He had reached the point when he dreaded fatigue more than risk.  In spite of his familiarity with the minutiae of Russian customs, he was nearly betrayed one day by his ignorance of tolokno, a national dish.  On another occasion he stopped at the cabin of a poor old man to ask his way:  the gray-beard made him come in, and after some conversation began to confide his religious grievances to him, which turned upon the persecutions to which a sect of religionists is exposed in Russia for adhering to certain peculiarities in the forms of worship.  Happily, Piorowski was well versed in these subjects.  The poor old man, after dwelling long and tearfully on the woes of his fellow-believers, looked cautiously in every direction, locked the door, and after exacting an oath of secresy drew from a hiding-place a little antique brass figure of Byzantine origin, representing our Saviour in the act of benediction with two fingers only raised, according to the form cherished by the dissenters.

[Illustration:  THE BENEDICTION WITH TWO FINGERS.]

Following his purposeless march for hundreds of miles, the fugitive reached Vytegra, where the river issues from the Lake of Onega.  There, on the wharf, a peasant asked him whither he was bound:  he replied that he was a pilgrim on his way from Solovetsk to the shrines of Novgorod and Kiow.  The peasant said he was going to St. Petersburg, and would give him a passage for his service if he would take an oar.  The bargain was struck, and that night they started on their voyage to the capital of Poland’s arch-enemy, the head-quarters of politics, the source whence his own arrest had emanated.  He had no design:  he was going at hazard.  The voyage was long:  they followed the Lake of Onega, the Lake of Ladoga and the river Neva.  Sometimes poor people got a lift in the boat:  toward the end of the voyage they took aboard a number of women-servants returning to their situations in town from a visit to their country homes.  Among them was an elderly woman going to see her daughter, who was a washerwoman at St. Petersburg.  Piotrowski showed her some small kindnesses, which won her fervent gratitude.  As they landed in the great capital, which seemed the very focus of his dangers, and he stood on the wharf wholly at a loss what should be his next step, the poor woman came up with her daughter and offered to show him cheap lodgings.  He followed them, carrying his protectress’s trunk.  The lodgings were cheap and miserable, and the woman of the house demanded his passport.  He handed it to her with a thrill of anxiety, and carelessly announced his intention of reporting himself at the police-office according to rule.  She glanced at the paper, which she could not read, and saw the official stamp:  she was satisfied, and began to dissuade him from going to the police.  It then appeared that the law required her to accompany him as her lodger; that a great deal of her time would be lost in the delays