that Nikolai looked at Trenchard as
one free man may look at another. "What is the matter with you?" his
eyes seemed to say. "But I know ... a terrible thing has happened to
you. At any rate I am here to be of any use that I can."

"Nikolai," I said, "why is there no one here?"

"_Ne mogoo znat_, your Honour."

"Well, the first soldier you see you must ask."

"_Tak totchno._"

"Who said you were to drive us?"

"Vladimir Stepanovitch, your Honour."

"Are you going to remain with us?"

"_Tak totchno._"

His eyes rested for a moment on Trenchard, then he turned to his
horses.

We were entering the town now and it did, indeed, present to us a
scene of desperate desolation. The place had been originally built in
rising tiers on the side of the valley, and the principal street had
leading out of it, up the hill, steps rising to balconied houses that
commanded a view of the opposite hill. Almost every house in this
street was in ruins; sometimes the ruins were complete--only an
isolated chimney of broken stone wall remaining, sometimes the shell
was standing, the windows boarded up with wood, sometimes almost the
whole building was there, a gaping space in the roof the only sign of
desolation. And there remained the ironical signs of its earlier
life. Many of the buildings had their titles still upon them. In one
place I saw the blackened and almost illegible plate of a lawyer, in
another a large still fresh-looking advertisement of a dentist, here
there was the large lettering "Tobacconist," there upon a trembling
wall the tattered remains of an announcement of a sale of furniture.
Once, most ironical of all, a gaping and smoke-stained building showed
the half-torn remnant of a cinematograph picture, a fat gentleman in a
bowler hat entering with a lady on either arm a gaily painted
restaurant. Over this, in big letters, the word "FARCE."

Although we saw no soldiers we were not entirely alone. In and out of
the sunny caverns, appearing outlined against the darkness, vanishing
in a sudden blaze of light, were shadows of the citizens of Vulatch.
They seemed to me, without exception, to be Jews. From most of the
Galician towns and villages the Jews had been expelled--here they
only, apparently, had been left. Of women I saw scarcely any--old men,
with long dirty black or grizzled beards, yellow skins, peaked black
caps, and filthy black gowns clutched about their thin bodies. They
watched us, silently, ominously,