At first Albína rejected this proposal, so unpleasant was it to her to connect deceit with the memory of her children; but when Migoúrski cheerfully approved the scheme, she agreed.
So the final plan was worked out as follows:
Migoúrski would do all that was necessary to convince the Authorities that he had drowned himself. After his death had been accepted as a fact, Albína would present a petition for leave to return home and to take her children’s bodies with her—her husband being dead. When she received this permission, the graves would be made to look as if they had been opened and the coffins exhumed; but they would be left where they were, and, instead of them, Migoúrski would get into the box. The box would be placed in a tarantass, and in this way they would travel to Sarátof. At Sarátof they would take a boat, and on the boat Josy would be released from the box, and they would sail down to the Caspian Sea, and thence to Persia or Turkey and to freedom.