“I’ve still life before me,” he thinks and resolutely drives away all doubts and other vexatious ideas. Even those in the “special division” who had been sentenced for life, sometimes reckoned on orders suddenly coming from Petersburg: “to send them to the mines at Nerchinsk and to limit their sentence.” Then it would be all right: to begin with, it is almost six months’ journey to Nerchinsk, and how much pleasanter the journey would be than being in prison! And afterwards the term in Nerchinsk would be over and then⁠ ⁠… And sometimes even grey-headed men reckoned like this.