tober, and a cold wind was
driving from the north-west across a plain which for sheer dismalness of
aspect may give points to Sahara and beat that abode of mental
depression without an effort. So far as the eye could reach there was no
habitation to break the line of horizon. A few stunted fir-trees,
standing in a position of permanent deprecation, with their backs
turned, as it were, to the north, stood sparsely on the plain. The grass
did not look good to eat, though the Cossack horses would no doubt have
liked to try it. The road seemed to have been drawn by some Titan
engineer with a ruler from horizon to horizon.

Away to the south there was a forest of the same stunted pines, where a
few charcoal-burners and resin-tappers eked out a forlorn and obscure
existence. There are a score of such settlements, such gloomy forests,
dotted over this plain of Tver, which covers an area of nearly two
hundred square miles. The remainder of it is pasture, where miserable
cattle and a few horses, many sheep and countless pigs, seek their food
pessimistically from God.

Steinmetz looked round over this cheerless prospect with a twinkle of
amused resignation in his blue eyes, as if this creation were a little
practical joke, which he, Karl Steinmetz, appreciated at its proper
worth. The whole scene was suggestive of immense distance, of countless
miles in all directions--a suggestion not conveyed by any scene in
England, by few in Europe. In our crowded island we have no conception
of a thousand miles. How can we? Few of us have travelled five hundred
at a stretch. The land through which these men were riding is the home
of great distances--Russia. They rode, moreover, as if they knew it--as
if they had ridden for days and were aware of more days in front of
them.

The companion of Karl Steinmetz looked like an Englishman. He was young
and fair and quiet. He looked like a youthful athlete from Oxford or
Cambridge--a simple-minded person who had jumped higher or run quicker
than anybody else without conceit, taking himself, like St. Paul, as he
found himself and giving the credit elsewhere. And one finds that, after
all, in this world of deceit, we are most of us that which we look like.
You, madam, look thirty-five to a day, although your figure is still
youthful, your hair untouched by gray, your face unseamed by care. You
may look in your mirror and note these accidents with satisfaction; you
may feel young and indulge in the