The first thunderstorm, the harbinger of spring, has aroused the earth
from her light slumber. At day-break, the convicts were mustered outside
the prison walls. "Ivan the Forgetful," called out the warder, with the
list in his hand. The old convict sulkily took his place in the row. He
scanned with a searching glance the weak-looking undergrown soldiers of
the escort, who in their ill-fitting grey cloaks looked almost deformed.
Their bayonets gleamed in the sun, their musket-barrels were stopped
with wads of cloth. "Loaded," said the old man to himself and smiled
significantly. It was on just such a spring morning in the previous year
that blindly-fired shots had rung out behind him. He remembered the warm
scent of the earth on which he had then flung himself, as though he
wished to be one with it, and then the deep weird silence during which
he seemed to hear incessantly soft creeping footsteps behind him ... and
finally, for a time, freedom. But now? Would he really have to
recommence the hated hard labour with which he had already been so
familiar? The dark mine-shaft yawned plainly enough at his feet; like
mole-holes the galleries wound through rocks and earth; here and there
in the darkness glimmered the miners' lamps, and he heard the melancholy
sound of monotonous, ceaseless hammering. The convicts were driven down
into the subterranean darkness before sunrise, and only when the sun had
sunk behind the blue mountains could they come up again, so that they
never saw the cheerful daylight.