turned and looked at him, but he said no more. He glanced across the
river towards the spires of Praga pointing above the brown trees.
Perhaps he was thinking of those other times, which he must have seen
fifty and twenty years ago. His father must have seen Praga paved with
the dead bodies of its people. He must have seen the river run sluggish
with the same burden. He may have seen the people shot down in the
streets of Warsaw only twenty years before. His eyes had the dull look
which nearly always betokens some grim vision never forgotten. He seemed
a placid old man, and was known as an excellent worker, though cruel to
his horses.

He who had first spoken--a boatman known as Kosmaroff--was a spare man,
with a narrow face and a long, pointed chin, hidden by a neat beard.
He was not more than thirty-five years old, and presented no outward
appearance of having passed through hardships. His manner was quick and
vivacious, and when he laughed, which was not infrequent, his mouth gave
an odd twist to the left. The corner went upwards towards the eye. His
smile was what the French call a pale smile. At times, but very rarely,
a gleam of recklessness passed through his dark eyes. He had been a
raftsman, and was reputed to be the most daring of those little-known
watermen at flood-times and in the early thaw. He glanced towards the
old man as if hoping that more was coming.

"Yes, it will be the third time," he said, when the other had lapsed
into a musing silence, "though few of us have seen it with our own eyes.
But we have other means of remembering. We have also the experience of
our forefathers to guide us--though we cannot say that our forefathers
have told us--"

He broke off with a short laugh. His grandfather had died at Praga; his
father had gone to Siberia to perish there.

"We shall time it better," he said, "than last time. We have men
watching the political world for us. The two emperors are marked as
an old man is marked by those who are named in his will. If anything
happened to Bismarck, if Austria and Russia were to fall out, if the
dogs should quarrel among themselves--the three dogs that have torn
Poland to pieces! Anything would do! They knew the Crimean War was
coming. England and France were so slow. And they threw a hundred
thousand men into Warsaw before they turned to the English. That showed
what they thought of us!"

The others listened, looking patiently at the river. The spirit of some
w