The morning arrived for my departure, the travelling carriage was at the
door, and our old servant Savélütch was in attendance to accompany me.

Two days later, when we were nearing our destination, a snowstorm
overtook us. We might have perished in the snow, for all traces of the
road were lost, but for a stranger who guided us to a small and lonely
inn, where we passed the night. In the morning, to the sorrow of
Savélütch, I insisted on giving our guide, who was but thinly clad, one
of my cloaks--a hare-skin _touloup_.

"Thanks, your excellency," said the vagrant, "and may heaven reward you.
As long as I live I shall never forget your kindness."

I soon forgot the snowstorm, the guide, and my hare-skin _touloup_, and
on arrival at Orenburg hasted to wait on the general, an old
comrade-in-arms of my father's. The general received me kindly, examined
my commission, told me there was nothing for me to do in Orenburg, and
sent me on to Fort Bélogorsk to serve under Commander Mironoff. Bélogorsk
lay about thirty miles beyond Orenburg, on the frontier of the Kirghiz
Kaisak Steppes, and it was to this outlandish place I was banished.

I expected to see high bastions, a wall and a ditch, but there was
nothing at Bélogorsk but a little village, surrounded by a wooden
palisade. An old iron cannon was near the gateway, the streets were
narrow and crooked, and the commandant's house to which I had been
driven was a wooden erection.

Vassilissa Ignorofna, the commandant's wife, received me with simple
kindness, and treated me at once as one of the family. An old army
pensioner and Palashka, the one servant, laid the cloth for dinner;