ur compartment was hot and
stale. When we opened the window, the wind blew in on our faces in
parching gusts. But it was grateful after the smells of cabbage, soup,
tobacco, and dirty Jews that we had been breathing for five hours in the
_douane_.

We sat by the window, cracking dried sunflower seeds, and looking out at
the steppes of Little Russia. The evening shadows were already lying in
the hollows of the fields of ripening wheat, but the late sun still
reddened the crests and the column of smoke from our engine. Frightened
larks rose from the tall grain. We passed patches of dark woods,
scattered thatched huts. Along a road came a man and a woman in peasant
dress. The train seemed to slow up on purpose to let us have a glimpse
of them through a thin, fine powder of golden dust, in their dark
homespuns, with patches of red embroidery on the white sleeves and
necks of their blouses. They carried a green box between them. Once we
passed through a wood of pale-green birches with thin silver stems. It
was a relief to see lines going up and down after the wide, level lines
of the steppes.

And then it grew dark. A sense of sadness filled me, and I was glad when
the conductor lighted the lamp and made up my berth. We lay down as we
were, all dressed, and the train rushing and swinging along deadened my
mind and feelings.

I was wakened by the conductor's twitching the covering back from the
light. Our carriage had broken down and was going to be side-tracked.

Then began the most restless night I ever spent. We bumped along in a
third-class carriage, and descended to wait for an hour or more on the
platform of some little crossroad station. We sat on our bags till our
spines cracked with fatigue. The men smoked one cigarette after another.
As far as I could see stretched dark fields lighted dimly by thick
stars, with a wind blowing out of the darkness into our faces. No one
spoke. Down the tracks a round white headlight grew bigger and bigger.
The noise of the approaching train filled the night. We scrambled into
another third-class carriage and sat on some more hard, narrow seats for
an hour or so.

At last the dawn came--a square of gray light through the train window.
Almost every one had fallen asleep. How pallid and ugly they looked with
their mouths open and their heads lolling forward!

At ten we changed for the last time before Kiev. The carriage was not
divided up into compartments, but was open, with rows