Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/360

338 passed without bringing any news from him, I felt more and more apprehensive that the sorrows and hardships of his life had been too great for his strength and that the next tidings of him would be the news of his death. At last, in November, 1889, when I had almost given up hope, I was astonished and delighted to receive one day a letter addressed in his familiar handwriting, but stamped with a Canadian stamp and postmarked "Vancouver."

"How did he ever get a letter mailed at Vancouver?" I said to myself, and hastily tearing open the envelope I read the first three lines. They were as follows:

"My dear George Ivánovich: At last I am free! I am writing this letter to you not from that land of exile, Siberia, but from free America."

If I had suddenly received a letter postmarked "Zanzibar" from a friend whom I believed to be dead and buried in Minnesota, I could hardly have been more astonished or excited. Volkhófski free and in British Columbia! It seemed utterly incredible; and in a maze of bewilderment I stopped reading the letter to look again at the postmark. It was unquestionably "Vancouver," and as I stared at it I came slowly to a realization of the fact that, in some extra-ordinary and incomprehensible way, Volkhófski had not only escaped, but had crossed the Pacific and was within a few days' journey of New York. His letter, which was brief and hurried, merely announced his escape from exile by way of the Amúr River, Vládivostók, and Japan, and his intention of coming to me in Washington as soon as he could be sure of finding me there. In the mean time I need not, he said, feel any anxiety about him, because he still had sixty Mexican silver dollars left, and was with a steamer acquaintance who had taken a warm and generous interest in his fortunes.

At the time when I received this letter I was lecturing six nights a week in New York and New England; but I telegraphed and wrote Volkhófski that I would meet him at