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 free, and they set out.
Their vessel was a huge hulk which looked like a floating barn: it was
manned by twenty or thirty rowers, and to replenish his purse a little