us a view of Europe. There is no plain here to see, but forests and hills. The wind has died away, and the silence is terrific. Great ravens come up from the valleys below, rise, sink, and vanish. ”

“ Oppression made Chicherin great, made him even renounce those women whom he evidently loved so much, risk all, lose all. And now that oppression has vanished—
They say a business man, when he retires, deteriorates; relieved of hard work, he dies. Hard work, oppression, the things that seem to destroy the mind and soul, after all, may they not contain the true food of the mind and soul?
And yet, again, there is Katkoff, another friend of mine, and a relative of him who once edited the Moscow "Gazette." Exile and brooding had made him seem like an animal ”

“ A misty night with the stars scarcely showing, and a railway track before us. We walk along it hand in hand. From far away the words of Katkoff come to me, "The railway from Archangel to Moscow." The Dog is still faithful, though his body lies there on the plain. We reach a siding where there are trucks, open trucks. ”

“ Not only have we to carry our provisions, but the furs in which we sleep, the old half-outworn furs we wear, and winter furs that would have been taken to Berizov in a month's time, and which we have sewn together hurriedly to make bags, into which we get at night like the Arctic men, only here it is not cold as there. The spring has come mild, and the frost does not do more than hold the snow from melting. ”

“ Man is man.
Katkoff, here, has always been nicknamed the Dog. Not out of derision or contempt, but fondness. He has the look of a faithful dog, and his mind is instinctive. That is perhaps why he is higher than us all.
I have said that we are a small post, so far, so far; yet we are only fifty versts south of Berizov, the town of birch-trees—Berizov, beneath whose snows lie buried the flower of the Russian court and army; Berizov, where Menzikofif, prince and courtier, found his tomb ”

“ These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone."
Many days pass, and scarcely living, I am taken from the cell. I stand in a room before a man who sits at a table, a man bald, wrinkled, laughing at times, who questions me. ”

“ I was moved here a year ago, the archives of the old Government may have been destroyed, they were busy completing that which I long ago lent my hand to, and the best men are men, and men are small. The wind has told that. ”