It always happened, however, that when a proprietor treated his serfs with extreme injustice and cruelty, some of them lost patience, and sought refuge in flight.  As the estates lay perfectly open on all sides, and it was utterly impossible to exercise a strict supervision, nothing was easier than to run away, and the fugitive might be a hundred miles off before his absence was noticed.  But the oppressed serf was reluctant to adopt such an extreme measure.  He had almost always a wife and family, and he could not possibly take them with him; flight, therefore, was expatriation for life in its most terrible form.  Besides this, the life of a fugitive was by no means enviable.  He was liable at any moment to fall into the hands of the police, and to be put into prison or sent back to his master.  So little charm, indeed, did this life present that not infrequently after a few months or a few years the fugitive returned of his own accord to his former domicile.

Regarding fugitives or passportless wanderers in general, I may here remark parenthetically that there were two kinds.  In the first place, there was the young, able-bodied peasant, who fled from the oppression of his master or from the conscription.  Such a fugitive almost always sought out for himself a new domicile—­generally in the southern provinces, where there was a great scarcity of labourers, and where many proprietors habitually welcomed all peasants who presented themselves, without making any inquiries as to passports.  In the second place, there were those who chose fugitivism as a permanent mode of life.  These were, for the most part, men or women of a certain age—­widowers or widows—­who had no close family ties, and who were too infirm or too lazy to work.  The majority of these assumed the character of pilgrims.  As such they could always find enough to eat, and could generally even collect a few roubles with which to grease the palm of any zealous police-officer who should arrest them.  For a life of this kind Russia presented peculiar facilities.  There was abundance of monasteries, where all comers could live for three days without questions being asked, and where those who were willing to do a little work for the patron saint might live for a much longer period.  Then there were the towns, where the rich merchants considered almsgiving as very profitable for salvation.  And, lastly, there were the villages, where a professing pilgrim was sure to be hospitably received and entertained so long as he refrained from stealing and other acts too grossly inconsistent with his assumed character.  For those who contented themselves with simple fare, and did not seek to avoid the usual privations of a wanderer’s life, these ordinary means of subsistence were amply sufficient.  Those who were more ambitious and more cunning often employed their talents with great success in the world of the Old Ritualists and Sectarians.