I was in the train at last, fairly on my way home, and I was glad. But I wasn\'t glad for very long. I began to wish myself back in the railway station at Stretensk, where at least I had fresh air. At first I had the window open and a corner seat. There are only two people on a seat in a Russian long-distance train, because when night falls they let down the seat above, which makes a bunk for the second person. But I was second class and my compartment opened without a door into the other compartments in the carriage, also two more bunks appeared crossways, and they were all filled with people. We were four women, two men who smoked, a baby who cried, and my little dog. I spread out my rugs and cushions, and when I wanted the window open the majority were against me. Not only was the window shut, but every ventilating arrangement was tightly closed also, and presently the atmosphere was pestilential. I grew desperate. I wandered out of the carriage and got on to the platform at the end, where the cold wind—for all it was August—cut me like a knife. The people objected to that cold wind coming in, and the next time I wandered out for a breath of fresh air I found the door barred and no prayers of mine would open it. In that carriage the people were packed like sardines, but though I was three-quarters suffocated no one else seemed at all the worse. I couldn\'t have looked at breakfast next morning, but the rest of the company preened themselves and fed cheerfully from the baskets they carried. Then at last I found a student going to a Western Siberian university who spoke a little French and through him I told the authorities that if I could not be transferred to a first-class carriage I was to be left behind at the next station. I had spent a night in a station and I knew all about it; it wasn\'t nice, but it was infinitely preferable to a night in a crowded second-class carriage.

After a little while the train master came and with the aid of the student informed me that there would be a first-class carriage a little farther on and if there was room I should go in it, also we would know in an hour or so.

So I bore up, and at a little town in the hills I was taken to a first-class compartment. There were three—that is, six bunks—making up half of a second-class carriage, and they were most luxurious, with mirrors and washing arrangements complete. The one I entered was already occupied by a very stout woman who, though we did not know any tongue in common, made me understand she was going to a place we would reach next morning for an operation, and she apologised—most unnecessarily but most courteously—for making me take the top bunk. She had a big Irish setter with her whom she called “Box”—“Anglisky,” as she said—and “Box” was by no means as courteous and friendly as his mistress, and not only objected to Buchanan\'s presence but said so in no measured terms. I had to keep my little dog up on the top bunk all the time, where he peered over and whimpered protestingly at intervals. There was one drawback, and so kind and hospitable was my stable companion that I hardly liked to mention it, but the atmosphere in that compartment you could have cut with a knife. Wildly I endeavoured to open the windows, and she looked at me in astonishment. But I was so vehement that the student was once more brought along to interpret, and then everybody took a turn at trying to open that window. I must say I think it was exceedingly kind and hospitable of them, for these people certainly shrank from the dangers of a draught quite as much as I did from the stuffiness of a shut window. But it was all to no purpose. That window had evidently never been opened since the carriage was made and it held on gallantly to the position it had taken up. They consulted together, and at length the student turned to me:

“Calm yourself, Madame, calm yourself; a man will come with an instrument.” And three stations farther down the line a man did appear with an instrument and opened that window, and I drew in deep breaths of exceedingly dusty fresh air.

The lady in possession and I shared our breakfast. She made the tea, and she also cleaned out the kettle by the simple process of emptying the tea leaves into the wash-hand basin. That, as far as I saw, was the only use she made of the excellent washing arrangements supplied by the railway. But it is not for me to carp, she was so kind, and bravely stood dusty wind blowing through the compartment all night just because I did not like stuffiness. And when she was gone, O luxury! Buchanan and I had the carriage to ourselves all the way to Irkutsk.

And this was Siberia. We were going West, slowly it is true, but with wonderful swiftness I felt when I remembered—and how should I not remember every moment of the time?—that this was the great and sorrowful road along which the exiles used to march, that the summer sun would scorch them, these great plains would be snow-covered and the biting, bitter wind would freeze them long before they reached their destination. I looked ahead into the West longingly; but I was going there, would be there in less than a fortnight at the most, while their reluctant feet had taken them slowly, the days stretched into weeks, the weeks into months, and they were still tramping east into an exile that for all they knew would be lifelong. Ah! but this road must have been watered with blood and tears. Every river, whether they were ferried over it or went across on the ice, must have seemed an added barrier to the man or woman thinking of escape; every forest would mean for them either shelter or danger, possibly both, for I had not forgotten the tigers of the Amur and the bears and wolves that are farther west. And yet the steppes, those hopeless plains, must have afforded still less chance of escape.

Oh! my early ideas were right after all. Nature was jailer enough here in Siberia. Men did escape, we know, but many more must have perished in the attempt, and many, many must have resigned themselves to their bitter fate, for surely all the forces of earth and air and sky had ranged themselves on the side of the Tsar. This beautiful country, and men had marched along it in chains!

At Chita, greatly to my surprise, my sotnik of Cossacks joined the train, and we greeted eaeh other as old friends. Indeed I was pleased to see his smiling face again, and Buchanan benefited largely, for many a time when I was not able to take him out for a little run our friend came along and did it for us.

The platforms at Siberian stations are short and this troop train, packed with soldiers, was long, so that many a time our carriage never drew up at the platform at all. This meant that the carriage was usually five feet from the ground, and often more. I am a little woman and five feet was all I could manage, when it was more it was beyond me. Of course I could have dropped down, but it would have been impossible to haul myself up again, to say nothing of getting Buchanan on board. A Russian post train—and this troop train was managed to all intents and purposes as a post train—stops at stations along the line so that the passengers may get food, and five minutes before it starts it rings a “Make ready” bell one minute before it rings a second bell, “Take your seats,” and with a third bell off the train goes. And it would have gone inexorably even though I, having climbed down, had been unable to climb up again. Deeply grateful then were Buehanan and I to the sotnik of Cossacks, who recognised our limitations and never forgot us.

I liked these Russian post trains far better than the train de luxe, with its crowd and its comforts and its cosmopolitan atmosphere. A Russian post train in those days had an atmosphere of its own. It was also much cheaper. From Stretensk to Petrograd, including Buehanan, the cost was a little over nine pounds for the tickets, and I bought my food by the way. It was excellent and very cheap. All the things I had bought in Kharbin, especially the kettles, came into use once more. The moment the train stopped out tumbled the soldiers, crowds and crowds of them, and raced for the provision stalls and for the large boilers full of water that are a feature of every Russian station on the overland line. These boilers are always enclosed in a building just outside the railway station, and the spouts for the boiling water, two, three and sometimes four in a row, come out through the walls. Beside every spout is an iron handle which, being pulled, brings the boiling water gushing out. Russia even in those days before the revolution struck me as strangely democratic, for the soldiers, the non-commissioned officers, the officers and everyone else on the train mingled in the struggle for hot water. I could never have got mine filled, but my Cossack friend always remembered me and if he did not come himself sent someone to get my kettles. Indeed everyone vied in being kind to the Englishwoman, to show, I think, their good will to the only representative of the Allied nation on the train.

It was at breakfast-time one warm morning I first made the acquaintance of “that very great officer,” as the others called him, the captain of the Askold. He was in full naval uniform, and at that time I was not accustomed to seeing naval officers in uniform outside their ships, and he was racing along the platform, a little teapot in one hand, intent on filling it with hot water to make coffee. He was not ashamed to pause and come to the assistance of a foreigner whom he considered the peasants were shamefully overcharging. They actually wanted her to pay a farthing a piece for their largest cucumbers! He spoke French and so we were able to communicate, and he was kind enough to take an interest in me and declare that he himself would provide me with cucumbers. He got me four large ones and when I wanted to repay him he laughed and said it was hardly necessary as they only cost a halfpenny! He had the compartment next to mine and that morning he sent me in a glass of coffee—we didn\'t run to cups on that train. Excellent coffee it was too. Indeed I was overwhelmed with provisions. One woman does not want very much to eat, but unless I supplied myself liberally and made it patent to all that I had enough and more than enough I was sure to be supplied by my neighbours out of friendship for my nation. From the Cossack officer, from a Hussar officer and his wife who had come up from Ugra in Mongolia, and from the captain of the Askold I was always receiving presents. Chickens, smoked fish—very greasy, in a sheet of paper, eaten raw and very excellent—raspberries and blue berries, to say nothing of cucumbers, were rained upon me.

At some stations there was a buffet and little tables set about where the first and second class passengers could sit down and have déjeuner, or dinner, but oftener, especially in the East, we all dashed out, first, second and third class, and at little stalls presided over by men with kerchiefs on their heads and sturdy bare feet, women that were a joy to me after the effete women of China, bought what we wanted, took it back with us into the carriages and there ate it. I had all my table things in a basket, including a little saucer for Buchanan. It was an exceedingly economical arrangement, and I have seldom enjoyed food more. The bread and butter was excellent. You could buy fine white bread, and bread of varying quality to the coarse black bread eaten by the peasant, and I am bound to say I very much like fine white bread. There was delicious cream; there were raspberries and blue berries to be bought for a trifle; there were lemons for the tea; there was German beet sugar; there were roast chickens at sixpence apiece, little pasties very excellent for twopence-halfpenny, and rapchicks, a delicious little bird a little larger than a partridge, could be bought for fivepence, and sometimes there was plenty of honey. Milk, if a bottle were provided, could be had for a penny-farthing a quart, and my neighbours soon saw that I did not commit the extravagance of paying three times as much for it, which was what it cost if you bought the bottle.

The English, they said, were very rich! and they were confirmed in their belief when they found how I bought milk. Hard-boiled eggs were to be had in any quantity, two and sometimes three for a penny-farthing. I am reckoning the kopeck as a farthing. These were first-class prices, the soldiers bought much more cheaply. Enough meat to last a man a day could be bought for a penny-farthing, and good meat too—such meat nowadays I should pay at least five shillings for.

Was all this abundance because the exiles had tramped wearily across the steppes? How much hand had they had in the settling of the country? I asked myself the question many times, but nowhere found an answer. The stations were generally crowded, but the country round was as empty as it had been along the Amur.

And the train went steadily on. Very slowly though—we only went at the rate of three hundred versts a day, why, I do not know. There we stuck at platforms where there was nothing to do but walk up and down and look at the parallel rails coming out of the East on the horizon and running away into the West on the horizon again.

“We shall never arrive,” I said impatiently.

“Ah! Madame, we arrive, we arrive,” said the Hussar officer, and he spoke a little sadly. And then I remembered that for him arrival meant parting with his comely young wife and his little son. They had with them a fox-terrier whom I used to ask into my compartment to play with Buchanan, and they called him “Sport.”

“An English name,” they said smilingly. If ever I have a fox-terrier I shall call him “Sport,” in kindly remembrance of the owners of the little friend I made on that long, long journey across the Old World. And the Hussar officer\'s wife, I put it on record, liked fresh air as much as I did myself. As I walked up and down the train, even though it was warm summer weather, I always knew our two carriages because in spite of the dust we had our windows open. The rest of the passengers shut theirs most carefully. The second class were packed, and the third class were simply on top of one another—I should not think they could have inserted another baby—and the reek that came from the open doors and that hung about the people that came out of them was disgusting.

I used to ask my Cossack friend to tea sometimes—I could always buy cakes by the wayside—and he was the only person I ever met who took salt with his tea. He assured me the Mongolians always did so, but I must say though I have tried tea in many ways I don\'t like that custom.

In Kobdo, ten thousand feet among the mountains in the west of Mongolia, was a great lama, and the Cossack was full of this man\'s prophecy.

Three emperors, said the lama, would fight. One would be overwhelmed and utterly destroyed, the other would lose immense sums of money, and the third would have great glory.

“The Tsar, Madame,” said my friend, “the Tsar, of course, is the third.”

I wonder what part he took in the revolution. He was a Balt, a man from the Baltic Provinces, heart and soul with the Poles, and he did not even call himself a Russian. Well, the Tsar has been overwhelmed, but which is the one who is to have great glory? After all, the present is no very great time for kings and emperors. I am certainly not taking any stock in them as a whole. Perhaps that lama meant the President of the United States!

We went round Lake Baikal, and the Holy Sea, that I had seen before one hard plain of glittering ice, lay glittering now, beautiful still in the August sunshine. There were white sails on it and a steamer or two, and men were feverishly working at alterations on the railway. The Angara ran swiftly, a mighty river, and we steamed along it into the Irkutsk station, which is by no means Irkutsk, for the town is—Russian fashion—four miles away on the other side of the river.

At Irkutsk it seemed to me we began to be faintly Western again. And the exiles who had come so far I suppose abandoned hope here. All that they loved—all their life—lay behind. I should have found it hard to turn back and go east myself now. What must that facing east have been for them?

They turned us out of the train, and Buchanan and I were ruefully surveying our possessions, heaped upon the platform, wondering how on earth we were to get them taken to the cloakroom and how we should get them out again supposing they were taken, when the captain of the Askold appeared with a porter.

“Would Madame permit,” he asked, not as if he were conferring a favour, “that her luggage be put with mine in the cloakroom?”

Madame could have hugged him. Already the dusk was falling, the soft, warm dusk, and the people were hastening to the town or to the refreshment-rooms. There would be no train that night, said my kind friend, some time in the morning perhaps, but certainly not that night. I sighed. Again I was adrift, and it was not a comfortable feeling.

If Madame desired to dine—— Madame did desire to dine.

Then if Madame permits—— Of course Madame permitted.

She was most grateful. And we dined together at the same table outside the station restaurant—I like that fashion of dining outside—under the brilliant glare of the electric light. He arranged everything for me, even to getting some supper for Buchanan. And I forgot the exiles who had haunted me, forgot this was Siberia. Here in the restaurant, save for the Tartar waiters, it might almost have been France.

“Perhaps,” said my companion courteously as we were having coffee, “Madame would care to come to my hotel. I could interpret for her and here no one speaks anything but Russian.”

Again I could have hugged him. I intimated my dressing-bag was in the cloakroom, but he smiled and shrugged his shoulders.