among the prisoners, Aksenov was always asked to judge betwixt them. Nobody wrote to Aksenov from home, and he knew not whether his wife and children were alive or dead.
One day they brought fresh prisoners to the katorga. In the evening all the old prisoners crowded round the new ones, and began to put questions to them as to which village or town they came from, and as to what they had done. Aksenov also sat down on the bench beside the new-comers, and with head bowed down, listened to what this or that one had to say.
One of the new prisoners was a tall, healthy old man of about sixty, with a grey-streaked beard. He told them what he had been taken up for, and this was his story:
"Yes, my brethren, not for nothing have I plumped down here! I loosed the carrier's horses from his sledge. They seized me. They said, 'You stole them!' But I said I only wanted to get along quicker—I let the horses go; besides, the carrier is my friend. I spoke true. 'Nay, but thou didst steal them,' said they. And yet they knew not what I had stolen nor where. There was a nice fuss about it; they would have sent me here to my ruin long ago if they could have got to the bottom of it, and if they drive me hither now 'tis contrary to law. But—faugh!—I am in Siberia at any rate, and there's an end of it!"
"And whence do you come?" asked one of the prisoners.
"We are from the city of Vladimir, and are
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