Kolina slept little that night. In a compartment near her was one who
had since childhood been the ideal of her future. She had loved Ivan
as a playmate--she loved him as a man; and here, he whom she had
longed for all the winter, and he whom she had hoped to see once more
the next summer, had suddenly come, starting on a perilous journey
of years, to win the hand of an avaricious, but young and beautiful
widow. Kolina saw all her fairest dreams vanish, and the idol of her
heart crumble into dust. And yet she felt no ill-will to Ivan, and
never changed her resolve to be the faithful companion and attendant
of her father and his friend in their wild journey to the supposed
islands in the Frozen Sea.


III.--NIJNEI-KOLIMSK.

The five days fixed by Sakalar for preparing for the journey were
wholly devoted to the necessary arrangements. There was much to be
done, and much to be talked of. They had to travel a long way before
they reached even the real starting-point of their adventurous voyage.
Sakalar, duly to impress Ivan with the dangers and perils of the
search, narrated once more in minute detail all his former sufferings.
But nothing daunted the young trader. He was one of those men, who,
under more favorable circumstances, would have been a Cook, a Parry,
or a Franklin, periling everything to make farther discovery in the
science of geography.

The five horses of Ivan were exchanged for others more inured to the
kind of journey they were about to undertake. There was one for each
of the adventurers and four to carry the luggage, consisting chiefly