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a scratch. From that time, his son Michael, aged eleven years,
never failed to accompany him to the hunt, carrying the ragatina
or spear to aid his father, who was armed only with the knife.
When he was fourteen, Michael Strogoff had killed his first bear,
quite alone--that was nothing; but after stripping it he dragged
the gigantic animal's skin to his father's house, many versts distant,
exhibiting remarkable strength in a boy so young.

This style of life was of great benefit to him, and when he arrived
at manhood he could bear any amount of cold, heat, hunger, thirst,
or fatigue. Like the Yakout of the northern countries, he was
made of iron. He could go four-and-twenty hours without eating,
ten nights without sleeping, and could make himself a shelter
in the open steppe where others would have been frozen to death.
Gifted with marvelous acuteness, guided by the instinct of the Delaware
of North America, over the white plain, when every object is hidden
in mist, or even in higher latitudes, where the polar night is
prolonged for many days, he could find his way when others would
have had no idea whither to turn. All his father's secrets were
known to him. He had learnt to read almost imperceptible signs--
the forms of icicles, the appearance of the small branches of trees,
mists rising far away in the horizon, vague sounds in the air,
distant reports, the flight of birds through the foggy atmosphere,
a thousand circumstances which are so many words to those who can
decipher them. Moreover, tempered by snow like a Damascus blade
in the waters of Syria, he had a frame of iron, as General Kissoff
had said, and, what was no less true, a heart of gold.

The only sentiment of love felt by Michael Strogoff was that which
he entertained for his mother, the aged Marfa, who could never be
induced to leave the house of the Strogoffs, at Omsk, on the banks of
the Irtish, where the old huntsman and she had lived so long together.
When her son left her, he went away with a full heart, but promising
to come and see her whenever he could possibly do so; and this promise
he had always religiously kept.

When Michael was twenty, it was decided that he should enter
the personal service of the Emperor of Russia, in the corps
of the couriers of the Czar. The hardy, intelligent, zealous,
well-conducted young Siberian first distinguished himself especially,
in a journey to the Caucasus, through the midst of a difficult country,
ravaged by some restless successors of Schamyl; then later,
in an important mission to Petropolowski, in Kamtschatka,
the extreme limit of Asiatic Russia. During these long journeys
he displayed such marvelous coolness, prudence, and courage,
as to gain him the approbation and protection of his chiefs,
who rapidly advanced him in his profession.

The furloughs which were his due after these distant missions,
he never failed to devote to his old mother. Having been much employed
in the south of the empire, he had not seen old Marfa for three years--

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