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                             ILLUSTRATIONS
                                   OF
                           POLITICAL ECONOMY.

                                   BY

                           HARRIET MARTINEAU.

                            THE CHARMED SEA.
                      BERKELEY THE BANKER—PART I.
                      BERKELEY THE BANKER—PART II.

                      _IN NINE VOLUMES._——VOL. V.

                    ROUTLEDGE, WARNES, & ROUTLEDGE,
                           FARRINGDON STREET;
                      NEW YORK: 56, WALKER STREET.

                                  859.

                               CONTENTS.

                                  ---

                            THE CHARMED SEA.
                                                                PAGE
    Song in a Strange Land                                         1
    To each Heart its own Bitterness                              14
    A wounded Spirit                                              25
    A Lodge in the Wilderness                                     43
    Traffic in the Wilds                                          73
    The Patriot’s Altar                                           89
    Wisdom from the Simple                                       106
    The Patriot’s Martyrdom                                      120
    The Patriot’s Vow                                            129

                      BERKELEY THE BANKER.—PART I.
                                                                PAGE
    The Haleham People                                             1
    The Pride of Haleham                                          24
    The Haleham Riot                                              37
    Wine and Wisdom                                               64
    Husbands and Wives                                            97
    Suspense                                                     119
    Certainty                                                    131
    Market-day                                                   152
    A Future Day                                                 168

                     BERKELEY THE BANKER.—PART II.
                                                                PAGE
    The Wife’s Journey                                             1
    The Wife’s Holiday                                            24
    Suspicion                                                     50
    The Wife’s Return                                             66
    The Wife’s Obedience                                          83
    An Arrangement                                               100
    The Wife’s Recompense                                        123
    Arrangements completed                                       132

                            THE CHARMED SEA.

                               CHAPTER I.
                        SONG IN A STRANGE LAND.

“These, then, are the mountains,” said a Russian officer to one of a
band of armed Siberian peasants, appointed to guard a company of exiles
who were on their way, some to the mines of Nertchinsk, and others to be
attached to the soil as serfs, wheresoever the governor of Irkutsk
should please. “These, then, are the mountains, and here they cross the
frontier, to give work to the Emperor’s enemies, in digging out their
gold and silver.”

“Yes, those are the mountains, and within them lies the Charmed Sea,”
replied the peasant, who, however, did not trouble himself so much as
even to look up towards the peaks, now beginning to wax dim in the long
northern twilight. This man lived in the next hamlet, and traversed this
road almost every day, as did his companions; for, though the Russian
officer had accompanied the exiles all the way from Poland, the peasant
guard was changed from village to village.

“Call the prisoners forward, and make way,” ordered the officer office,
and the peasants, who had not felt it necessary to trouble themselves
much about their charge in a region where escape was next to impossible,
now began to look how far off the prisoners might be, and ran to urge
the men on foot to greater speed, and to lash the tired horse of the
kibitka in which the women were seated.

At the first glance the men looked all alike, their heads being shaved,
and their dress uniform in its sordidness. It required a little
observation to discover that some were old and others young; which of
them bore the wrinkles of care, and which of years also. A still closer
observation was necessary to distinguish the respective rank and quality
of those who externally so nearly resembled each other. No Siberian
serfs looked so toil-worn and poverty-stricken; but neither did any
husbandmen in all the Emperor’s dominions display such countenances as
those of some of the company appeared, when they could be viewed without
reference to the disfigurement of the rest of their persons.

The women in the kibitka appeared alarmed at the signal to make speed;
of the men, some ran on, under an impulse of curiosity, as fast as the
weight they carried would permit; the rest preserved the slow and steady
pace at which they had been walking since they came in sight. Every
other man shouldered an iron bar, with a short chain at each end, and
all were, at present, marching in silence.

“Make haste!” cried the Russian, shaking his lance impatiently. “You
march as if you had still a thousand miles to go; but there, among those
mountains, is Nertchinsk, and we are close by the lake, where we are to
halt for the governor’s orders about some of you.”

“You will not cross the testy sea to-night,” observed one of the
peasants. “The spirits let no boat get back safe after dark.”

“That depends on who crosses it,” observed another of the escort. “If
some call it the testy sea, others call it the charmed sea. Sometimes it
foams and gathers its waters into a heap when not a breath is stirring;
but, just as often, it is as smooth as glass while the pines are
stooping and shivering on all the hills around. Learn who it is that the
spirits favour, and who it is that they hate, and then you will know
whether a boat will go straight across, like an eagle flying home, or
whether it will turn over and over in the water, like an eider duck shot
under the wing.”

“Hold your tongues, slaves,” cried the officer. “Here, you other slaves;
let me hear you thank the Emperor for sending you here, where grass
grows under your feet, instead of ordering you into Kamtchatka.”

In answer, the exiles uplifted one of the patriotic chaunts, of which
the loyal ears of their guard had long been weary:—

                         “Our Poland mourns,—
                           She shall not die!
                         Her watch-fire burns,
                           And help is nigh.
             Her ruffled eagle speeds from shore to shore,
             Till nations rise to bid her weep no more.”

“Wretches!” cried the Russian, “how dare you abuse the Emperor’s
clemency? Will your treason never be silent?”

“Never,” replied a young Pole, “to judge by the look of the place we are
coming to. There must be echoes enough among these rocks to tell the
tale from eve to morning, and from morning to eve again. In the steppe
we have passed, our voices were stifled in space; but among these
mountains the plaint of Poland shall never die.”

“I will silence it,” growled the officer.

“Not by threats,” replied Ernest. “The Emperor has wrought his will upon
us; we have no more to fear from singing our country’s songs, and we
will sing them.”

“You carry your bar on your shoulder,” said the Russian. “You shall all
be chained to it by the wrists as before, unless you cease to blaspheme
the Emperor.”

Ernest, the young Pole, cast a glance behind him, and seeing the
exhaustion of his friend Taddeus, who had been lately crippled, and the
fatigue of Owzin, the father of Taddeus, and of old Alexander, the
feeblest of the party, he had compassion on them, and refrained from
answering the tyrant who had it as much in his will as his power to
fetter them, though no chance of escape afforded him a pretence for
doing so. In order to remind them of their present position in relation
to himself, the officer addressed them by the new titles which he had
never yet been able to get them to recognize.

“Three! you will sink in the marsh presently, if you do not keep the
line. Halt, there, Seven! If you get on so fast I will shoot you. Two!
no shifting your bar yet. You have not had your fair share of it.”

His words were wasted. Owzin still straggled from the line. Ernest
strode on as fast as ever, and Taddeus persisted in resigning his load
to his stronger companion, Paul, who walked by his side. A volley of
oaths from the Russian, or rather one indecent oath repeated a dozen
times, seemed likely to be succeeded by blows from the attendant
peasants, when a woman’s voice was heard above the creaking of the
kibitka.

“Husband, do try to remember your number, that I and your children may
not see you murdered before our faces. Taddeus, my son, if you can bear
your load no farther, say so. Is it manly to bring new sufferings on us
all by irritating those whom we cannot resist? Ask for relief, since you
want it.”

Taddeus could not bring himself to do this; but he cast a submissive
look towards his mother, and took his burden again from Paul, who was
not sorry, being eager to run forwards to see as much as Ernest of the
pass they were approaching.

Lenore silently descended from the kibitka, charged herself with the
load of her crippled son, who was too weak and weary to resist, and sent
him to occupy her place beside his sister. The Russian looked on
surprised, but did not interfere with the arrangement.

Of all this miserable group, none, probably,—not even their
parents,—were so wretched as the brother and sister, who now sat side by
side for the first time since they had left Poland. During the whole of
the journey they had avoided each other, though, till of late, no two
members of one family had mutually loved more tenderly. But, henceforth,
Sophia had a quarrel with her brother, which could, she believed, never
be reconciled; and the spirit of Taddeus was grieved as much by his
sister’s injustice as by his own remorse. Sophia had long been betrothed
to Cyprian, a friend of both her brothers; and there had been hope that
the marriage might shortly take place in peace, as Cyprian had borne
little share in the troubles of the times, and had the character, in his
provincial residence, of being a quiet citizen. But this scheme of
happiness was unconsciously broken up by Taddeus.’ In accordance with
the Russian Emperor’s new rule, that every family, where there were two
sons, should spare one to his majesty’s armies, Taddeus, described as an
active young rebel, had been drafted into one of the condemned regiments
which was to guard the frontiers of Siberia. His brother, Frederick, was
a theological student in the university at Wilna, fit for something so
much better than being a private soldier, under the severest discipline,
in a desert country, that Taddeus generously acquiesced in the lot
having fallen on himself, and prepared to go into ignominious
exile,—with whatever heart-burnings,—with an appearance of submission.
But when, not long after, tidings came that Frederick had passed the
frontiers, and was safe in France, the resolution of Taddeus was at once
changed. Now that he was sure of not endangering his brother, he felt
that it would be easier to him to die than to enter the armies of the
ravager of his country; and he did,—what was then no uncommon act,—he
crippled himself so as to be unfit for military service. In
consideration to his parents, he left it to his enemies to take his
life, if they should so choose. He was willing to have it spared as long
as that of his father. But it required all his resolution to refrain
from laying violent hands on himself when he discovered the result of
his manœuvre. The commissioners whom he had cheated, found it necessary
to make up, as rapidly as possible, the 20,000 recruits that were to be
brought from Poland, and also to allow no instance of evasion to escape
punishment; and, in order to accomplish both these objects at once, and
as Frederick was beyond their reach, they seized upon Cyprian, as one
who was almost a member of the family. Before the fact could be made
known at Warsaw, or, consequently, any measure of prevention or
remonstrance could be taken, Cyprian was marching far away in the
interior of Russia, and confidence was broken down between the brother
and sister for ever. It would have been difficult to say which was the
most altered by this event. Sophia, who had always been gay and amiable,
and of late made hopeful amidst the woes of her country by the faith
which happy love cherishes in the heart, seemed to have suddenly lost
the capacity of loving. She hated, or was indifferent. Her indifference
was towards her parents, and most who crossed her daily path: her hatred
was not only towards the enemies of her country, but towards an
individual here and there who could not be conceived to have given her
any cause of offence, or to have obtained any great hold on her mind.
The passion appeared as capricious as it was vehement. No one could
declare that it extended to her brother, for towards him alone her
conduct was cautious. Her one object, as far as he was concerned, seemed
to be avoidance; and he did not cross her in it, for he felt that he had
much reason to be hurt at her conduct, as well as grieved at the
consequences of his own. The only point in which they now seemed to
agree was in shunning mutual glances and speech. This had been easy from
the day when the doom of banishment fell on the whole family, for
supposed political offences. During all the days of their weary journey
of four thousand miles, they had been able to keep apart; Sophia
preferring to walk when she saw that her brother must soon ask a place
in the kibitka; and it being the custom of her mother, herself, and a
little girl who was under their charge, a daughter of one of the exiles,
to appropriate a corner of the post-house where they stopped for the
night, apart from the rest of the band of travellers.

Now that they were at length side by side, they proceeded in perfect
silence. Taddeus folded his arms, and Sophia looked another way. It was
some relief that little Clara was present, and that she talked without
ceasing. She was allowed to go on unanswered, till she observed that
mamma (for so she called Lenore) must be very tired with having carried
the iron bar so long.

“What are you talking about, child? Paul is carrying the one Taddeus
had.”

When Clara explained that Lenore had carried it till that moment, Sophia
cast a look of indignant contempt upon her brother, who was equally
surprised, supposing that his mother had only taken his burden from him
to hand it to some one else.

“Have patience, Sophia,” he said, as he let himself down from the
carriage. “You will none of you have to bear my burdens long.”

He looked so desperate, that the apprehension crossed Sophia’s mind that
he meant to rid himself of his life and his miseries altogether, perhaps
by means of the very iron bar which was the subject of dispute. Whatever
might have been his intention, however, he was prevented from executing
it, for he fell in a swoon as soon as he left hold of the carriage, and
was replaced in it, as his marching any farther was out of the question
that day. As his mother sat, wiping the moisture from his forehead while
he rested his head against her knees,—as she looked on her children, and
saw that their misfortunes were further embittered by the absence of
mutual confidence,—it required all the fortitude of the woman to bear up
against the anguish of the mother.

It was a relief to all when they at length arrived at their
halting-place, on the banks of that extraordinary lake on which no
stranger can look without being awed or charmed. As the procession
emerged from a rocky pass, upon the very brink of the waters, the
peasants carelessly took off their caps, and immediately resumed them,
being too much accustomed to the prospect before them to be much
affected by it, except when their terrors were excited by storms, or by
any other of the phenomena of the charmed sea which they were wont to
ascribe to the presence of spirits. Now, this vast lake, extending to
the length of 360 miles, and more than 40 miles broad, lay dark in the
bosom of the surrounding mountains, except where a gleam of grey light
fell here and there from their openings upon its motionless surface. Not
a movement was seen through the whole circuit of the vast panorama, and
not a sound was heard. If there were bears in the stunted pine woods on
the mountain side, or aquatic birds on the opposite margin, or eagles
among the piled rocks that jutted into the waves, they were now hidden
and still. If there were ever boats plying on the lake, they were now
withdrawn into the coves and creeks of the shore. If there were human
beings whose superstition was not too strong to permit them to live
beside the very haunt of the invisible powers, their courage upheld them
only while the sun was above the horizon. As soon as the shadows of
twilight began to settle down, they hastened homewards, and avoided
looking abroad till they heard the inferior animals moving, in sign, as
it was supposed, of the spirits having retired. Neither man, woman, nor
child was to be seen, therefore, at this moment, and it was difficult to
imagine any, so perfect a solitude did the place appear. As soon as the
peasants perceived this, they began to quake, and gathered round the
Russian, with whispered entreaties to be allowed to return homewards
instantly. This being angrily refused till a shelter should have been
found for the whole party, the poor creatures, divided between their
fear of an officer of the Emperor and of invisible spirits, prepared
themselves for a somewhat unusual method of march. They took off their
caps again, crossed themselves every moment, and walked with their backs
to the lake, carefully shunning any appearance of a glance over either
shoulder. Their consternation was at its height when their prisoners
broke the silence by singing, as before,—

                    “Our Poland mourns,—
                      She shall not die!
                    Her watch-fire burns,
                      And help is nigh.
              Her ruffled eagle speeds from shore to shore
              Till nations rise to bid her weep no more.”

Before the last echo had died away, a gurgling, rushing sound came from
a distance, and those who gazed upon the expanse of waters saw a
prodigious swell approaching from the north-east, and rolling
majestically towards them, slowly enough to afford the strange spectacle
of half the lake in a state of storm, and the other half as smooth as
glass. Presently, the whole was surging, tossing, foaming, roaring,
while not a breath of air was at first felt by those on the shore. Next
followed a flapping of wings overhead, for the eagles were roused; and a
prodigious cackling and hurry-scurry in the marshes on either hand, for
the wild-fowl were alarmed; and a crashing of boughs among the firs in
the background, whether by a rising wind, or by wild beasts, could not
be known. Then the clouds were parted, and the stars seemed to scud
behind them; the fogs were swept away in puffs, and the opposite shores
appeared to advance or recede, according to the comparative clearness of
the medium through which they were seen. By this time the peasant guards
were muttering their prayers with their hands before their eyes, the
officer, astounded, sat motionless in his saddle, and the Poles burst
into a shout, as if they had partaken of the superstition of the
country. Louder than ever arose

                        “Our Poland mourns,—
                            She shall not die!”

And it was not till the commotion had subsided, nearly as rapidly as it
had arisen, that either threats or persuasions could induce them to stir
a step from the station they had taken up on the brink. They all wished
that it might be the lot of their whole party to remain near this mighty
waste of waters. Those who were destined for the mines of Nertchinsk,
that is, Owzin and his family, and Andreas, the father of little Clara,
were within easy reach of the Baïkal lake: but where the others, Ernest,
Paul, and old Alexander, might be located as serfs, no one could guess,
till the will of the governor of Irkutsk should be revealed.

Nothing was heard or seen of the invisible powers through the thick
darkness which surrounded their halting-place during the whole night.
How different was the face of things when that darkness fled away! By
sun-rise, the officer having received his directions from Irkutsk, the
whole party were on the lake in boats managed by the neighbouring
fishermen, who had come forth from hidden dwellings here and there among
the rocks. The snowy peaks, on the western side, looked of a glittering
whiteness in the morning light, while the fir-clad mountains opposite
seemed of a deeper blackness from the contrast. The waters were of all
hues of green, in proportion as their depth varied from twenty to more
than two hundred fathoms. In the shallower parts it might be seen that
their bed was a rocky basin, with no mud, and scarcely any sand to
injure the transparency of the waters, even after the most searching
storm. Pillars of granite shoot up from this rocky foundation, and in
sunshine show like points of light amidst the emerald waves. The only
circumstance which the boatmen could find it difficult to account for
was, why fish were permitted to exist in this lake; neither did it live
in the memory of man when permission was given to mortals to catch them:
but some pretty traditionary stories were current respecting the last
question; and as to the former, perhaps it might be an amusement to the
lake-spirits to chase a finny prey among the pillars and recesses of
their green-roofed sea-halls, as it is to kindred beings to follow the
wild-ass among the hills, or the roebuck over the plain.

                              CHAPTER II.
                   TO EACH HEART ITS OWN BITTERNESS.

It happened to be the pleasure of the governor of Irkutsk that the two
divisions of the band of exiles should settle near each other. This was
more than either had expected. A sentence to work in the mines is
usually equivalent to one of complete separation from countrymen as well
as country; for, as only a limited number of miners can be employed, in
comparison with serfs and soldiers, the exiles condemned to the mines
run a risk of isolation proportioned to the smallness of their numbers.
In the present case, the risk was lessened by the station being one from
which escape was out of the question. The miners of Ekaterinburgh may
dream of getting away, even though they must cross the Uralian chain,
and the whole of the interior of Russia, before they can see a friendly
face, or set foot in a neutral country; and therefore they are watched,
and not allowed to associate with such as speak a friendly language. But
in the depths of eastern Siberia, 2000 miles further into the wilds than
even the last-mentioned station, what hope of deliverance can exist? It
is found the least troublesome and expensive way to leave the exiles
alone, as long as they do their work and keep quiet; and there is no
objection to letting them communicate, unless it should be found
profitable or convenient to send on some of them a thousand miles or so,
or into Kamtchatka. The governor had received intelligence from
Petersburgh that a party would soon be sent through his district to
Kamtchatka, and hesitated for a short time whether he should not send on
this procession, and keep the next that might arrive within his
jurisdiction; but, as the officer could prove by documents which he
carried that Owzin and his son and Andreas were to be miners, it seemed
best to trust to another arrival for Kamtchatka, and to locate the
present party where work was waiting for them.

A silver mine, near the western extremity of the Daourian range, and
within hearing of the waters of the Baïkal when its storms were
fiercest, was the appointed station of Owzin and his little band of
companions; while plots of ground, within sight of the lake, were marked
out for the three who were to become crown peasants.

The whole procession was permitted to stop for a while at the future
abodes of the latter, before proceeding to the almost equally forlorn
dwellings of the convict miners. They had little comfort to offer each
other: but the new homes might be made somewhat less desolate by being
entered in company.

They were miserable places. Log-huts, consisting of one room, were
thought good enough dwellings for serfs. The holes between the
rough-hewn logs were stuffed with moss, which hung out in shreds,
leaving spaces for the biting wind to whistle through. A bench at one
end, intended to be covered with a hide, and thus to constitute a bed,
and a space built round with bricks, which was to be an oven, were all
the preparations for warmth in one of the severest climates in the
world. An earthen pan, to cook food in, was the sole utensil provided;
but Ernest was told that he might make himself a wooden platter, bowl
and spoon, when he had provided a plough and harrow, the first
necessaries of all, as the season was getting on. All these were to be
made of wood; the harrow being a mere hurdle, with the twigs bent
downward to serve as teeth, and the plough being a wooden hook, pointed
with iron, and with two sticks tied on the back as tillers. Where was
the necessary wood to be obtained? asked one and another; for none was
to be seen but fir and pine, and a few dwarf shrubs. The oak, hazel,
plane, lime, and ash had disappeared long ago, and it was some weeks
since they had seen elms and poplars. The officer only knew that other
peasants had these utensils, and so the material must be within reach.
It struck him that the best thing Ernest and his companions could do
would be to take each a wife from among the women who would soon be sent
to them for their choice. These native women could put them in the way
of knowing and doing what they wanted; and it must be the best plan for
their comfort, since the emperor’s own clemency had suggested it.

Ernest ground his teeth in speechless fury at this proposal; but his
friend Paul, who was not so apt to take things to heart, begged to know
how they were to maintain their wives?

“The best fields we have passed, within some hundred miles,” said he,
“bear only a little winter-rye, and a few straggling oats. The potatoes
are no larger than gooseberries, and not a single fruit,—not even the
sour crab we have all heard of, will grow in this region. When we have a
plough and harrow, will they give us food?”

“Leave it to the women to find that out,” replied the officer. “You see
people do live here, and so may you, if you choose to do as others
do—marry, and sit down peaceably to praise the Emperor’s mercy in
sending you here, when he might have taken your lives.”

Some one now asked if they were not to be provided with rifles, powder,
and ball, as their subsistence must mainly depend on the chase. When
they could purchase them, was the reply; these things were always to be
had at Irkutsk.

It was well that the governor had more humanity, and understood better
the necessities of the case, than the Russian escort. With the promised
assortment of native women, he sent the most needful articles for which
the exiles had inquired; and Ernest’s first pleasurable thought this day
was of going alone into the woods with his gun, when the rest of the
party should be gone, to relieve his bursting heart where none might
witness his anguish. A disgusting scene, however, had to be gone through
first.

On coming in from a survey of his miserable plot of ground, he found
Paul amusing himself with making acquaintance with new comers, who had
arrived in company with the rifles and fowling-pieces, to be examined
and selected after somewhat the same manner as they. The gray-haired
Alexander gazed with a grave countenance of philosophical curiosity.
Sophia looked more terrified than it might have been supposed she could
now ever feel; and her mother, who sat retired with her and the
wondering Clara, was pale, and evidently appalled at the new society she
seemed likely to be placed in. She looked eagerly for her husband and
son, who were not in the hut. As soon as they appeared, she said, in a
low voice,—

“Husband, this is worse than all.”

“It would have been so to me, Lenore, if you had not come with me; and
Sophia, too. Taddeus will not have anything to do with these people
while his mother and sister are with him.”

Taddeus turned from the group at the door with no less disgust than
Ernest; but it was not to meet his sister’s eye. This family had no
further wish to stay. They chose their implements and arms, put them
into the kibitka, and begged to proceed without delay. Their companion,
Andreas, allowed them to guide his movements as they would. He had a
ruling passion, which he could not at present gratify; and, till he
could, he remained perfectly passive.

When the adieus were spoken, amid many hopes of soon meeting again, and
before the creaking kibitka was out of sight, Ernest ran and shut
himself into Paul’s neighbouring hut, since he could not get undisturbed
possession of his own. He closed the ricketty door of deal-boards, set
his back against it, rested his forehead on the butt-end of the
fowling-piece he carried, and struggled in body as he had long struggled
in spirit. A driving rack of thoughts swept through his brain, like the
storm-clouds that he was destined to see deform many a wintry sky.
Providence,—whether there be one or not, or where now hidden?—an instant
recall of the doubt; Man,—why doomed to connexion with, to subservience
to, man? Life,—what it is, from pole to pole—from nothing to eternity?
His own life,—at his mother’s knee, in college halls, in the field,—and
all for this! His home, with its civilization and its luxuries;—his
beloved Warsaw, with its streets thronged as in former days, and not, as
now, resounding with the voice of weeping;—the gallant army filing from
its gates, and his own brave regiment, first going forth in the
solemnity of its heroism, then sadly falling away when hope was
over;—his own words, little thought of at the time—“My poor fellows, it
is over! leave me, and save yourselves;”—all these, and a thousand other
images, came in turbulent succession, almost as rapidly as the pictures
of a whole life flit before the very eyes of a drowning man; and from
each was breathed, as it passed, the same thought—“and all for this!”
Then came efforts to endure,—to reconcile himself to be the bondsman of
an enemy; and though in a desert, watched from afar with eyes of
malicious triumph! As if actually at this moment beheld in his retreat
from the throne of Petersburgh, Ernest drew himself up, and commanded
his emotion. But again the remembrance of his country, more potent than
any considerations for himself, unnerved him, and again his head sank
upon his breast, and the conflict was renewed. He was roused from it by
a voice at the opening which was meant to serve for a window.

“Come, Colonel, make the best of it, and take a wife while one is to be
had, as I have done.”

“I am going to make the best of it,” replied Ernest, starting from his
position, and examining the lock of his piece; “but I am not going to
take a wife.”

“Well, come among us, at any rate, instead of staying in this cursed
cold place: the women have got us a fire already. But, bless me! you
have found the secret of warming yourself,” he continued, as Ernest came
out, the perspiration yet standing on his forehead. “I beg your pardon,
from the bottom of my soul, Colonel, if I have gone too far about taking
a wife; if I have touched upon——”

“You have not, indeed, Paul. I was no more likely to take a wife in
Warsaw than here.”

“Well, I am glad of it; but I shall always need a forbearance I cannot
practise. There does not seem much temptation to joke in Siberia; but
see if I do not joke my friends away from me, even here, before five
years are over.”

“Joke away, friend, and we shall all thank you if you can keep it up for
five years. But, Paul, this marrying——it is no joke. You will not,
surely, give into any of the Emperor’s schemes; you will not bring among
us——”

“I will not be chilled, and starved, and solitary, while I can get
anybody to take care of me, and keep me company,” replied Paul; “and let
me tell you, a Mongolian wife has accomplishments which are not to be
despised by a man in my condition,—as you might see presently, if you
would condescend to give a little attention to them.”

Ernest looked impatient, and was turning his steps towards the woods,
when Paul laid a finger on his arm, saying,

“I do not mean their white teeth and black hair, though some of them
braid it very prettily; nor yet, altogether, that they can handle the
plough while one goes out shooting; but you have no conception what use
they make of eye and ear, and smell and touch. They can tell in the
darkest night when one comes within twenty miles of a hamlet, by the
smell of smoke; and, when there is no fog, they will distinguish the
tread of a bear, or the neighing of a horse, or detect the tiniest white
mouse stealing to its hole, at distances that you would not dream of.
Think what a help in sporting!”

“No matter,” replied Ernest; “I thought you had too much disgust at
being a slave yourself to wish to have one of your own.”

“But, Colonel, did you ever know me use anybody ill?”

“Never, except yourself: seriously, I mean. I will not say what you have
done in jest.”

“The jesting happens very well in the present case; for a merrier and
more sociable set than these girls I never saw. But I really mean to be
very kind to my wife; and you will soon see how fond she will grow of
me, and what I shall make of her.”

“And when we go back to Warsaw—what then?”

“My dear fellow! you do not expect that, surely?”

“I do! And at your peril say a single word against it,” said Ernest,
vehemently, to his astonished companion. “Do you think I will live here?
Here! hedged in with forests! buried in snow! petrified in ice! while
the tyrant watches me struggling in his snares, and laughs! No! I shall
go back to Warsaw!”

“But how?—tell me how?”

“How? Step by step, if I live; in one long flight, if I die. Oh! if it
should please Providence that I should die in these wastes, I will wring
from Him that which I have not hitherto obtained. I will open a volcano
in these wilds that shall melt all the snows between yonder lake and our
own river. I will make a causeway in one night through all the steppes,
and in the morning every Pole shall be marching to Petersburgh to drag
the dastard——”

“Come, come,” said Paul, “no more of this. I must take care of you for
once, Ernest, and bid you be reasonable. You will take me for Nicholas
next, and shoot me as you would him, or his likeness—a hyæna.”

“Have patience with me,” replied Ernest, resuming his calmness, “and
leave me my own way of making the best of things, as you say. My way is
to dream of going home, in the body or in the spirit.”

“Aye; but we shall be afraid to let you go out shooting alone, lest you
should see the towers of Warsaw at the bottom of the Baïkal, or be
persuaded that a pull of your trigger will take you to them.”

“No fear, Paul. I am most religious when alone; and I shall best recover
my faith where man is not present to drown the whispers of Providence,
or mar the signs He holds out in the skies and on the mountain tops.
Even these heavens are measured out with the golden compasses; and the
same sun which shines on the graves of our heroes fires the pines on
yonder mountain steep, and unlocks its torrents in spring.”

“How much further will your faith carry you? To forgive Nicholas?”

Ernest drew a long breath between his teeth, but calmly replied—

“Perhaps even so far. Philosophy alone might lead me to this, if it
could so enable me to enter into the constitution of a tyrant’s mind as
to conceive the forces under which it acts.”

“But, once allowing that it is acted upon by forces, known or unknown,
you cannot withhold forgiveness? Your faith refers all forces to one
master impulse, does it not?”

“It does; and therefore my faith, when perfected, will impel me to
forgive,—even Nicholas. But no more of him now. Shall I bring you some
water-fowl? Can your fair Mongolian tell you how much longer they will
stay with us? Their flight must be very near.”

And without waiting for an answer, the badged Siberian serf strode into
the pine-woods with a step very like that of a free man.

                              CHAPTER III.
                           A WOUNDED SPIRIT.

If Owzin and his family had been offered a choice whether to be attached
to the soil as serfs, or to work in the silver mine by the mouth of
which they were located, they would have found it difficult to make
their decision. Amidst the manifold woes of both positions, each had
some advantages over the other. The regular amount of labour required of
the miners,—labour in which there was room for the exercise of
intelligence,—was a relief rather than a burden to overwrought minds and
sinking hearts; while they might not have had resolution to appoint for
themselves, and execute, a daily task on plots of land for whose
improvement they were responsible only at the end of the season. On the
other hand, they were exposed to the control of Russian task-masters;
and it was all a chance whether they would be tyrannical, or whether
they would appreciate and reward skill and industry. Again, the
dwellings of the miners were somewhat less wretched than those of the
cultivators, and were situated, high and dry, among picturesque rocks,
instead of standing alone in the midst of a marsh, or on the borders of
dreary fir-woods. On the other hand, again, the cultivators could supply
themselves with necessaries from their own resources, while the miners
suffered much for some time from the want of all but the commonest
necessaries, and seemed likely to be always exposed to the
inconveniences attending the rudest state of barter. Those who had been
long settled had agreed upon plans of mutual accommodation as to
providing furniture, clothing, and food; but it was difficult for new
comers to obtain a share of the compact; both because an increased
demand is rather a trouble than an advantage, in a very rude system of
barter, and because it must be some time before they could have any
thing to change away which their neighbours would be willing to take. Of
all the silver which passed through their hands, not one grain was to
become their property; nor, if it had, would it have been of any use to
them: for no coin was circulated in this wild region, and metal in its
native state is neither fit for ornament nor for a medium of exchange.
The neighbouring peasantry cared nothing for silver, further than as
something which was valued by great people at a distance, and gave
consequence to the region they inhabited, and brought new settlers into
it. They knew nothing of the use of money; and merely exchanged with one
another so much rye every year for so much cloth, coarsely woven from
wool that came from the south in exchange for skins. In like manner,
rough-hewn deal benches went for game or bear’s flesh; and no one
article was fixed upon which might maintain a tolerably steady value,
and change away for all other things. Such a plan would have simplified
their commerce considerably, and have admitted strangers to share it;
but they did not wish to have their commerce simplified, and strangers
must shift for themselves as they best might.

The little company of Poles were some time in learning to do this
cleverly; and they endured more hardship than they need have done. If
they had been voluntary settlers, seeking their fortunes, they would
have found the elements of prosperity even here; but they were
perpetually suffering under a sense of injury; and there was a spirit of
listlessness, if not unwillingness, in them about improving their state,
which protracted their inconveniences in a way that one or two of the
more buoyant-minded of the party did not scruple to call very foolish.
Paul, in the one settlement, and Andreas, in the other, were the first
who rallied, and began to stimulate their companions to ingenuity and
forethought; and they had efficient helpers,—the one in his native wife,
and the other in his little daughter Clara. Ernest cared for nothing but
solitude; and of Owzin’s family, the only one who seemed fit for a state
of adversity—of this kind of adversity, at least,—was Lenore. Each
morning before it was necessary to be stirring,—hours before the day
began to break,—Owzin rose from his bed of disturbed sleep; disturbed,
not by the hardness of the planks, or the ill-odour of the hide on which
he slept, or by the suffocating smoke with which it was necessary to
fill the hut to keep out the cold; not by these, for Owzin had been a
soldier, and had learned to sleep in any temperature, and on the bare
battle-field; but by cruel thoughts, which came back all the more
vividly at night, for being driven off amidst the toils of the day.
Lighting his torch of pine-wood, he went forth before the night-fogs
were dispersed, or while the stars glittered like steel through the
biting air, and was always the first to arrive at the shaft, and to bury
himself in the dark chambers of the mine. Taddeus soon followed to the
smelting-house, which was the province of his labours. There, amidst
heat and toil, the father and son could lose in part the sense of their
misfortunes for hours together; for nothing is so beguiling as labour:
at least, when that of the head must aid that of the hands, which is the
case in most mining operations.

The women were far more unhappily circumstanced. Though they wanted
almost every thing, there was little for them to do, from the absence of
materials. They looked around them upon a scene of discomfort which they
could not remedy, and felt themselves as helpless as ladies of their
rank often are in much happier circumstances. When Taddeus had been
attended to the smelting-house by his anxious mother, who always went
with him to carry his food and ease his painful steps, and when Sophia
had meanwhile ventilated the hut and removed the sleeping-skins, little
employment remained, but to collect more wood to burn, more moss to stop
up crevices, and to see how nearly their stock of food was consumed.
Their clothes began to drop to pieces; but they had neither
spinning-wheel, distaff, nor wool. The draught under the door seemed to
cut off their feet at the ancles, and the floor was damp, although the
oven was always kept heated; but carpets were a luxury unheard of, and
not a yard of matting was to be seen nearer than Irkutsk. There was one
little person, however, who did not see why these things need be; and
that was Clara. She had the advantage of childhood in being able to
accommodate herself to a new set of circumstances, and she had learned
from her father how to make the most of whatever came to hand,—though
their object was different enough; her’s being the pleasure of
enterprise, and his pure avarice.

The case of Andreas was, in his own opinion, a desperately hard one; and
he secretly advanced as nearly as he dared towards cursing Providence
for it. He cared no more than the babe of six months, who ruled over
Poland, and what character its government bore; and during many months,
while the struggle was pending, he preserved, and with ease, a strict
neutrality. At last, however, an army contract, which he had peculiar
means of supplying with profit to himself, was offered by the patriots.
This appeal to his ruling passion overcame him. He was one of the first
of the inhabitants of Warsaw that the Russians laid hold of; and he who
had never had a patriotic thought in his life, who would have prayed for
the Emperor or the Diet as mammon pointed to the one or the other, was
punished in the same degree with those who were really guilty of loving
their country. It was very hard thus to lose all the gains and scrapings
of nearly twenty years, and to be deprived of the prospect of making any
more. It was very hard that his property, of all men’s, should be
confiscated, when, of all men, he cared most for the property and least
for the cause. From his feeling his misfortune so acutely, and being
absorbed in it during the journey, his daughter felt it little. For many
weeks, he never once reproached her with wasting anything, or being
idle, and she was therefore happier than usual during the long journey;
for she minded cold and fatigue little in comparison with her father’s
watchfulness. Nor did her spirits sink when arrived at her future home,
for it was less dull than the one at Warsaw. There she was closely mewed
up, to be kept out of mischief; and from the day that she had lost her
dear mamma, she had never known what companionship was. Here, she had
liberty at first to do what she pleased; and when some degree of
restraint followed, from her father resuming certain of his old feelings
and ways, it was compensated for by an increase of consequence. She
began by wandering abroad to watch the field mice to their holes, and
pulling rushes to weave baskets in play. Her father, seeing the
capabilities of both these amusements, employed her in stripping the
nests of these mice of their winter store of onions and other roots, in
collecting rushes enough to cover the floor when dried, and even in
attempts to weave them into a sort of matting. When Clara thus found her
sports turned into work, she consoled herself with being proud of it,
and thought she had good reason to be so when she saw even the wise and
grave Lenore adopting her little plans, and trying to make matting too.
Sophia also began to follow her when she went into the woods to pull
moss at the foot of the trees, or climbed rocks to see how the wild
birds built, that she might know where to look for eggs in spring.
Sophia was sometimes moody and sometimes kind, but the little girl had
always been used to moodiness in her father, and to kindness no one was
more sensible; so that, on the whole, she would rather have Sophia’s
companionship than not.

As for Sophia, anything like enjoyment was out of the question for one
whose mind was so embittered as hers. Unable to be soothed by her
mother’s tenderness, yet obliged to regard her with high respect, she
felt relieved to be out of her presence; and yet the solitude of these
wildernesses was oppressive to her restless spirit; so that the society
of a child was welcome as a refuge from something more irksome still,
and the child’s pursuits beguiled her of more minutes and hours than
anything else could have done. She too began to look for a mouse’s nest,
now and then, and to learn to distinguish the traces of game and wild
animals. Her mother perceived this with pleasure, and hoped that she
discerned in it a means of interesting her unhappy son and daughter in
one object, and of bringing them into something like their former state
of intercourse. If she could but once secure their remaining together,
without witnesses, for a few hours, so as to be tempted to free
communication, she thought it impossible but that they must understand
one another, and mutually forgive.

It was a thing agreed upon that Owzin, Taddeus, and Andreas should go
out in turn in pursuit of game, for the common good, before or after the
hours of work at the mine. On holidays, which were not very rare
occasions, they were at liberty to unite their forces for a hunt on a
larger scale; but, in the common way, it was thought better for one only
to go, as the fatigue of their daily labour was quite enough for the
strength of those who were new to the occupation. Owzin preferred making
excursions quite alone; and as he could have no four-footed helper,
chose to have none at all. Andreas presently found that the attendance
of his little daughter would be very convenient to him, and he therefore
speedily trained her to perform the part, not only of gamekeeper, but of
spaniel. She not only carried the powder, and bagged the game, but
plunged among the reeds to disturb the fowl, and waded in the shallow
water to bring out those that had fallen wounded or dead. Few fathers
would have thought of exposing a child thus to cold and wet; but Andreas
had a great idea of making Clara hardy, as well as of shortening his own
work as much as possible, and he therefore wrapt her in skins which
could be changed with little trouble when she had been in the water, and
obliged her, on emerging, to start a hare, or take some such exercise to
warm her. Though it was by no means desirable that Sophia should undergo
discipline of this kind, it was that poor Taddeus, lame and fatigued,
should have a companion and helper: and when his mother had accompanied
him once or twice, it was naturally Sophia’s turn. She looked astonished
and indignant at being asked, and replied that she had rather he should
take Clara.

“Clara had her share yesterday,” said Lenore; “and I must see that our
little hand-maiden is not wearied out among us all. Besides, Taddeus
wants more help than she has strength to give. He should be relieved of
his gun, and wants a shoulder to lean upon in difficult places.”

“If my father would but have taught me to load and fire,” exclaimed
Sophia, “I might have gone alone; for there is such a quantity of game
that very little sporting skill is required.”

“Ask your brother to give you a lesson to-day,” replied Lenore, “and
then you and Clara may save our harder workers the toil they undergo,
partly for our sakes. But I shall hardly like your going alone till, by
some means or other, better guns are to be had.”

“Papa says that his misses fire three times out of four,” observed
Clara.

“I do not like the idea of a bear-hunt while this is the case,” said
Lenore. “It is a fearful thing to miss fire when within reach of the
gripe of a bear.”

“As Poland has found,” said Sophia gloomily. “It is an ugly hug that the
monster gives; but some manage to get a knife into its heart while it is
at the closest.”

“My child,” said her mother, mournfully, “why are your thoughts for ever
set upon revenge? Why——”

“Revenge!” cried Sophia, clenching her small fingers, and looking upon
them with contempt. “No, mother; it is folly for us to think of revenge.
If I had been a soldier,—if I had made the false promise to serve the
Emperor for twenty-five years,—if I had taken the false oath of
allegiance forced upon these loyal new soldiers, I might have thought of
revenge: I might have stolen through forests, crept across the steppes,
waded, dived,—made my way like Satan into Eden, to dog the Emperor’s
heels, and get within reach of his heart’s-blood. But a woman in eastern
Siberia cannot do all this, and must not think of revenge. But hatred is
left, mother;—women and slaves can hate!”

“I cannot,” replied Lenore.

“I am sorry for you, mother. There is a pleasure in it; and, God knows,
we have few pleasures left.”

“What pleasure, Sophia?”

“The pleasure of changing everything about one to one’s own mood; of
staining these snows, and blasting these pine woods, and dimming the sun
and stars.”

“The pleasure of a child that beats the floor, of an idiot that grinds
his teeth: the pleasure of spite. My poor child! is this your best
pleasure?”

“Mother, all is changed in the same way, and at once, so that there is
no struggle, like the child’s or the idiot’s. I never was so calm in my
life as I have been since we left Warsaw.”

“Because you hate all. You say there is no struggle.”

“I hate all that has to do with the Emperor. This waste of snow, and
these woods are his.”

“And the sun and stars?”

“The sun and stars of Siberia, mother; and every thing that moves on his
territory.”

“Yes, my dear: I see it all. You hate Andreas.”

“Who would not? The mean-souled, cringing wretch!”

“And Taddeus?-you hate Taddeus, Sophia.”

Sophia was some time before she answered; but, as Lenore continued to
look steadily in her face, she at length said, in a low voice,

“Mother, I loathe him. When he is away, I can turn my thoughts from it:
but when I am with him,—that limp of his,—his voice,—they make my heart
sick.”

“Grief made your heart sick, my child; and you cannot separate that
grief from the sight of your brother’s lameness, or from the voice which
told you the tidings. These things are not Taddeus: though, alas! he
suffers from your hatred as if they were. But, Sophia, how is this
wounded spirit of yours to be healed?”

“O! let nobody think of healing it, mother. I am happier as it is. I am
happier than you. You rise with swollen eyes when I have been sleeping.
Your countenance falls when you hear me laugh; and you are altered,
mother, very much altered of late. It would be better for you to be as
calm as I am.”

“And for your father? Would it be better for all if each grew
indifferent? The easiest way then would be to live each in a cave alone,
like wild beasts.”

“Much the easiest,” exclaimed Sophia, drawing a long breath, as if
impatient of confinement beneath a roof. “I am so tired of the whole
domestic apparatus,—the watching and waiting upon one another, and
coaxing and comforting, when we all know there can be no comfort; the——”

“I know no such thing. There is comfort, and I feel it. But I will not
speak to you of it now, my dear, because I know you cannot enter into
it.”

“Not now, nor ever, mother.”

“Yes, Sophia; hereafter. You cannot suppose that your present feelings
are to last through your existence?”

An internal shudder was here visible which gave the lie to what the
sufferer had said of the enviableness of her calm state of feeling. Her
mother continued,—

“Just tell me what you are to do with such a spirit as yours in the next
world?”

“How do we know that there is another world?” cried Sophia, impatiently.
“I know you told me so when I was a child, and that you think so still.
But I see nothing to make one believe it; but the contrary. What is worn
out, drops to pieces and is done with. Whatever is weary goes to sleep
and is conscious of nothing, and so it will be with us and the world
about us. We shall soon be weary enough, and it is folly to pretend that
we shall therefore go somewhere to be more lively and active than ever.
The world is wearing out very fast: so everybody hopes, unless it be the
Emperor. Let it fall to pieces then, and be done with, and the sooner
the better.”

“It will outlast your unbelief, my child.”

“No, mother; mine is not a fickle,—it is a progressive mind. A year ago,
if we had been coming here, I should have expected to see some such
sights as Clara apprehends, when she looks fearfully round her. I should
have watched for flitting spirits among the rocks, and have sung hymns
in the woods, and fancied they were heard and answered, because there
are echoes about us. I am wiser now, and shall not go back into the old
state. I see things as they are, bleak and bare, and soulless. You will
not find me among the worshippers of the Charmed Sea. I leave such
worship to the peasants.”

“And another kind of worship to us to whom all things are not bleak and
bare. But, Sophia, how far is your mind to be progressive, and why, if
there is so soon to be an end of it?”

Sophia was not prepared with a very clear answer to this. She denied
that, by progression, she meant anything proceeding regularly, according
to a plan. All that she meant was that she once believed a great many
things that she did not know, and now she only believed what her senses
taught her.

“And do you believe what actually passes before your eyes?” inquired her
mother.

“Why, one would think,” said Sophia, half laughing, “that you knew what
passed within one. Do you know, mother, all the things that I see are
often so like shadows or dreams, that I am obliged to touch and grasp
them before I am sure that I am awake.”

“I knew it, my dear. Your life is like the adventure of a sleep-walker:
but are not you aware how sure sleep-walkers sometimes are that they
know better what they are about than those who are awake? I do not ask
you to take my word on any matters of faith. I only ask you to believe
the word of one who has never deceived you, that there is calmness to be
had without hating, and comfort without superstition.”

“If you mean to tell me so from your own experience, mother, I must
believe you: but if you are going to tell me that Ernest is calm and
Paul comfortable, that is a different thing.”

“I can tell you of myself, my child. I am not happy, and it would be
mocking Providence to pretend to be so; but I am not without comfort.
You speak of swollen eyes; but tears flow from other causes than grief.
Night is the time for devotion, and there are some who can seldom look
up into the starry heavens without the homage of emotion. You say my
countenance falls when you laugh; and I dare say it is true, for your
laugh now gives me more pain than any sound I hear. But even this is not
a hopeless pain. I believe that everything proceeds according to a
plan,—the progression of your mind, as well as of yonder morning star
towards its setting,—the working out of your suffering, and of Cyprian’s
punishment——”

At the mention of the name, Sophia flinched as if pierced through the
marrow. The next moment, she gazed fiercely at her mother, who met her
eye with a mild look of compassion.

“I have done wrong, my child, in avoiding all mention of this name so
long. Nay; hear me. We each know that he is perpetually in our thoughts:
that every foot-fall is taken for his, every deep tone felt to thrill us
like his; every——”

“Stop, mother, stop. Nobody can—nobody dares—he is _mine_; and if any
one——”

“No one shall speak his name lightly, my love; but you cannot prevent
our remembering him. You would not wish it.”

“Yes, I would have him forgotten,—utterly.”

“No, Sophia, that cannot be. It was on my shoulder that you first wept
your confession that you loved him; it was to me that you both came,
when your love was not too engrossing for sympathy; and by me,
therefore, shall your love never be forgotten. If it were forgotten, how
could I trust for forgiveness for you? You will ask me why I should
either hope or pray for you. It is because I have faith; and I have
faith because I have not, like you, been tried beyond my strength. I
have your father left me, and my deprivations are therefore nothing to
yours; nothing to make my heart sick, if yours were less so.”

Sophia grieved her mother by coldly entreating that she might not add to
her sorrows in any way. She was so far from being tried beyond her
strength, that at present she did not feel herself tried at all. Nobody
could have less occasion for effort, for strength. That was all over
long ago. She must beg that she might occasion no uneasiness. Nothing
could be further from her wish.

“I take you at your word,” said Lenore, with a calmness which was the
result of strong effort, for she saw that the moment for indulging
tenderness was not yet come. “I take you at your word. If you wish to
save me uneasiness, go with Taddeus to-day.”

“O, certainly. It will be a very creditable day to begin, too: a fine
day for sport, if we can but get out before the fogs come on. Those fogs
are so choking, and this smoke too! Between the two, one can scarcely
breathe anywhere. What is there wanting to be done before I go? Is there
nothing that I can do to save you trouble?”

Lenore shook her head, and said no more.

“One thing besides,” said Sophia, returning from the door; “I go with
Taddeus because you wish it: but if he dares to whisper so much as——”

“He will not.”

“You are sure?”

“Quite sure. I advised him not, and I have his promise.”

“Why was I not assured of this before? It might have saved you much
pain.”

“Who could venture, my dear?”

“You have ventured, you see, and where is the harm?” asked Sophia, with
a stiff smile. As she turned away again, she thought within herself,——

“If I could feel in any way as I used to do, I should be full of remorse
for treating my mother so coldly. But it cannot hurt her, as I am also
different towards every body else. No; it cannot hurt her: and so——it
does not signify. Nothing signifies.”

Yet at this very moment Sophia felt her flesh creep at the sound of
Taddeus’s limping tread approaching.

“I am going with you, Taddeus,” said she, lightly, “and you are to teach
me to load and fire;” and she talked on till out of her mother’s
hearing, when she became suddenly silent.

She was not the less obsequious to her brother, watching every motion,
and offering attentions which were painful to him from being
over-strained. Presently they saw their little friend Clara in an odd
situation, which afforded some relief to their formality. She was doing
battle with a large bird, the Russian turkey, which had been caught in a
snare laid by Andreas. Clara had been walking round and round at a safe
distance, pondering how best to attack the creature, whose flapping
wings and threatening countenance might well seem alarming to a little
girl.

“Stand aside, my dear, and I will dispatch him,” said Taddeus, and the
turkey forthwith ceased its clamour.

“I will carry him home; he is too heavy for you,” said Sophia, “and you
will go with Taddeus. You know so much better——”

“I can’t go to-day,” replied the child. “I went yesterday, and there is
a great deal indeed to do at home.” And the little house-keeper gave a
very sage account of the domestic duties that lay before her.

Sophia would not listen to some, and promised to discharge others; but,
seeing that the child looked distressed, Taddeus declared that she
should go where she liked, slung the big bird over her shoulders, and
sent her tripping homewards.

In the midst of the next wood they saw somebody moving among the firs at
a distance. Sophia changed colour, as she always did on distinguishing a
human figure in unfrequented places. Another soon appeared, whose aspect
left no doubt as to who the first was. They were Paul and his wife.

“Well met!” cried Sophia, disengaging herself from her brother, and
running on to meet them. “You three will take care of one another
admirably; and, Paul, your wife will carry Taddeus’s gun when he is
tired, and you will see him safe on the way home; and the game may lie
any where that he chooses to put it till the evening, and I will go for
it. And O, Paul, we want some more money sadly, and you must give us
some, for our guns are not to be trusted to shoot it. You see we cannot
get more money without better guns, nor yet better guns without more
money.”

And Sophia took flight without any resistance from her brother, who
could not indeed very reasonably require her to be the companion of
Paul’s wife in a sporting expedition.

                              CHAPTER IV.
                       A LODGE IN THE WILDERNESS.

It does not follow that Sophia had lost her senses because she talked of
shooting money,—of replenishing the funds of the little company by means
of rifle and powder. It only follows that their money was not made of
gold and silver.

“I think, Paul,” said Taddeus, “you change your arms as often as a
court-lady varies her dress. The last time we met, you were carrying a
lance twice as long as yourself, and to-day you have a bundle of
arrows.”

“According to our game should be our arms. When we begin to hunger for
bear’s flesh, I carry a lance, and bring old Alexander with me to teach
the creature to squat on its hind legs, convenient for a thrust. I tell
him he will be qualified to lead one about the streets of Warsaw by the
time we get back. To-day, I come out for skins,—sables if I can get
them; and am my wife’s pupil for the occasion. She made these
arrows,—blunt, you see, so as not to injure the skins, and she is to
bring down the first we see. She carries my rifle, however, that we may
not lose the chance of other game by the way.”

“Are your sable-skins for sale or exchange?”

“O, for sale, to be sure. Our money system must extend very much before
we shall want so valuable a medium. The inhabitants of a poor hamlet can
get on a long time with copper and silver before they begin to want
gold: and mouse, ounce, and hare skins may serve us at present as well
as sables could do. But how do your neighbours take to your plan of
exchange by a medium? Do they see that it is more convenient than
barter?”

“Many do; and this is the reason why we are in want of more skins, as
Sophia told you. The man who was vexed with us for not taking a whole
sheep, when we really did not want to have more than a quarter of one,
and had nothing so valuable as a whole one to give in return, was more
angry than ever when we first offered him a hare-skin for a quarter of
his mutton, and told him that you would give him a wicker seat and
basket for the same hare-skin. And his wife thought us fools for
offering to take three or four ounce-skins in exchange for two of
Clara’s mats. But now they begin to find it convenient for those who
have little merchandise to barter away, to make some one article a sort
of rough measure of the value of the rest.”

“The women like the plan, I will answer for it,” said Paul. “Instead of
having to carry the carcase of a whole sheep about with them, with a
bench and a bundle of clothing, perhaps, in addition, with the chance of
having to convey them all home again, because nobody may happen to want
just these things at this very time, and in these very quantities, they
have now only to tie up their package of skins, and go out bargaining,
trusting that those who want mutton will come in like manner to them. O,
yes; the burden-bearers must find their account in there being, at last,
a medium of exchange.”

“But how is it that they had had none before?” said Taddeus. “One would
have thought that the burden-bearers, at least, would have been driven
to such a device long ago.”

“Burden-bearers have more bright ideas than their lords allow them to
make use of,” observed Paul. “I will ask my good lady whether she ever
thought of such a thing, while she roved about in the south at her
mother’s heels.”

And Paul beckoned to his wife, Emilia, (for so he had called her,) and
by means of gesticulations and gibberish, of which Taddeus could make
nothing, learned from her that the men of the southern tribes valued
their possessions at so many horses, or so many sheep, and that they had
no other measure.

“As clumsy folks as the patriarchs themselves,” pronounced Paul, “though
the world is so many ages older. Only conceive what a method for rovers
to carry their purses! Instead of a pocket-book, or a money-bag, or even
a package of skins, to have to transport herds of horses, and droves of
sheep spreading half a mile square. Why, a rich man must keep a dozen
salaried purse-bearers, instead of having his wealth in his pocket, or
under lock and key.”

“Do not forget the advantage,” replied Taddeus,—“no small one in the
deserts of Asia,—of being able to eat one’s money when one is hungry,
which is not the case with gold and silver, nor even with our skins.”

“True; but still they might easily have other denominations of money for
common use on small occasions.”

“Even as we may, if necessary. At present, our money serves either for
use or exchange. We can either make mittens of our mouse-skins, and
leggings of our hare-skins, or give them in return for fish and
rye-bread; and hereafter——”

“Hereafter,” interrupted Paul, “the Siberians may grow civilized enough
to have money that is fit for nothing but to be money, like the
paper-medium of our merchants; but it will hardly be in our time. There
is gold and silver money still in every country in Europe, and gold and
silver are used for ornaments and dinner-services as well as for
coinage. But my good woman has something more to tell us. Do look at her
now, and say whether you ever saw a European wife wait so prettily for
leave to speak.”

Taddeus had no pleasure in witnessing the slavish delight testified by
Emilia when her lord seemed disposed to attend to her. He turned away
from seeing her loaded with caresses with nearly as much disgust as if
they had been stripes; and his thoughts glanced proudly and painfully
towards the daughters and sisters of the heroes of Poland. He was in a
reverie when Paul called him to look at a little ornament of virgin
silver which Emilia carried at the end of each of the thick braids of
hair which hung down on either side her head.

“She says,” continued Paul, “that the women carried on exchanges among
themselves which their lords had nothing to do with. These bits of
silver, with a very few of gold, are liked the best; then come bright
pebbles, and lastly, flakes of something which I take to be the
semi-transparent mica that we were talking of making windows of.”

“Their lords might, for once, have condescended to receive a lesson from
them,” observed Taddeus. “The ladies used the more convenient media, in
my opinion.”

“I think we might take the hint,” said Paul. “I question whether we
shall not soon find ourselves in difficulties, not only as to the
quantity but the quality of our money. Our skins get sadly worn by
passing from hand to hand; and our neighbours will refuse to take them
when the hair is all off, and they look like nothing better than bits of
old leather.”

“Besides,” observed Taddeus, “there are no means of keeping those of the
same denomination of equal value. One mouse’s skin may be as good as
another, at first; but it depends on how much each circulates, and on
what care is taken of both, whether they are equally fit to be made
mittens of at the close of the season. There will be endless trouble
whenever our neighbours begin to look sharp, choose which mouse’s skins
they will take in exchange, and which not.”

“There is another danger,” responded Paul, “though a distant one. The
seasons here do not affect all animals alike, and a winter that may
freeze our poor little mice in their holes, may do no harm to the ounces
or hares. Now, if it should happen that we could for a whole year get no
mice, and double the number of hares, our whole commerce will become
perplexed. No one will know whether he is rich or not, if the value of
his money is totally changed; and little Clara may find that she can buy
more with a single mouse’s skin than her father with the twenty
hare-skins he will have been hoarding for years!”

“It is very difficult to devise a kind of money that is steady in its
value,” replied Taddeus. “Metals will always prove the best, I should
think.”

“Yes; because they may be divided into very small portions; and they are
little subject to wear and tear; and they carry great value in small
bulk, so as to be convenient in removal.”

“So far so good. All this is true of such chance bits as are dangling at
your wife’s shoulders; bits found near our smelting-house, or in the
beds of rivers. But to make them as useful as they may be made, they
must be coined. Without this, they cannot be marked out into
denominations, nor, if they could, would their value remain steady. We
could only determine the denomination of jagged, misshapen pieces of
silver like those by perpetual weighing; and there would be many
gradations between the weights required. And the circumstance of a thief
running away with a handful, or of some lucky person picking up a dozen
pieces in a day, would change the value, both of each denomination, and
of all together, in a way which can scarcely take place where the
process of coining has to be gone through, before the metals can be used
as money.”

Paul thought that beauty was a quality which should be taken into
consideration in the choice of all things that man meant to possess
himself of, from a wife to a pair of mittens. Now, he thought gold and
silver by far the prettiest commodities that can pass for any length of
time from hand to hand.

“Clara would give it against you there,” replied Taddeus. “She is a
great admirer of bright feathers, and would think such bunches of them
as the Indians use as pretty a kind of money as need be devised. She had
a fine assortment of them in her little cabinet at home. She was
wondering, the other day, poor child, whose hands they were in now, and
saying how gaily they would dress up the screen that she is weaving, to
stand between the door and the oven. She thinks our mouse-skins very
soft and pretty, too, and would like of all things to have a snow-white
hare for a favourite, that she might cherish its beautiful coat.”

“Look, look!” cried Paul, “there is a Persian duck among the reeds. If I
can get it for Clara, she need not wish for a prettier bunch of feathers
than it will make. Shall I use powder, or try my arrows? I give you
warning that we shall have a terrible din if I fire, whether I hit my
[missing lines]

The arrow whizzed from Paul’s inexperienced hand over the back of the
beautiful bird, just touching the tuft on its head. It set up a scream,
which caused a plashing in all the marshes for a mile round, and roused
innumerable woodcocks from their nests among the reeds. Emilia, out of
patience that such a hubbub had ensued upon the failure of an arrow made
by her, snatched the bow, and shot without more ado, while the wings of
the bird were yet spread. The duck sprang convulsively out of the water,
plumped in again, and sank; but the lady was already up to the middle in
the water. She, too, dived, and presently reappeared with the prey
between her teeth, seized upon two more unfortunate birds which happened
to be within reach, strangled them, shook the water from their oily
plumage, and laid them down at her husband’s feet. Then she returned for
the arrow which had been first shot, found, and presented it, and
retired behind the sportsmen, wringing her hair and garment, and being
ready for further orders. Paul could not restrain his admiration at all
this. Unlike the Indian who awaits such performances from his squaw in
profound gravity, and takes no notice when they are done, he clapped,
shouted, looked as if he was going to jump in after her, and rewarded
her, wet as she was, with a kiss and a hearty shake of the hand, when
the adventure was over.

Taddeus seemed to admire the duck more than the lady.

“What a splendid creature!” said he. “What size! What proportions!”

“Aye, has she not? And such an eye, too!”

“Brilliant, indeed.”

“So you can get over the slant up from the nose. I think nothing of it;
but, Alexander—”

“Beak, I should rather say. How jet black that beak is! And the crest
that rose and fell in its terror. And the plumage! Clara had not a finer
rose colour in all her cabinet.”

“O, you are talking of the duck! I thought you meant Emilia; and I am
sure there is the most to admire in her of the two. But you have not
seen half her accomplishments yet. There was no room for her to swim in
that pond. She swims beautifully. You shall see her in some broad reach
of the Selinga some day, when she goes to watch the beavers. She might
help them to build. On my honour, she can stay in the water for hours
together, and keep under to frighten me, till I expect never to see her
again. O, you have no idea yet what she can do.”

“She can see in the dark like an owl, you say, and track game like a
pointer, and fetch it like a spaniel, and hearken like a deer, and run
like an ostrich. Now, tell me what she can do like a woman.”

“Cook my dinner, and keep my house warm, and wait upon me.”

“So this is to be a woman, is it?”

“Yes; and a few other things. To scrape lint and nurse the wounded was
proper woman’s employment down in Poland yonder. As for the other things
you value so much,—the power of thinking, and reasoning, and all
that,—where is the Polish woman that would not now be better without
it?”

“In the same way, I suppose, as their husbands and brothers would be
better without either thoughts or feelings. Polish men would be happier
now as savages than as enslaved heroes, and, in like manner, women would
be better as mere animals than as rational beings; therefore, patriotism
is to be eschewed by the one sex, and rationality by the other. This is
your reasoning, is it not?”

“Let us have no reasoning, pray. All I mean is, that I am sorry to see
your mother look so wasted, and your sister so haggard; and that I wish
they could be as happy as my little woman. There! she has started a
sable.”

And Paul, who had talked more gravity this day than any day since the
loss of the last battle in which he fought, bounded off to his sport. He
was not recoverable, for five minutes together, till near nightfall,
going hither and thither, faster than Taddeus could follow him, and
having not a word to spare while taking aim, or beating about for a new
prey. He was very careful of his friend, however, making signs to Emilia
that she was to attend upon and aid him to the utmost. At first, Taddeus
would rather have been left to himself, and found it difficult to
receive the lady’s kind offices thankfully; but they really were offices
of kindness, and so modestly and gently urged, that his repugnance gave
way, and he soon submitted to have his infirmity relieved by one who was
certainly a far better help in guiding, walking, and preparing for
sport, than either his mother or sister could have been.

To his own surprise, he was not the first to think of returning home,
though he had presently obtained all the game he wanted. While he was
still moving onwards, and Paul was roving, nobody knew where, Emilia
began to look about her, and up into the sky, with a countenance of some
anxiety, and a gesture implying that she either felt very cold, or
expected soon to feel so. It had not been one of the most trying days
Taddeus had known. The sun, very low in the sky, had shone with a dim,
hazy light, in which, however, there was some warmth. There had been
little wind, and that little had not told of frost. The heavens were
grey, and there was a very dark line to windward; but this was so usual,
as was the moaning among the firs which now began to make itself heard,
that Taddeus would have taken no particular notice of it if Emilia had
not appeared to do so. Communication by language not having yet been
established between him and his supporter, he could not make out the
extent of her fears, till she at length slipped from under the arm which
leaned on her shoulder, climbed a neighbouring pine like the nimblest of
the squirrels that harboured near, and uttered a peculiar call, which
could be heard to a vast distance, from its unlikeness to any of the
deep and grave sounds of a northern wilderness. She came down, and
pointed the way back; refusing, by signs, to wait for Paul, and seeming
confident that he would immediately follow. He did not appear, however,
and again she climbed, and again she called, more loudly and hastily, as
volumes of black clouds unrolled themselves before the wind, and seemed
to sink as well as spread. Taddeus saw that she apprehended snow, but
was not fully aware how very soon the atmosphere, in its now approaching
state, becomes incapable of transmitting sound to any distance; and that
if Paul was to be warned homewards by the cry, it must be immediately.
It was not long before he came, considerably out of humour at finding
that both his companions were safe and well. He had concluded that some
accident had caused such repeated alarms, and was vexed to have been
called off from a very tempting chase.

“Call, call, call!” he exclaimed; “they came as thick as an English
traveller’s calls at an hotel; and all for nothing. I wonder the jade
dared to take such a liberty with me. She made my heart turn over; I can
tell you that. I thought of nothing less than that a bear had bugged one
of you. Before I was frightened, I would not hear her, for you never saw
such a beautiful animal as I was at the heels of. A black fox, if you
will believe me; but you won’t; nor any body else, for black foxes are
oftener seen than caught; and so one is winked at for a tale-telling
traveller, if one says what I am saying now. But it was a black fox, as
sure as that is a white hare over your shoulder; and I should have had
him in another minute, if that jade had not sent a call that went
through me when my shot should have gone through him. His coat would
have been a fortune to me. My hut would have been a palace presently, in
comparison with Ernest’s, to say nothing of the glory of being the first
of you to shoot a black fox. And to have been called off just because
there is snow in the air! As if snow was as rare here as it is at
Timbuctoo!”

And thus the disappointed sportsman went on growling,—not so that his
wife could understand him. She only comprehended that, for some unknown
cause, her potent lord was displeased with her. This was enough to make
her look very penitent. She scarcely glanced at the threatening sky,
when Taddeus pointed it out as her excuse, and stood, looking the
quintessence of a slave, till motioned to to lead the way.

She led them nearly as straight as the arrow flies;—a mode of proceeding
more practicable in that country than in many less wild. The forests
were not tangled, like those of a southern region, but composed of
multitudes of stems, bare to the height of some feet from the ground.
There were few small streams in the plains; and those few were rendered
passable by stepping-stones, the precise situation of which Emilia
seemed to know by instinct. Though it was now nearly dark, she did not,
in one instance, fail to arrive in a straight line with the passage over
the stream: nor did she once pause, as if perplexed, when her companions
saw nothing out a wilderness of wood around them. There was no hope of
star-light guidance this evening. The clouds hung so low that they
seemed to rest on the tops of the stunted firs; and they slowly rolled
and tumbled, as if they were about to enwreath and carry up those who
were moving beneath them. It was time now, Paul perceived, to cease his
grumbling, as something more important was on hand than the chase of a
black fox. On issuing from a wood, a blinding, suffocating mass of snow
was driven in their faces, and compelled them all to turn their backs if
they wished to breathe. Not the more for this would Emilia allow them
one moment’s pause; and perceiving that the lame Taddeus, who had long
had some difficulty in proceeding in the usual manner, was utterly
unable to walk backwards, she snatched his handkerchief from his neck,
hung it over his face like a veil, seized both his hands, and pulled him
on thus blind-folded.

“Surely,” said Taddeus, “we had better climb a tree, and wait till the
drift is past.”

“Aye, and have our feet frozen off, to say nothing of noses and ears,”
replied Paul. “And supposing we lived till morning, how are we to get
home through snow three yards deep, maybe, and not frozen to walking
consistence? No, no; our only chance, if we have one, is in getting on
as far as the rocks, at any rate. But God knows I can’t keep this up
long.”

Paul had more to say; for the last thing he ever thought of was leaving
off talking; but his companion could no longer hear him. The snow,
falling noiselessly as the light, yet stifled all sounds, and the last
words of Paul’s which were heard, came like murmurs from under a pillow.
When these had ceased for some little time, Taddeus addressed him, and
got no answer. Growing uneasy, he put out his hand to feel for him. Paul
was certainly not within some yards. Uttering now her first exclamation
of fear, Emilia sprang back upon her footsteps, motioning to Taddeus not
to stir, and in two minutes returned with her husband, who had tripped
and fallen, and been half buried in snow before he could recover
himself. In order that this might not happen again, his wife slipped her
girdle, and tied it round his arm, holding the other end herself, and
dragging on their lame friend as before.

“This will never do,” said Taddeus, resolutely stopping short. “You two
will be lost by lagging with me. I shall go back to the wood, and fare
as I best may till the storm is over; and God speed you!”

Paul answered only by pushing him vigorously on, setting his back
against Taddeus’s, so that the breadth of only one person was opposed to
the drift, and one made a path for all. This was an amendment; but
Taddeus was still convinced that the two would get on better without
him, and again he stiffened himself against being driven forward.

“I am going back,” said he, very distinctly. “If the plain is passable
in the morning, you will come and look for me. If not, never mind. You
know _I_ cannot be sorry to get quit so easily of such a life as mine.”

Paul growled impatiently; but, for once, Taddeus was too nimble for
them. He had played them the slip, and they groped after him for some
minutes in vain.

“It does not much matter,” muttered Paul to himself. “It is only being
found a few feet further from one another eight months hence, when the
snow melts. Emilia and I will stay together, however; we will keep one
another warm as long as we can. ’Tis not so very cold now, though, to my
feeling, as it was; and yet I can scarcely tell whether Emilia grasps me
or not. ’Tis the sleepiness that is so odd. One might choose a better
time for going to sleep, though there is a big, soft, feather-bed about
us. But I don’t believe I can keep awake two minutes longer. Holla!
there! What’s that? Why! is this Poland again? Aye, home: yes, yes. Why,
mother, you have seen me faint before, and you did not scream so then.
But it is so dark. Bring lights. Have you no lights? Eh, what? I can’t
hear you. My ears;—how they ring? Lights, I say! Eh? Good-night, mother.
I’m sleepy. I ... I can’t ... good-night.”

And Paul ceased his muttering, having sunk down in the snow some moments
before. Emilia did not cease to scream in his ear, to attempt to raise
him, to chafe his limbs, and warm his head in her bosom. He made feeble
resistance, as if angry at being disturbed; and in keeping this up lay
the only chance. Before he became quite passive, a new hope crossed her.
For one moment the drift slackened, ceased; and in that moment came
tidings that help was not far off. There was yet neither gleam nor
sound; but Emilia detected that there was wood-smoke in the air. She at
once gave over her chafing, and shouting into the ears of the dying man,
lifted him on her back, and struggled forward in the direction of the
fire. It was not so difficult for her to do this as it would have been
to Sophia, for she had been accustomed from childhood to bear heavy
burdens of skins, and to bring faggots from the woods. Before she was
quite exhausted, she not only was encouraged by a scent of turpentine
which reached her, but could distinguish a red gleam through the veil of
falling snow.

Her appearance was somewhat startling to those who had kindled the fire.
They were Siberian merchants,—that is, itinerants, who knew as well as
any people in the world how to keep body and soul together in all
weathers. The present company consisted of three who were just finishing
their yearly circuit, and, having been detained on the road by the great
increase in the number of their customers, in consequence of the
Emperor’s accession of convict subjects, had found the autumn close upon
them while they were yet some way from their several homes. They were
now encamped for the night, and seemed to have no other anxiety amidst
this terrific wilderness than that the frost should immediately follow
the snow, in order that the plains might be passable. They had banked up
the snow in a circle round them, and lighted a huge fire within. A bear
skin, stuck upon poles, made a sort of tent covering, and one at a time
was employed to prevent its becoming too heavily laden by the drift. The
others lazily fed the fire, as they lay on hides within the heat of it,
and smoked their pipes and drank brandy as calmly as if they had been
under the best roof in Tobolsk. The glittering of the white wall in the
background, the sparkling of the snow-flakes as they drizzled thick and
slanting over the darting blaze, had less of a domestic character than
the retreat in which the merchants alternately dozed and gossiped. The
place altogether looked very tempting to Emilia as she emerged from the
utter darkness, and stood dripping with her load in the presence of the
shoveller. The man swore, the dogs leaped up, the dozers roused
themselves; and, though vexed at the interruption, they could not refuse
a place by their fire to the wanderers.

More than this, however, they would not do. They were impenetrable about
poor Taddeus’s fate; and as they would not stir, Emilia was exposed to a
sad struggle between duty and inclination. Her husband began to revive
almost immediately, and she believed that there was yet time to save his
friend, if she could bring herself to leave the further cure of Paul to
the merchants.

She did her duty. Pointing out to the smokers the method in which they
were to proceed, and in which they were indeed much practised, she
seized a handful of brands, some of which might, she hoped, escape being
quenched, called the dogs without ceremony, and stalked forth again the
way she had come, the brands casting a scanty red light for a few
moments only before she disappeared.

The shoveller nearly forgot his duty in looking out and listening, for
he was better aware than his mates below what Emilia had to contend
with. He began to give her over, and his companions to swear at the
probable chance of losing their dogs, before there was any sign of
motion near.

“Keep that man quiet, can’t ye?” the watchman cried. “I want to listen.”

“He won’t be still,” they replied. “His pains and twitches are on him.
We have warmed him too soon. You should see him floundering like a duck
in the water. Listen how he moans.”

“Move him farther from the fire, then, and make him hold his tongue. I
could not hear the dogs two yards off with such a screeching coming up
from between you.”

As soon as Paul began to collect his ideas, he kept his pain more to
himself, and began to listen as eagerly as any body for sounds from
afar.

“I see something; but it cannot be the light she carried,—it is so high
up in the air,” proclaimed the watchman. “It is coming this way,
however. No: it is out. Aye; there it is again. It was a thick wreath
that hid it. Now, where is it gone?”

Paul scrambled up on his hands and knees, intending to play the watchman
too; but he could not yet stand. His feet were as numb as ever, though
his ancles burned with pain. The light was not out, and it came riding
in the air, dimly dancing, and then steadily blazing again. It was
preceded by one of the dogs, leaping backwards and forwards between the
little camp and the party behind. The other dog did not do the same,
being otherwise engaged. He was the torch-bearer.

When Emilia had been led by the dogs to the place where Taddeus lay, and
had reared him up insensible from under the drift, she found she could
not charge herself with both the body and the light, the one of which
was nearly as indispensable as the other. She carried Taddeus as she had
carried her husband, and made one of the tractable dogs mount to the top
of all with a flaming torch in his mouth; and thus they proceeded, the
drift sometimes being nearly as thick as ever, and threatening to plunge
them in darkness; and sometimes slackening so as to allow gleams and
flickerings to point out her former footsteps.

She could think no more of Taddeus when she saw her husband dizzily
falling back as often as he attempted to rise, and groaning with his
torments. She was in consternation when she had examined his ancles and
feet; and seizing a large knife and an earthen bowl that lay near, she
disappeared behind the fire. A fearful howl from each of the dogs gave
the next tidings of her. The merchants swore that they would cut the
animals’ tongues out if this bark brought any more strangers in upon
them. They presently saw that their dogs would never howl more. Emilia
appeared with a bowl full of reeking blood in one hand, and the
carcasses of the two poor animals in the other: and immediately
proceeded, as if she saw and heard nothing of the fury of the merchants,
to pour the warm blood down the throats of Paul and Taddeus, and to
cover up their feet in the bodies which she had slain and ripped up for
the purpose. When the enraged owners seized her two braids, and pulled
them as if they would have divided her scalp, she quietly lifted the
great knife to either side of her head and severed the hair. When they
griped her by the shoulders, as if they would have shaken her to pieces,
she ducked and disappeared behind the bearskin. When one of them
wrenched the knife from her, and made a thrust in his passion, she
leaped through the fire, and took up a position, with a flaming
pine-splinter in each hand, which they did not choose to brave. As soon
as Paul could make himself heard, he offered the value of many dogs, if
they would let his wife alone; and, as the animals could not be brought
to life again, the owners saw that their best wisdom would be to make as
good a bargain as they could.

Paul not only offered this high compensation under immediate
apprehension for his wife’s safety, but thankfully confirmed the bargain
when she was sitting securely beside him, or helping him to use his
stiff limbs, by leading him to and fro in the little space beside the
fire. He felt that he should be paying for the restoration of his own
feet, and perhaps of Taddeus’s life; for he much doubted whether either
limbs or life could have been saved by other means than Emilia had so
promptly adopted, and the efficacy of which she, in common with other
natives, well knew. The suspicion never crossed him that he might not be
able to fulfil his engagement, and that these men were now in possession
of the very wealth he had promised them.

The whole party not only lived till morning, but were of better cheer
when the day dawned than they had been twelve hours before. The two
sportsmen were weak and stiff, and not a little dispirited when they
looked out upon the dreary waste around, and pondered how they were to
reach home; but the danger and the fearful battling with the elements
were over.

The sky was still dark, but the air so serene, that if a solitary
snow-flake had found its way from the clouds, it would have sauntered
and danced through the air like a light leaf in autumn. There were no
such flakes, however, and all the snow that the atmosphere of the globe
could be charged with seemed to be collected within view. Snow was
heaped on the eastern mountains, and tumbled in huge masses among the
stark, black rocks at their base;—snow was spread to a vast depth upon
the steppe, as far as a horizon which it made the eyes ache to attain,
clearly distinguishable as it was from the leaden sky;—snow was spread,
like a cushioned canopy, over the black woods which extended northwards
for many miles. Amidst this waste of whiteness, black waters lay here
and there in pools, or in wide reaches of rivers; and in other parts
there was a rushing of the currents, and a smashing and tumbling of the
young ice, which had begun to form, but was already giving way at the
touch of light and of more temperate airs. All this was dreary enough;
but the smoke of the smelting-house could be seen far off; home was
visible, if they could but reach it.

The merchants travelled back with the party, in order to receive the
promised compensation for their dogs; and Paul was not a little amused
with the accounts they gave of their mode of traffic.

“You must have a troublesome journey of it sometimes, friend,” he
observed to the man next him, who had, like all his brethren of the
craft, picked up enough of the languages of the various people he dealt
with to be able to carry on something like a conversation. “You must
have a troublesome journey in such weather as this,” said Paul to him;
“but you are free from the danger of being robbed, as people of your
trade are in some countries. It is very hard, when they have disposed of
their wares, and begin to enjoy the lightness of their load, and the
goodly look of the gold and silver they carry in their bosoms, to be
stopped in the dark and robbed, or to wake in the morning and find their
pouch as empty as their packs. You are never so robbed, I suppose?”

The Siberian indulged his scorn at the idea of gold and silver, and
thought that those who carried their wealth in such small compass
deserved to lose it. How much better, be urged, was a pack of skins, or
a drove of black cattle, or a sledge-load of rye-flour, which no man
could hide in his bosom and slip away with! Though Paul thought robbery
a bad thing, he did not consider the not being subject to it the very
first quality in money. He asked why the merchant mentioned three kinds
of money; and whether all his customers did not agree to use the same.

“Oh, no! Some give us all things that they make or grow in return for
our tea from China, and the pepper we buy from abroad, and the clothing
we bring from Tobolsk. Others give us only skins; others only cattle;
others, again, only rye.”

“That is, they use these articles respectively as money.”

“Yes; and what we take as money in one district we sell as merchandise
in another.”

“So you use no coin at all.”

“Not here. We travel along a vast line;” and he stretched his arms east
and west with a most important look. “In the west, we do as they do in
the west,—we pass the Emperor’s coin. In the east, we do as they do in
the east,—we make no objection to whatever gain they put in our way.”

“But do they make no objection? It seems to me that there must be
perpetual objections. One says, ‘Give me wool for rye.’ ‘I have rye
enough,’ says the shepherd. ‘What do you want most?’ asks the
cultivator. ‘Fish.’ So the cultivator goes to the fisherman, and says,
‘Give me fish for rye.’ The fisherman wants no rye, but skins; so, even
if the hunter happily wants rye, the cultivator has to manage three
bargains before he can get his wool. This seems to me a system open to
many objections.”

“Yes; the people are as long in exchanging their fish and their furs as
in catching and curing them. But what is that to us? We reckon upon
spending twice as much time where there is barter as where there is
sale; but we make our gain accordingly.”

“Aye, to the injury of your customers: they lose their time in
bargaining, and by not dividing their labours; and they also pay you
largely for the loss of your time. Truly, they are losers in every way.
Why do not you teach them to use money?—then you would finish your
traffic, and get home before these storms could overtake you.”

The merchant laughed, and said that some ways were better for some kinds
of people, and others for others. The thing that took the most time,
after all, was the measuring quantities of different articles against
one another, and agreeing upon their value. Every man could tell how
much trouble and expense his own article had cost him, and nobody could
judge in the same way of his neighbour’s: a third party was necessary to
decide between them.

“Oh, aye; and you merchants are the third party, and so have the
pronouncing upon the value both of the goods you buy and the goods you
sell. It may be very profitable to you to keep exchange in this rude
state; but it would be a prodigious convenience and saving to the people
to have the value of their produce measured, and made somewhat steady,
by a standard which should not vary very much.”

The merchant thought things had better go on as they were. Gold and
silver coins were much more valuable among the wise people that lived
westwards than among the simple folks to the east.

“As gold and silver, certainly,” said Paul; “for savages have little
notion of their being valuable. Even my wife there wore as much gold as
a duchess would have been glad of, the first time I saw her, and would
have given it all away for as many steaks of horse-flesh as she carried
ounces of precious metal. But, as money, some such article would be
useful to savages in the same way as to civilized people. It would save
their time and labour, and prevent their being cheated by you, Mr.
Merchant.”

The merchant still remained an enemy to innovation; like all who profit
largely by things as they are. So Paul pursued,

“I assure you I can speak to the want savages have of money. Even in our
little company, inhabiting only five huts in all——”

“You are not going to call us savages,” sternly interrupted Taddeus, who
had just joined his friend.

“O yes, I am. What would you have more savage than our way of passing
last night? or our huts? or our implements? or all about us on this side
Irkutsk?”

“That has nothing to do with the matter. You are talking of a social
arrangement, and its subjects; and when the subjects are civilized, you
cannot show by their example how the arrangement suits a savage state. I
suppose you allow that we, as Poles, are civilized.”

“Savage; absolutely savage,” persisted Paul. “Why now, who can look more
savage than Ernest when you catch him talking to the spirits of the
Charmed Sea, or whoever else it is that sets him raving there? Where was
there ever a savage, if it is not Andreas when any one alludes to his
iron chest at Warsaw? Or your own sister, for that matter,—ten times a
day she looks as savage as——”

“As your wife,” said Taddeus, moved beyond his patience.

“Just so; only my wife is more like a faithful dog, and your sister like
a hunted tiger-cat. But, as I was saying, Mr. Merchant, even in our
little company, we presently found we could not get on without a medium
of exchange.” And he explained their device of skins of three several
values. The merchant seemed more amused than he could well account for,
and asked if all were so honest that nobody stole this kind of money.

“It is never stolen entire,” replied Paul. “Such a theft would be
detected at once in so small a society as ours.”

“Even supposing,” interrupted Taddeus, “that there was a Pole among us
who would steal.”

“Take care how much you answer for, friend,” said Paul. “I was going to
say, that though no entire skin has been abstracted, some expert fingers
have been at work clipping. A curious mouse-skin came into my hands
lately, made of cuttings from the jags and edges of other mouse-skins.”

“Indeed! I should not have thought an article of so low a denomination
worth the labour.”

“Some people,—you know who I mean,—think no labour too much for gain.
Besides, this was probably a first experiment; and if it had succeeded,
there would have been a rising up early, and sitting up late, to make
patch-work hare-skins or sables,—if we should ever attain to high a
denomination of money.”

“Well; but what did you do to the miser; for I conclude you mean him? He
is no Pole, remember; he does not like to be considered so, so and we
may as well take him at his word.”

“Since I could not threaten him with the ancient punishment of
counterfeiters of the current money, namely, pouring it molten down the
throat, I came as near to it as I could. I fried a bit of the tail, and
made him eat it, on pain of being pilloried at the mouth of the mine.
Then I let him burn the rest, and told him he should be watched, and not
get off so easily the next time he was caught clipping and manufacturing
money. I dare say he cursed our medium for not being metal. You may melt
metal, and nobody knows how many clippings a lump is made of; but piece
a skin as neatly as you may, and daub over the inside as cleverly as
Andreas himself, and the seams still remain visible to the curious eye.
The public has the advantage over counterfeiters where leather money is
used.”

“And how many advantages knaves have over the public where leather money
is used, we may live to see,” observed Taddeus. He was right: it was not
necessary for them to be many hours older to ascertain this point.

They were yet at a considerable distance from home when they heard
shouts ringing among the rocks before them, and saw one or two dark
figures moving among the snow in the plain. The young men answered the
shouts, and made signals, the most conspicuous they could devise. The
merchants at once became exceedingly inquisitive about the exact
situation of Paul’s abode; and having learned it, were suddenly in far
too great a hurry to go any farther. As for the promised payment, the
sportsmen were welcome to the dogs, unless indeed they would give their
arrows and a rifle, and the game they carried, in consideration of the
loss. Paul sighed over his valuable new arrows, Taddeus over his only
rifle, and both over the skins which they were conveying home to be made
money of, and which they had managed to retain with that view through
the whole adventure. They could not refuse, however, considering what
the martyred dogs had done for them; so they surrendered their goods,
and returned from this memorable sporting expedition much poorer than
they set out; and the merchants retired precipitately in the opposite
direction.

At an abrupt turn of the rock they came upon Sophia, who was alone,
busily engaged in tracking the path they had followed after parting from
her the preceding day, and sounding in the snow. Sometimes she looked
intently into the black stream which flowed sullenly by, and then
renewed her sounding, so eagerly, that she did not perceive the approach
of the young men and Emilia. Their footsteps could not be heard. She
started when they came close up to her, and said, with an indescribable
expression of countenance,——

“O, you are safe, are you? We have all been out since dawn to look for
you. You will find my mother farther on. They would not spare my father
from the mine.——So you are safe, after all!”

“You are disappointed,” said Taddeus, in a low and bitter tone. “You
hoped to see me no more. You were praying to find my body in those
waters.”

“I do not pray,” said Sophia, pettishly.

“Not to demons?” asked her brother.

“What and where are they?” inquired she, laughing. And she turned to go
home without objecting to her brother’s construction of what she had
been doing.

“I wish Emilia had let me alone last night,” thought Taddeus. “No; there
is my mother. What would become of her with poor Sophia for her only
child?”

And as he shuffled forward painfully to meet his mother, he felt that
there was yet something to live for, even if Poland should not be
redeemed.

                               CHAPTER V.
                         TRAFFIC IN THE WILDS.

There was a very good reason for the merchants turning back when they
discovered whither they were being conducted. They had not only made an
enormous profit of their traffic in the little settlement during the
absence of the young sportsmen, and the employment of the rest of the
men in the mine, but had carried off nearly all the skins they could lay
their hands on. They had frightened Clara, and cheated Sophia, out of
their respective stocks, and fairly robbed Lenore: so that, with the
exception of half a dozen skins, too much worn to be saleable, and
therefore left behind, the little company was once more moneyless. Some
of them looked rather grave upon the discovery of this new
inconvenience, and not the less because the weather was now of the
dubious kind which sets in at the end of autumn, and renders the pursuit
of game impracticable for a few weeks. But nobody looked so dismal as
Andreas, who could not hold up his head for some days after this new
misfortune. The loss of anything once possessed was to him the most
intolerable of evils; and it certainly seemed to be the one from which
he was to have no rest. “I would be deaf, dumb, and blind to be rich,”
was the sentiment which had been heard to escape from him in his agony.
He was not deaf, dumb, or blind; but neither was he rich. “I would live
directly under the sun in the Sandy Desert, or burrow in the snow at the
North Pole, if I could get gold there,” was another of his aspirations.
He was fixed among the snows, but not, alas! so as to get gold; and he
considered himself a much-tried man, and appeared with a countenance of
great dejection when the next time of meeting their neighbours for the
purpose of making purchases came round.

This little market presented a curious scene. It was held near the mouth
of the mine, and either on holidays, or at leisure hours; so that groups
of grim-faced miners stood to look on, or took part in the traffic, if
they chanced to have anything wherewith to conduct it. It seemed
remarkable that there should be an unbounded store of what is commonly
considered wealth beneath their feet, and piles of bars of shining
silver in the smelting-house at hand, while the traffickers were
exchanging their goods laboriously, and with perpetual disputes, for one
another, or for some common commodity which bore a different value
according as it was wanted for use or to serve as a circulating medium.
Andreas, and some others cast longing glances towards the store-houses
of the metals procured by their labour; but there was always an ample
array of green coats and red collars,—of sabres and fire-arms,—and,
above all, a full exhibition of the knout: in the face of which terrors,
no one could dream of fingering his Majesty’s mineral wealth, coined or
uncoined.

The next was a somewhat awkward market-day for the Polish settlers.
Having been disappointed of getting game, they had nothing to sell; and,
having been robbed, they had no purchase-money but five or six clipped
and worn skins. They were some time in perceiving the advantage this
gave them as to the quantity of goods they might obtain in return; but
the discovery, when made, helped to raise the spirits even of Andreas
himself; as did another circumstance, which acted in some degree as a
remedy of their new inconvenience,—the increased rapidity of the
circulation of their money.

Sophia could never bring herself to take part in any social business or
amusement, and regularly walked off into solitude when there was a
congregation of numbers. To-day, she wanted to have Clara with her, and
consented, though unwillingly, to wait on a sheltered ledge of rock
near, till the little girl should have made a purchase for her father
with her little mouse’s skin, the only one she had.

The article she wanted was a pair of pattens for her father;—broad
sandals of light wood, tied on with leather thongs, to prevent the feet
from sinking in the snow before it was frozen into a hard surface. The
right time for chasing the elk is when the snow is in this state; for
the elk, wearing no pattens, sinks in the snow at every step, while the
shod hunter gains upon him in the open plain. Clara thought the
possession of a fine elk would comfort her father for his losses sooner
than any other consolation she could devise; so into the market she
went, to look for a pair of pattens. There were several to be sold; but,
at first, the holders laughed at the little girl for offering so low a
price; and only laughed again when she made melancholy signs that she
had no more money to offer. When they found, however, that nobody could
give more, they began to be afraid of having to carry their wares home
again, and grudgingly offered the worst pair in the market. There was a
very suspicious crack in one patten, and the thongs of the other were a
good deal worn; but Clara thought they would last till one elk was
caught, and then her father would be rich enough to buy a better pair.
So she untied her precious mouse-skin from about her neck, gave one more
look at it, and paid it away. She wondered whether she should ever see
it again, and was sure she should know it by the little hole she had
burned in one corner to pass a string through.

Seeing that Sophia looked in a reverie, and in no hurry, she thought she
would stand a minute or two to see what became of her mouse-skin.

She had not to wait long. The five who held money were by far the most
important people in the market, where money was the scarcest commodity
of all; and this importance shifted from one to another more quickly as
the exchanges became more brisk.

The countryman who sold the pattens had not intended to purchase
anything; but others who did, and who wanted money to do it with, came
to him with so many offers of goods that at last he was tempted, and
gave the mouse-skin for a quiverful of blunt arrows and a wooden bowl
and platter.

“O dear!” thought Clara, “I have certainly made a very bad bargain; for
the bowl and platter, without the arrows, are worth as much as these
trumpery pattens.”

She could not help following to see who would have her mouse-skin next.
The woman who held it seemed to have a great wish for a hunting knife;
for she passed by a variety of offered goods, and pushed through a group
of eager sellers, to where Ernest stood leaning on his lance, and
observing what was going forward. She seized the knife with one hand, as
it was stuck in his belt, and proffered the money with the other; but
Ernest smiled, and made signs that he had no wish to sell his knife.

“What have you to do with it, my dear?” he inquired, struck with Clara’s
look of anxiety. “You look as if you wished me to part with my knife.”

“This was my mouse-skin,” she replied, half crying, “and look,—this is
all I got for it!”

“Indeed! I could make a better bargain than that for you now. Let us
try; and perhaps I may get both a better pair of pattens and my knife
back again soon, if we manage cleverly; and if not, your father will
lend me his knife till I can get another from Irkutsk.”

And the good-natured Ernest made the exchange for Clara’s sake; and,
moreover, bought the pattens, which he declared he wanted very much.

Clara had too much sense of justice not to insist on his taking
something more; and Ernest promised to accept the first mat she should
make.

“And now,” said he, “we will look out for the best pair of pattens in
the market; but you must not be in a hurry to make your bargain this
time. What else would you like to have?”

There were so many tempting things in sight that it was somewhat
difficult to choose: and she was half-frightened by the eagerness with
which she was courted when she was perceived to be one of the favoured
five money-holders. She grasped Ernest’s hand, and clutched her
treasure, and saw nothing of Sophia’s signs of impatience, while engaged
in negociation. By Ernest’s help, and to her own utter astonishment, she
presently found herself mistress of a perfect pair of pattens of the
finest wicker-work, a large package of tea which had just crossed the
frontier, pepper enough to last the winter, and a vigorous young
rein-deer. The rich little lady thought a scarcity of money a fine
thing; and having thanked Ernest very gratefully, and given her wealth
into the charge of her delighted father, she at length joined Sophia on
the rock.

“I am glad you had a reason for staying,” said Sophia; “but I do not
care now for going any farther. These people must soon have done now, I
suppose, and leave us in peace.”

“O, I am sorry I kept you,” said Clara; “but yet,—I should like to see
who has my mouse-skin after all. I shall know it anywhere by the hole in
the corner.”

“You need not move from where you are, child. You may see where money is
passing from hand to hand, by the gathering of the people about the
holder. Look how they run after the man with the Chinese belt who sold
you the tea.”

“Will he carry it away, I wonder?”

“No. He is going back to China for more tea, I suppose; and your
mouse-skin will be of no use to him there, or on the road; so he will
part with it in this neighbourhood, you will see.”

And so it proved; and the exchanges became quicker and quicker every
moment till it began to grow dark, and it was necessary for the people
to be going home. The five skins remained in the possession of three
strangers; viz. one cultivator, one Russian soldier placed as a guard
over the silver, and a travelling merchant, who held three out of the
five skins.

“How busy they have been all day!” observed Clara, as she turned
homewards, after seeing the last trafficker pack up and depart. “They
seem to have had as much buying and selling to do as if everybody had
had a purse full of money.”

“And so they have,” replied Paul, who was carrying his purchase home in
the shape of as heavy a load of grain as a strong man’s back would bear;
and groaning under it all the more discontentedly for knowing that, if
he had but waited till the close of the day, he might have had a sledge
into the bargain, on which to convey his burdens, or be conveyed
himself, whenever he should have a rein-deer, or dogs from Kamtchatka to
draw it. “They have as much buying and selling to do, my dear, with
little money as with much. The difference is, that when there is much,
some of it lies still in the purse, or moves into only one or two new
hands; while, where there is little, it flies round and round the market
as fast as it can go from hand to hand.”

It had never before struck Clara that any piece of money made more than
one exchange. She thought that her mouse-skin was worth a pair of
pattens, but forgot that if the person with whom she exchanged it did
the same thing that she had done, it would become worth two pair of
pattens; and if a third bargainer followed the example, it would become
worth three pair. She now began to exclaim upon the prodigious value of
money. Paul laughed at her for having fancied for a moment that there
must be a piece of money for everything that is bought and sold.

“If,” said he, “it was necessary for us to have a skin for every
individual thing we want to buy, there would soon be an end of all the
poor animals in Siberia. And if it was necessary for everybody in Russia
to have a piece of coin for every article purchased, the Emperor would
have to collect all the gold and silver that were ever dug out of the
ground, and to be always digging more at a great expense. And, after
all, the value of the money of the kingdom would be no greater than if
there was only a tenth part of all this existing.”

“Why, to be sure, a ruble that was used yesterday does just as well to
use again to-day as a new one; and my mouse-skin bought as many things
just now as twenty mouse-skins once used, would have done. But some
people lay by their ducats and rubles, as father used to do in Warsaw.
If some lie idle in this way, must others go round faster, or will there
be more money made?”

“That depends upon whether money is easy or difficult to be had, and on
whether people want to make many exchanges. To-day, money was very
difficult to be had, and so it passed round very rapidly; which happened
to be the only way in which we could manage to have money enough to
carry on our dealings with any briskness. ‘Be quick, be quick,’ we said
to one another, ‘for if we can make five pieces of money go through
twenty bargains each, it will be nearly the same thing, as to the
quantity of business done, as if ten pieces went through ten bargains
each, or twenty pieces through five.’”

“It is not often that one of our skins belongs to five people in one
day,” observed Clara.

“True; and we never before had any pieces go through twenty hands.”

“I think it is a fine thing to have very little money,” said Clara.

“I do not. Many of us would have been very glad, before the market was
over, to have caught more mice and killed more hares. I wish I could do
it now, before morning, to baulk that merchant who finished off with
pocketing three skins out of five.”

“What did he do that for?”

“To make things cheaper than ever to-morrow; fill his sledge at our
expense; and travel elsewhere to sell his goods, where money is cheaper
and goods are dearer than here.”

“How will he do so?”

“He will hide one of his skins; and then, when there will be only four
in use, more goods still will be given for each, and he will be able to
buy as much with two skins as he could buy to-night with three. Then he
will begin to sell again; and, to raise the price of his goods, he will
bring out the skin he laid by, and put it into circulation.”

“Then goods will be just the price they are to-night. But if he sells,
the skins will come back to him.”

“Yes; and then if he chooses to lay by two, goods will be dearer than
ever, and he may play the same trick over again with a larger profit,
till he gets all our goods into his hands in return for one skin.”

“What a shame!” cried Clara. “People will not let him do so, to be
sure?”

“If they must have his goods, and cannot get any more money, they must
submit; but it will not be for long. We must soon get more skins by some
means or another. I do wish I had the fur cap they took from me when
they gave me this horrible covering.” And he pulled off and threw away
the badge cap which the tender mercy of the Emperor had allotted to him.
His shaven head, however, could not bear the cold without it, and he was
obliged to let Clara pick it up and put it on again.

“I always thought,” she said, “that it was a very fine thing for goods
to be cheap,—and it has been a fine thing for father and me to-day; but
yet it seems as if they ought to be dearer again to-morrow.”

“And they should be, if I could make them so. You see, my dear, there
are two sorts of cheapness, one of which is a good thing, and the other
not. When it costs less trouble and expense, for instance, to grow corn
than it did before, people will exchange more corn for the same quantity
of tea or cloth or money than they did before; and this cheapness is a
good thing, because it is a sign of plenty. There is more corn, and no
less tea or money. But when more corn is given for a less quantity of
tea or money, not because there is more corn, but because the Emperor of
China will not let us have so much tea, or the Emperor of Russia so much
money as formerly, this kind of cheapness is a bad thing, because it is
a token of scarcity. This was our case yesterday. We had a scarcity of
skins, but no more goods of other kinds than usual.”

“And there was a scarcity of skins in two ways,” observed the thoughtful
little girl. “When we have had more than we wanted to use as money, it
answered very well to make leggings and mittens of them; but now we
could not get mouse-skin mittens if we wished it ever so much.”

“Not without buying money with more goods than a pair of mittens can
ever be worth.”

“I never heard of buying money before,” said Clara, laughing.

“Indeed! In all money bargains, one party buys goods with money, and the
other buys money with goods. How should countries that have no gold and
silver mines procure their money in any other way? England buys gold and
silver from South America with cotton goods; and the Americans get
cotton goods by paying gold and silver, sometimes in coin, and sometimes
in lumps of metal. These metals are sometimes, as you see, a commodity,
and some times a medium of exchange, like our skins. It there happens to
be plenty to be had, either of the one or the other, their value rises
and falls, like the value of all other commodities,—according to the
cost and trouble of procuring them, and a few other circumstances. If
there happens to be a scarcity, their exchangeable value may be raised
to any height, in proportion to the scarcity, and they cease to be
commodities.”

“And just the same, I suppose, whether they are in good condition or in
bad? My mouse-skin bought as many things to-day, worn and jagged as it
was, as it would have bought if it had been new, and sleek, and soft.”

“Yes; but as a commodity it would now bear little value. If there were a
hundred new ones in the market to-morrow, the old ones would scarcely
sell for anything as mitten materials.”

“To be sure. They would make very shabby, rotten mittens. But it is a
good thing that we have not always this rich merchant here, unless
indeed we could always get what skins we want. He might play all kinds
of tricks with us.”

“Like some foolish kings with their people, my dear; but kings are more
sure to be punished for such tricks than this merchant. When he has
ruined us all, he can travel away, and enjoy his profits elsewhere; but
kings who have put bad money into the market under the name of good, or
thought they could vary the quantity as they pleased for their own
purposes, have found themselves in a terrible scrape at last. When there
was too much coined money among the people, some of it was sure to
disappear——”

“Where did it go to?”

“If the people could manage to send it abroad to where money prices were
not so high, they did so. If not permitted to do this, it was easy to
melt it down at home, and make cups and dishes, and chains and watches
of it.”

“And then, if there was too little, I suppose they made their plate and
chains into coins again. But could they do this without the king’s
leave?”

“The kings are not sorry to give leave, because the people pay
governments something for having their metals coined. But whenever
governments meddle to injure the coin, or to prevent its circulating
naturally, they are sure to suffer; for violent changes of price make
many poor, while they make a few rich; and the consequence of this is
that the government is not well supported. The people are not only
angry, but they become unable to pay their taxes.”

“Do people know directly when more money is sent out, or some drawn in?”

“Very soon, indeed; because great changes of price follow. In this place
now, if we see the same quantity of goods brought for the same number of
people to buy, and our skins generally changing hands five times in the
day, and prices remaining the same, we are sure that the same quantity
of money is in use. If prices remain the same, and skins change hands
eight times a-day, we know that there must be fewer skins in the market;
and if prices fall very much at the same time, we may be sure that there
is very little money indeed, and that everybody will be on the look-out
to make more. If prices rise in an equal degree, it will be quite as
plain that there are more skins than we want as money; and, presently,
some of them will be made into mittens.”

“But in such a place as this, it is very easy to count the skins, and
observe who steals or hides, and who brings in a fresh supply.”

“True; but in the largest empire it may be just as certainly known as
here when there is more or less money afloat, by the signs I have
mentioned, without our being able to look into every hole and corner
where people are melting coins to be made into dishes or thimbles, or
looking out their bars of gold and silver to be coined. Though you may
not see all that may be done in the darkness of this night, you may