itself in an hour. We heard the beat
of the rain on the earth: in ten minutes it was the hiss of the rain
on the flooded meadows. By the sulphurous illuminations we saw almost
continuously the close-packed, drenching rain.... The wet came in.
We burrowed deep down into the straw and slept like some new sort of
animal.

VI

On other nights heavy rain came on unexpectedly, and I discovered how
pleasant a bed may be made just under the framework of a bridge. The
bridge is a favourite resort of the Russian tramp and pilgrim, and I
have often come across their comfortable hay or bracken beds there.
Indeed I seldom go across a bridge at night without thinking there may
be some such as myself beneath it.

When the weather is wet it is much more profitable to sleep in a
village--there is hospitality there, and the peasant wife gives you
hot soup and dries your clothes. But often villages are far apart, and
when you are tramping through the forest there may be twenty miles
without a human shelter. I remember I found empty houses, and though I
used them they were most fearsome. I had more thrills in them than in
the most lonely resting-places in the open. Some distance from Gagri
I found an old ruined dwelling, floorless, almost roofless, but still
affording shelter. I had many misgivings as I lay there. Was the house
haunted? Was it some one else's shelter? Had some family lived there
and all died out? You may imagine the questions that assailed me, once
I had lain down. But whether evil was connected with the house or
no, it was innocuous for me. Nothing happened; only the moon looked
through the open doorway; winds wandered among the broken rafters, and
far away owls shrieked.

Again, on the way to Otchemchiri I came upon a beautiful cottage in
the forest and went to ask hospitality, but found no one there. The
front door was bolted but the back door was open. I walked in and took
a seat. As there were red-hot embers in the fire some one had lately
been there, and would no doubt come back--so I thought. But no one
came: twilight grew to night in loneliness and I lay down on the long
sleeping bench and slept. It was like the house of the three bears but
that there was no hot porridge on the table. But no bears came; only
next morning I was confronted by a half-dressed savage, a veritable
Caliban by appearance but quite harmless, an idiot and deaf and dumb.
I made signs to him and he went out and brought in wood, and we