A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 95 



chuk himself had been a gendarme. He was very 

 proud of the fact, and liked to boast that he had formed 

 one of the bodyguard of the present Czar, when, as 

 Czarevitch, the latter visited Siberia. We never 

 learned exactly why he left the police, but we suspected 

 that he retired under a cloud, for he could not have 

 been much past the prime of life when he exchanged 

 the streets of Petrograd for the tundras of Golchika. 



His wife lived down at Krasnoyarsk, in order, so it 

 was said, to educate the younger children. Only two 

 remained with their father — the huge son, Joseph, and 

 a daughter, Marusia. Joseph, we had already seen on 

 our arrival. Marusia Prokopchuk was a gentle, 

 slatternly girl of nineteen or twenty. In face she was 

 curiously like her father, but without the fire and 

 humour which gave his countenance, dissolute though it 

 was, its queer attraction. Her sweet voice and grace- 

 ful carriage were her great charms. Her dark eyes 

 were generally cast down, and her black hair was like- 

 wise hidden under the ugly drab shawl of the country. 

 There was something almost Eastern in the beauty of 

 Marusia, which even the darkness of the northern winter 

 could scarcely bleach. The grandfather of Gerasim 

 Androvitch came from the plains of Poland, and perhaps 

 it was from this source, rather than from the more 

 phlegmatic Siberian Russians, that Marusia derived her 

 dark beauty, and her father his courtly manners and 

 wit. 



Mrs. Prokopchuk's representative at Golchika was 

 her sister, Anastasia Ivanowna, the same who had rated 

 Gerasim Androvitch for his conduct in the boat. She 



