touch of our coveted "experience," in spite of the strain of our thirty
hours' vigil and the jolts of the springless vehicle.

Then we discovered the exact extent of our _yamtschik's_ trick. He had
let us off on fairly easy terms, getting not quite half more than his
due. By the regular route, we might really have had three relays and
made better time, had we been permitted. By the short cut which our wily
friend had selected, but one change was possible. This left the price of
two changes to be credited to his financial ability (in addition to the
tea-money of gratitude, which came in at the end, all the same), and the
price of the one which he would not make. And, as I was so thoughtless
as not to hire him to carry away those pounds of "relay" copper, I
continued to be burdened with it until I contrived to expend it on
peasant manufactures. The postboy bore the reputation of being a very
honest fellow, I learned,--something after the pattern of the charming
cabby who drove us to Count Tolstoy's estate.

The village, like most Russian villages, was situated on a small river,
in a valley. It consisted of two streets: one running parallel with the
river, the other at right angles to it, on the opposite bank. The
connecting bridge had several large holes in it, on the day of our
arrival, which were mended, a few days later, with layers of straw and
manure mixed with earth. We continued, during the whole period of our
stay, to cross the bridge, instead of going round it, as we had been
advised to do with Russian bridges, by Russians, in the certainty that,
if we came near drowning through its fault, it would surely furnish us
with an abundance of straws to catch at.

In one corner of the settlement, a petty bourgeois,--there is no other
word to define him,--the son of a former serf, and himself born a
serf, had made a mill-pond and erected cloth-mills. His "European"
clothes (long trousers, sack coat, Derby hat) suited him as ill as his
wife's gaudy silk gown, and Sunday bonnet in place of the kerchief usual
with the lower classes, suited her face and bearing. He was a quiet,
unassuming man, but he was making over for himself a handsome house,
formerly the residence of a noble. Probably the money wherewith he had
set up in business had been wrung out of his fellow-peasants in the
profession of a _kulak_, or "fist," as the people expressively term
peasant usurers.

On the other side of the river stood the church, white