neventful. Who can tell? When a country begins to grow, its
mental development is often startlingly rapid.

But we have to do with Russia of to-day, and the village of Osterno in
the Government of Tver. Not a "famine" Government, mind you! For these
are the Volga Provinces--Samara, Pensa, Voronish, Vintka, and a dozen
others. No! Tver the civilized, the prosperous, the manufacturing
centre.

Osterno is built of wood. Should it once fairly catch alight in a high
wind, all that will be left of this town will be a few charred timbers
and some dazed human beings. The inhabitants know their own danger, and
endeavor to meet it in their fatalistic manner. Each village has its
fire organization. Each "soul" has his appointed place, his appointed
duty, and his special contribution--be it bucket or rope or ladder--to
bring to the conflagration. But no one ever dreams of being sober and
vigilant at the right time, so the organization, like many larger such,
is a broken reed.

The street, bounded on either side by low wooden houses, is, singularly
enough, well paved. This, the traveller is told, by the tyrant Prince
Pavlo, who made the road because he did not like driving over ruts and
through puddles--the usual Russian rural thoroughfare. Not because
Prince Pavlo wanted to give the peasants work, not because he wanted to
save them from starvation--not at all, although, in the gratification of
his own whim, he happened to render those trifling services; but merely
because he was a great "barin"--a prince who could have any thing he
desired. Had not the other barin--Steinmetz by name--superintended the
work? Steinmetz the hated, the loathed, the tool of the tyrant whom they
never see. Ask the "starost"--the mayor of the village. He knows the
barins, and hates them.

Michael Roon, the starosta or elder of Osterno, president of the Mir, or
village council, principal shopkeeper, mayor and only intelligent soul
of the nine hundred, probably had Tartar blood in his veins. To this
strain may be attributed the narrow Tartar face, the keen black eyes,
the short, spare figure which many remember to this day, although
Michael Roon has been dead these many years.

Removed far above the majority of his fellow-villagers in intelligence
and energy, this man administered the law of his own will to his
colleagues on the village council.

It was late in the autumn, one evening remembered by many for its
death-roll, that the starosta was stand