tendance, and fluttered up and
down, shifting the bread or refilling the wine bowls.

We were a mixed company--aged road-worn pilgrims, bright boys come
from a local watering-place by coach, red-kerchiefed peasant women,
pleasant citizens' wives in town-made blouses, Caucasians, a Turk, a
Jew, an Austrian waiter, and many others that I took no stock of.

The diet is a fast one, just as the hard beds are penance beds, and
no one can procure anything different at Novy Afon for any amount of
money. Even in the hall reserved for dignitaries and officials the
fare was the same as for us in the _tiers etat_. The soup was of
vegetables only, and much inferior to what the tramp makes for himself
by the roadside. The second course was cold salt fish or boiled beans
and mushrooms, and the third was dry maize-meal porridge. As each
plate was put on the table the brother told us it came from God, and
whispered a blessing.

There was not much talking; every one was busy eating and drinking.
The wine was drunk plentifully, though without any toasts. One felt
that more generosity was expressed in the provision of wine than in
the other victuals. But for the meal only ten minutes and then once
more the peremptory voice "Stand!" and we all listened to a long
thank-offering and bowed before the ikons. Dinner was over.

Dinner was at eleven in the morning; tea with black bread and no
butter at three; supper, a repetition of the dinner menu, at seven;
and all doors closed and the people in their beds by eight-thirty.
After many nights in the open I slept once more with a roof over my
head, and looking up in the night, missed the stars and wondered where
they were.

III

The monastery bells in pleasant liquid tones struck every quarter of
an hour, and at two o'clock in the morning I was awakened by a great
jangling, and the sound of steps along the stone corridors. I asked my
companions--I was sharing my room with an Armenian and a Russian--what
was the reason of the bell, and I learned that it was the call to
early prayers. We none of us got up, but I resolved to go next night
if it were possible.

Next day was one of relaxation after tramping. The Armenian went off
ten miles to a celebrated cave and a point of view, "the swallows'
nest"; he wished me to accompany him, but I had not come to Novy Afon
to find points of view or the picturesque--moreover he had come by
steamboat and was fresh, I had come on foot five hundred miles