y the
existence of two other conflicting forces,--the _moujiks_ and the Jews.
The bureaucracy indiscriminately oppresses and seeks to crush all three
sections; the democracy despairs of the _moujiks_ and hates the Jews,
though it accepts their financial help; while the _moujiks_ distrust
every one, and also hate the Jews, whom they murder whenever they get
the chance.

That's how the situation appeared to me even then, before the curtain
went up on the final act of the tragedy in which I and the girl I loved
were involved; and the fact that all these complex elements were present
in that tragedy must be my excuse for trying to sum them up in a few
words.

I've knocked around the world somewhat, and have had many a long and
perilous ride through unknown country, but never one that interested me
more than this. I've said before that Russia is still back in the Middle
Ages, but now, with every verst we covered, it seemed to me we were
getting farther back still,--to the Dark Ages themselves.

We passed through several villages on the first day, all looking
exactly alike. A wide thoroughfare that could not by any stretch of
courtesy be called a street or road, since it showed no attempt at
paving or making and was ankle-deep in filthy mud, was flanked by
irregular rows of low wooden huts, reeking with foulness, and more like
the noisome lairs of wild beasts than human habitations. Their
inhabitants looked more bestial than human,--huge, shaggy men who peered
sullenly at us with swinish eyes, bleared and bloodshot with
drunkenness; women with shapeless figures and blunt faces, stolid masks
expressive only of dumb hopeless endurance of misery,--the abject misery
that is the lot of the Russian peasant woman from birth to death. I was
soon to learn that this centuries' old habit of patient endurance was
nearly at an end, and that when once the mask is thrown aside the fury
of the women is more terrible, because more deliberate and merciless,
than the brutality of the men.

At a little distance, perhaps, would be a small chapel with the priest's
house adjacent, and the somewhat more commodious houses of the
tax-gatherer and _starosta_--the head man of the village, when he
happened to be a farmer. Sometimes he was a kalak keeper, scarce one
degree superior to his fellows. One could tell the tax-gatherer's house
a mile away by its prosperous appearance, and the kind of courtyard
round it, closed in with a solid breast-high lo