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Collection: Directories and Documents > Yearbooks
Nevada City High School - The Quill (371.QUI.1910)(1910) (76 pages)
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Page: of 76
oH) THE QUILL
so much needed. ‘He closed his eyes—but not to sleep: it was to think
of the probability of seeing his family starving and freezing, and to try
to devise means by which he could avert that terrible calamity.
When he rose in the morning, he appeared happier and more
hopeful, but he could not conceal the fact that his cheerfulness was
mostly assumed.
After eating breakfast, which consisted of one potato, he embraced his family with more tenderness than usual; and evading his
wife’s question as to where he was going, he bade them be of good cheer
and left the house. When he was well out of sight, he sat down on a
rock by the road, and strong man ds ke was, he bowed his head in _ his
hands and sobbed like a chi'd.
“Oh, my God! this is terrible!” he moaned: “how can I leave
my wife and little ones forever? Yes, it means forever; for no one yet
has ever escaped from the iron-works. But it means bread for them
and, while my heart will almost break at being separated from them, I
will have some happiness in knowing that they are not suffering from
the pangs of hunger. Yes, I must do it or they wi'l starve.”
After a few minutes of uncon\rollable grief, he removed all traces
of his tears and strode rapidly dows the road.
He begged a morsel or two of bread from serfs along the road.
and when night settled over the valley, crawled into a hedge. and from
sheer exhaustion soon fell as!eep. The sun was peeping over the Ural
mountains when he awoke. Stiff and sore, he rose and again took his
way toward the great iron works. It was almost noon and not a mouthful of food had passed his lips, as every one of whom he asked a morsel
to eat had refused him. Suddenly the loud report of a gun several hundred yards away was heard and almost immediately he was overjoyed to
see a ptarmigan fall dead but a few feet away.
“That was a lucky shot for me,” exclaimed Petroff, picking up
the bird and thrusting it under his jacket. Looking around to make
sure the hunter had not seen him, he hurried on, and after covering 4
mile or more, stopped by the roadside and built a fire, over which he
cooked his ptarmigan and though he ate it without bread or salt, he
felt much strengthened afterward.
As the gray orb of day smilirgly dipped below the horizon, Petroff began looking about for some place in which to spend the night.
Sleeping in the cold air had given him a tinge of rheumatism, and he
resolved that he would not pass another night in a hedge if he could help
it. When it grew so dark that he could not distinguish objects a hundred yards off, he came to the large estate of Count Romanoff. Passing by the castle, he was highly elated at seeing a large barn about
one hundred yards from the highway. Clambering over the fence as
fast as his tired and sore limbs would allow him, he slipped along the
hedge to escape observation, and reaching the barn, climbed in a low
he ree ee ee swe
_
oor.