[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;