One moonlight night, in the dead silence of the ice-bound winter, he stood on the ridge of the mountain-chain and began to descend its eastern slope.  Still on and on, the way more dangerous than before, for now there were large towns upon his route, which he could only avoid by going greatly out of his way.  One night in the woods he completely lost his bearings; a tempest of wind and snow literally whirled him around; his stock of bread was exhausted, and he fell upon the earth powerless; there was a buzzing in his ears, a confusion in his ideas; his senses forsook him, and but for spasms of cramp in his stomach he had no consciousness left.  Torpor was settling upon him when a loud voice recalled him to himself:  it was a trapper, who lived hard by, going home with his booty.  He poured some brandy down the dying man’s throat, and when this had somewhat revived him gave him food from his store.  After some delay the stranger urged Piotrowski to get up and walk, which he did with the utmost difficulty:  leaning upon this Samaritan of the steppes, he contrived to reach the highway, where a small roadside inn was in sight.  There his companion left him, and he staggered forward with unspeakable joy toward the warmth and shelter.  He would have gone in if he had known the guards were there on the lookout for him, for his case was now desperate.  He only got as far as the threshold, and there fell forward and rolled under a bench.  He asked for hot soup, but could not swallow, and after a few minutes fell into a swoon-like sleep which lasted twenty-four hours.  Restored by nourishment, rest and dry clothes, he set forth again at once.

During the first part of his journey he had passed as a commercial traveler; after leaving Irbite he was a workman seeking employment in the government establishments; but now he assumed the character of a pilgrim to the convent of Solovetsk on a holy island in the White Sea, near Archangel.  For each change of part he had to change his manners, mode of speech, his whole personality, and always be probable and consistent in his account of himself.  It was mid-April:  he had been journeying on foot for two months.  Easter was approaching, when these pious journeys were frequent, and not far from Veliki-Oustiog he fell in with several bands of men and women—­bohomolets, as they are called—­on their way to Solovetsk.  There were more than two thousand in the town waiting for the frozen Dwina to open, that they might proceed by water to Archangel.  It being Holy Week, Piotrowski was forced to conform to the innumerable observances of the Greek ritual—­prayers, canticles, genuflexions, prostrations, crossings and bowings, as manifold as in his own, but different.  His inner consciousness suffered from this hypocrisy, but it was necessary to his part.  They were detained at Veliki-Oustiog a mortal month, during which these acts of devotion went on with almost unabated zeal among the boholomets. At length the river was