Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/334

322 know this; yet we also know that in the noise of day, in the bustle of life among untutored men, one cannot pray in such a way. Consequently, we flee from men, we hide at night in solitary houses or in the homes of the enlightened and there we pray. &hellip;"

Then I realized what this old man really was, so evidently mysterious in the eyes of all who came in contact with him. He belonged to a sect known in the Orthodox Church as the "whirling ones." This sect originally came from Byzantium and was in all likelihood of the same extraction as the Whirling Dervishes of the Islamic faith, whom I have run across in the Crimea, at Trebizond in Turkish Asia Minor and in the northern part of Persia in the mosques between Resht and Teheran.

In this same stone sack I met another one of these many prison acquaintances whose lives were permeated with suffering and despair, the old convict, Maxim Suvoroff. He was always silent, and I never knew just why it was that he came up to the fence one day and began to talk with me, speaking in a mysterious sort of voice that searched the heart and seemed to indicate some strong inner urge for expression.

"To-day, sir, is a terrible day for me, for it is the anniversary of my crime. It is an old story, now that I have been twelve years in prison. Twelve years! Is it not a long time?"

I was silent, afraid of diverting the course of his thoughts. After a moment he continued:

"You are young, sir, and you cannot remember back to those times when long caravans of sledges, laden with tea and silk, trekked slowly across the vast Siberian stretches of snow. We drove them from Kiakhta to Irkutsk, where the principal custom-house and the largest depots of the leading firms were located. Each driver,