Meeting the Fugitives
33
—Sixteen people.
On the ground floor it's as hot as in a bath-house.
It's difficult to breathe there.
The fugitives are sitting on iron bedsteads covered with grey woollen quilts.
They look like people from a town.
They sit there and they don't go out.
After eight or nine weeks under the open sky they don't want to go out of this suffocating heat.
From Podolsk we go to Little Yaroslavets.
We are borne along in two motor-cars belonging to the All Russian Municipal Alliance.
The high-road is quiet and deserted.
Along it they are carrying only enormous loads of charcoal for Moscow.
And here in Liokopin, fifteen versts from Podolsk, is the first fugitive.
He is striding along.
