w here--we know nothing about ..."
alluding of course to me. I hardly could wait until evening.

It was evening when S. finished connecting the kitchen station with
the city current. When I came home he and the Russian were trying to
harness the pony. The poor little horse was choking from the smoke of
his pipe and trying to bite the torturer.

"Say, Lucie," the Englishman said to her, as shivering in my overcoat,
she came out to say good-bye to him, "the benzine is in the barn,
over there under the hay. Tell your man to be careful and not to smoke
around here."

"If it did not explode after your pipe, sir," I replied in my best
Shakespearian, "my cigarette won't do any harm. So don't be alarmed."

It took him about half a minute to digest the fact that I could
understand his cockney. Lucie became almost hysterical with laughter
and ran into the house.

Then he made a serious face and sprang into the sledge and the Russian
flicked the horse with the whip. Near the corner, I saw him say
something to the Russian and they turned back.

"Say," the Englishman asked, "are you English? Or Canadian, I fancy?"

"Never mind me, Major or Captain, or whoever you are. I'm just I.
Don't fancy, and proceed. I'm busy."

I closed the gate and heard another formidable crack of the whip on
the pony's fat flanks.

Hundreds of bells started ringing again, and then died away in the
distance, drowned out by a locomotive whistle....

And here I was in my room again. In the corner stood Lucie, lovely
creature with all her funny actions and thoughts, Heaven knows by what
and whom inspired.

"Look what I brought, Alex! Here are canned goods, and chocolate and
coffee, and ham, and ..." and she threw package after package on the
bed. On one of them I read "Army and Navy Calcutta," but said nothing
and looked away. I'm getting sly. She noticed it too, the little
devil! She sent me out to see whether or not the gate was closed, and
when I came back the label was scratched out.

34

(_Sixth letter to M. Goroshkin_)

"There are, virtually, three--or perhaps more--organizations, members
of which have decided to save the Emperor from imprisonment. They
all realize the danger of letting things go on by themselves, or of
relying upon German promises.

The latter are well known here and in Tobolsk from Bolshevik sources.
When during the Brest-Litovsk _pourparlers_ the Russian Delegates were
waiting for the Germans, the latter ent