CHAPTER XLIII
THE WOMAN FROM SIBERIAAt last there was a movement within. Halting footsteps approached the gates, and a man's voice, hoarse and weak, demanded: "Who is there?"
"It is Yossof," Anne exclaimed. "How comes he here alone? Where is my mother, Yossof?"
I started as I heard that. Her mother was alive, then, though Anne had said she could not remember her, and Treherne had told me she died soon after her arrest, more than twenty years back.
"She is within and safe; Natalya is with her," came Yossof's quavering voice, as he labored to unbar the gates. We heard him gasping and groaning as if the task was beyond his strength, but he managed it at last. The great doors swung open, and he stood leaning against one of them. In the chill morning light his face looked gray and drawn lik
