Page:The Boy Travellers in the Russian Empire.djvu/336

330 "Imagine Ivanoff's feelings when one day the other said,

Exiles sometimes escape by getting forged passports and travelling on them. Wouldn't it be funny if you were one? Ha! ha! ha!'

"Of course Ivanoff laughed too, and quite as heartily. Then he retorted,

Now that you mentioned it, I've half a mind to take you to the next police-station and deliver you up as a fugitive. Ha! ha! ha! Suppose we do it, and have some fun with the police?"

"Thereupon the serious side of the affair developed in the mind of Mr Garrulity. He declined the fun of the thing, and soon the subject was dropped. It was occasionally referred to afterwards, and each thought how funny it would be if the other were really a fugitive.

"They continued in company until they reached Kazan. There they separated, Ivanoff going to Nijni Novgorod and Moscow, and from the latter proceeding by railway to Smolensk and Warsaw. From Warsaw he went to Vienna. As soon as he set foot on the soil of Austria he removed his hat and, for the first time in many months, inhaled a full breath of air without the feeling that the next moment might see him in the hands of the dreaded police. He was now a free man."

"And what became of his companion?"

"When they separated at Kazan, the latter announced his intention of descending the Volga to Astrachan. It was fully a year afterwards that my friend was passing a cafe in Paris, and heard his assumed name called by some one seated under the awning in front of the establishment. Turning in the direction of the voice, he saw his old acquaintance of the Siberian road.

"They embraced, and were soon sipping coffee together, Ivanoff talked freely, now that he was out of danger of discovery, and astonished his old acquaintance by his volubility. At length the latter said,

What a flow of language you have here in Pans, to be sure. You never talked so much in a whole day when we were together as in the hour we've sat here.'

Good reason for it,' answered Ivanoff. 'I had a bridle on my tongue then, and it's gone now. I was escaping from a sentence of twenty years in Siberia for political reasons.'

And that's what made you so taciturn,' said the other. I was escaping from the same thing, and that's what made me so garrulous When we met at that station I feared you might be on the lookou for me; and much as I hated doing so, I proposed that we should travel together.'