C(uec^ St. lO BE REIAI/NlED :- - 5 1S35 CONTENTS. i'.\iii; A Sonnet on Official Paper 1 A Missing Trunk L5 The Priest's Daughter 27 Piotr Yorob 49 Coffin People 65 Two Acts of a Drama 79 Little Vanya's Burial 97 A Queer Companion ... 105 Bribery and Corruption 121 A Lost Leader 139 Leading into Temptation ... 157 Osip Starotchok 171 The Morning of St. Isaac's Day ... 187 The Water Demon 19^ 008 A SONXET ON OFFICIAL PAPER. A SONNET ON OFFICIAL PAPER, Those of my readers who have visited the ancient city of Kieff will, perhaps, remember that from the hill on which stand the massive red buildings of the Imperial Univer- sity of St. Vladimir, a rambling- road leads down into the valley through which the mighty Dnieper flows. Low, comfortable houses lie among trees and gardens on both sides of this road — pleasant little places where the doctors and pro- fessors live. Provided with a flatter- ing letter of introduction to Professor Kiumin, I found myself, some little time ago, walking down this road inquiring for the professor's house. I 4 A SOXXET found the place easily enough — a cosy little cottage, backed by a large garden, surrounded by a verandah overgrown with clematis and Vir- ginia creeper, and commanding a fine prospect over the steppe beyond the river. I was the professor's guest during my stay in Kieff. One afternoon, accompanied by my host, I passed through the Arch- bishop's garden, with its shady nooks and venerable dark green mouldiness, into the cathedral church of St. Sophia near by. Groups of beggars and pilgrims stood in the porches and lay about outside. Through the obstructed light of the interior a few worshippers moved quietly to and fro. Dim, sentinel-like frescoes of apostles and fathers ; stolid-looking, brown, aged bishops, whose medita- tion no incident could disturb ; great, ox OFFICIAL PAPEl?. 5 gentle faces of female saints also, like unpretending patient nuns, with nothing to say the like of which one was used to hear — all looked sadly and solemnly at us, filling us with those sombre feelings to which the Byzantism of Eussian churches ministers so powerfully. And in- creasing or intensifying these feelings were the low tones of a hymn sung by men's voices at a distant altar — passages of monotonous and un- ending melody. A crucifixion in a deserted and dim corner of the church especially attracted me ; the lonely anguish of that agonised face was the most pathetic thing I had ever seen. Kneeling before it was the solitary figure of a young girl dressed in black. She had heavy waves of golden hair folded above the neck, a 6 A SONNET pallid, gentle, kind, beseeching face, eyes that told her capable of terrible sorrow. "AYhat a sad face that poor girl's is," and I pointed her out to my companion. " Hush ! " said he ; " come away ; that is Marya Pavlovna — I know her. If you wish I'll tell you her story this evening." We had hardly reached home when the heavy thunderclouds that had been gathering all day broke over our heads, and the rain came down in torrents. At evening it cleared, and we sat on the verandah, looking out on the dark, wet steppe which stretched away above the tallest roofs of the old pilgrim city, distinctly out- lined on that evening in deep fluid grey against a sky still heavy with coming rain, and out on the dark ox OFFICIAL PAPEE. 7 forest frame of pines on the verge of the great plahi. The professor lit a cigarette, and, opening a small desk, took from it and handed to me a piece of crumpled paper — torn, scorched by fire, scribbled on in many places, and bearing on the top, left- hand corner the letters, M. V. D. " This," said the professor, " is a piece of ofiicial paper ; the letters M. V. D. are the initial letters of our Ministry of the Interior ; the straight, careful writing across the paper in the usual direction, and ending in a blot, is the first sentence of an official report about an agrarian dispute ; the finer, more careless lines, in the opposite direction, are all that the fire has left of a beautiful sonnet. Do you see this name below the sonnet ? That is Marya Pavlovna's, and she is the author of the poem. You notice the 8 A SONNET letters L. K. below Marya's name ? These are Lyov Karneyeff's initials, and the numerous corrections which you see here and there are in the same handwriting — the handwriting, moreover, of the official report." "Who is LyoY Karneyeff?" I inquired. " LyoY was the son of an artillery colonel, and was sent to our univer- sity here to study law. He was a remarkably brilliant student, and, when I first knew him, restless, romantic, and ambitious. He took a high degree, and soon obtained an excellent appointment on the Gover- nor-General's staff. However, he was not long in the Governor's chancery, when an affection of the lungs obliged him to ask prolonged leave of absence. As he was high in favour this was readily obtained, and a week ON OFFICIAL PAPER. 9 later he was in the Riviera, seeking the necessary rest and change. He chose the Eiviera because his uncle, old Judge Treskoff , with his daughter Marya, was there. Young Lyov had not seen his cousin for years — she had been in Paris at school — but when he saw her sweet face, and knew her pure, clear soul, he was her slave, bound hand and foot in the bonds of love. Yes, yes ; that was Marya you saw in St. Sophia's. You don't wonder that Lyov loved her, neither do I. Well, after a little more travelling, the whole party returned to KiefP, and the young peoi^le became engaged. " Shortly after his return Lyov was occupied with a complicated quarrel about land, in which a certain Count well known in society here, sought to drive a number of jpeasants from his 10 A SONIN^ET estate, because, as the Count alleged, they had joined an heretical set called Stundists. These peasants were led by a certain Afanasi Bogo- sloYski, a great, roughly- cut strong man, masculine in mind, and of indomitable courage, one of the best types of that curious body of pro- testing peasants who are likely sooner or later to revolutionise the life of our common people. The young official came a good deal in contact with this Afanasi, and Avhen he was obliged, more than once, to visit the scene of the dispute, he was the Stundist's honoured guest. There was many a conversation between them on serious and sacred subjects, and the elder man quickly won an extraordinary influence over the younger. Well, somehow, it got abroad that Lyov had become a Stundist, that he attended ox OFFICIAL PAPEK. 11 and spoko at tlieir meetings. I suppose this rumour reached the Governor- General's ears, for steps were soon taken to spy out the young man's movements. One night it was arranged in the village that the Stun- dists should meet in Bogoslovski's house to hear an address from Lyov on improved methods of agriculture which he had noticed while abroad. There in the meeting sat the Governor's spy, disguised as a peasant. Lyov gave his address, and I heard afterwards that although he began his remarks with descriptions of improved agri- cultural implements, he nevertheless went on to speak of other things in which Europe is far ahead of us — care for the poor, the relation of workman to employer, religious freedom, liberty of the Press, and so on. The informer made his report to the authorities, 12 A SONNET and then misfortune followed mis- fortune. The Governor- General dis- missed LyoY from his chancery, and on the evening of the day of his dismissal a domiciliary visit was made him, and all his books and papers seized by the police. I used to see him walking about in those days with his Marya, and I think this sonnet, and, perhaps, many another, was written then. The denouement came suddenly. One night Lyov disappeared from Kieff, and men whispered to one another that the police had removed him, and that he was now on the way towards Eastern Siberia. Marya's grief and terror knew no bounds. Her invalid father was bedridden, and she was alone in the world. She went to the police-master to discover where Lyov was ; but this gentleman professed ox OFFICIAL PAPEE. 13 entire ignorance of the matter. She went to the Governor, who refused to see her. " The poor girl continued to mourn her lost lover for many a long month. One dav, fourteen months after his disappearance, a letter reached her bearing the Tobolsk postmark, and written in an unknown hand. It announced that Lvov was dancrer- ously ill of small-pox, contracted in the foetid atmosphere of an over- crowded etape house. Two weeks later, and another letter in the same hand announced his death in an etape house somewhere east of Tobolsk." The Professor paused a little, then continued : '• Mary a goes every after- noon to St, Sophia's to prav, just as we saw her this evening. She is orthodox, so I suppose the heart- broken girl prays for the repose of 14 A SONNET ON OFFICIAL PAPER. her lover's soul, and entreats the Yirgin to hasten the time when her soul and Lvov's will be joined in the abode of the Eternal." Another and a longer pause, and the Professor, in sadder tones, con- tinued : " They were both of them eager seekers after something that is in this land of ours in no satisfvinof measure, or, perhaps, not at all." " And what is the subject of this sonnet ?" I asked. " ' For Freedom and Fatherland ' they called it. It is a iDcautiful sonnet." A MISSING TRUNK. A MISSING TRUNK. AVhex I first knew Sosont Eudenko, two years ago, he was a bright-eyed, handsome young fellow of six-and- twenty, full of life, and vigour, and hope. He had just completed his third year of active mission work among the villages in the provinces of Podolia and Kursk, and so crowned with success had been his efforts that the Stundists of the district had elected him their principal preacher, and given into his hands all the threads of their organisation. In May two years ago he left his home in Moscow, to visit the elders of the more important Stundist com- munities in the South, with the 2 18 A missi:n^g truxk. object of discussing with them the best method of putting the growing Protestant movement on more sys- tematic lines. In the railway car- riage he took with him a bundle of clothes. In the guard's van he deposited his trunk, containing books, numerous papers, lists of the names and status of the brethren in different portions of the Empire, and other documents pertaining to the organisation. For the trunk he received the usual luggage receipt. At Orel, on his way South, he changed carriages, and to his joy he saw that the guard of the new train was a Stundist — secretly, of course. As soon as the guard had a favour- able opportunity he called Eudenko aside, and informed him he had heard that the gensclannes along the line between Orel and K had A MISSING TEUXK. 19 received a telegraphic message that day from Moscow to look out for a certain man with a certain trunk. He could give no fuller particulars, he could describe neither the man nor the trunk. But Eudenko suspecting that he was the man looked for, expressed this fear to tlie guard. " Then for God's sake destroy your baggage check at once," was the reply he received. Thereupon Eudenko chewed his receipt into pulp, and quietly awaited the course of events. He had not long to wait. At the first station from Orel two gensdarmes entered his carriage, and informed him he was w^anted. He was taken from the train into a waiting room and searched. " Where is your luggage receipt ? " was the first question. "Haven't one." 20 A MISSING TKUNK. The intelligent geyisdarmes doubt- less thought, Well, if he has no lug- gage receipt, he has no luggage, and they allowed the train to proceed. Eut Kudenko was marched off to the police-station, charged with being a Stundist propagandist, and with entertaining designs against the safety of the Orthodox Church. When the guard reached K he delivered Kudenko's trunk in the usual way to the baggage clerk ; and as the train was to stop here an hour and a-half he had time to run to a friend of Eudenko's to tell him what had happened, and to advise him to get possession of the trunk by fair means or by foul. Eudenko had told him what was in the trunk, and he knew that his own fate, and the fate of hundreds of others, depended on the success of this manoeuvre. A A MISSIXG TllUXK. 21 council of Stundists was immediately held, and the question they discussed was, How are we to get at the trunk ? They were wise as serpents. They had an intimate acquaintance with the character of Eussian officials, and they clubbed together to subscribe a sum of money to corrupt the baggage clerk. The sum was 50 roubles. Their most discreet member was sent to the railway station with the money, and in due time he returned with the trunk. When its contents had been abstracted, the trunk was broken up and burnt. The papers, account books, lists, &c., were care- fully tied up in bundles. One bundle was sent to a reliable friend in Peters- burg, another to the Crimea, a third XDackage was forwarded to Orenburg, and the remainder to a town in Poland. 22 A MISSING TEUNK. From the police-station Eudenko was taken to the district town of Kromi and lodged in gaol there. In due time the investigating magis- trate arrived, and questioned him about his doings and about the missing trunk. About himself he answered freely and fully; but he refused to make any communication which might be used to implicate others. As his examination was un- satisfactory he was ordered prison clothes, one side of his head was shaved, chains were put on his legs, all communication with the outside world, whether by letter or by inter- view, was forbidden, and books, papers, and writing materials were rigorously withheld from him. This was in June, a month after his arrest. Month followed month, Eudenko remained obdurate, and the police A MISSIIN^G TRUNK. 23 continued tlieir investigations into the whereabouts of the missing trunk. They advertised, its description was hung up at railway stations, and all sorts of secret inquiries were set on foot, but to no purpose. No intelligence could be conveyed either to or from the unfortunate man in Kromi gaol, and nothing was known of his condition, until quite accidentally it transpired that he was in the prison infirmary, deadly ill with typhus. This was in March of last year. The wretched man had worn out body and soul in vain frettings, he was without occupation of anv sort, and he was treated like an ordinary felon in the reeking filthy dens of the prison. Of course he fell a victim to typhus — it is quite a common disease in Eussian prisons. Until June he remained in the infir- 24 A MISSIXG TRUXI^ mary, and when he was strong enough he went back to his cell. In the meanwhile all police inquiries into his affairs came to nothing, no evidence, not even the flimsiest, could be procured against him, and one morning, just fourteen months after his arrest near Orel, he was told that if he could procure bail for 5,000 roubles he would be allowed to visit his home. Bail was soon procured, but his passport was re- tained by the authorities, and ho was obliged to undertake to report himself once in every forty- eight hours to the Moscow police. A week ago I saw Eudenko in Moscow. I did not recoonise in the wan, broken-down man of apparently forty years, with grey- streaked hair, and trembling hands, and deep lines of suffering and anguish engraved A MISSING TRUNK. 25 about his eyes and mouth, the bright youth I had known two years ago. What had they done to him to work this terrible change ? He would not talk about it. But his wife told me that the poor fellow was nearly crazy with joy when he reached home, and that he burst into an agony of tears when he noticed how his little boy shrank from him as from one unknown. We in our free island home will pity those harried broken men in Eussia, fighting the fight now that our fathers fought so grandly in olden time, and pray that they may continue to fight it loyally and truly, and in the end conquer the forces of darkness arrayed against them. THE PRIEST'S DAUGHTER. THE PRIESTS DAUGHTER. If any of my readers know the swamp region of the i)rovince of Volhynia in Western Eussia, they will agree with me when I say it is one of the most cheerless and desolate on earth. When the events which are gathered into this little story were beginning, it was a morning in early winter. The frozen marshes were swept by a bitter wind from the North. The ground was covered with a thin coating of snow. Shadowy birches grew here and there, their russet leaves still ad- hering to them. In the midst of little clearings could be seen here and there on the wide expanse of 30 THE peiest's daughtee. plain the izha of the Polish or German settler — squalid and damp abodes, where rheumatism in winter and malaria in summer find congenial homes. Away on the horizon were low grey bluffs on the further side of a river that rises amidst these fens, and finds its sluggish way over a thousand miles of monotonous steppe until it merges itself in the waves of the Euxine. Across this desolate tract tramped Alexei Shalkoff, as sturdy and stal- wart a young fellow as could be found in all the province of Yolhynia. The red sun of early morning shone on his ruddy, handsome features, and he smiled as he shouldered his way through the storm which sought to bar his progress. In one hand ho carried a rough portmanteau, in which he had packed all his belongings ; THE priest's DAUGHTEE. 31 in "the other a stout stick to do battle with the fierce clogs swarming around every izha. He was apx3roaching the end of his journey, the large village of Uspenskaya, and his mind was full of thoughts of how best to carry on his work there ; how best to wean the people from sin, from drunkenness, and impurity, and superstition ; how best to win them to Christ and His Kingdom. For Shalkoff was full of youthful enthusiasm, and he was resolved, God helping him, to make his new vocation of preacher to the little Stundist communities around Uspenskaya a fruitful source of bless- ing to the whole country side. Beginnings, the Eussian proverb says, are always hard, and Shalkoff found his first steps beset with unusual difficulties. The villagers were hostile ; they called him by opprobrious epi- 32 THE PEIEST'S DAUGHTEE. thets, and on more than one occasion personally maltreated him. The Stund- ists themselves were apathetic. They were torn into rival parties, and con- sumed their strength in factious dis- putations and internal strife. But his greatest trial was the attitude of Father Ambrose, the village priest. This man was not like the ordinary village popes — besotted, ignorant, superstitious, sordid — but a person who had had an excellent education, energetic, a powerful speaker, and with considerable means at his disposal. So when Father Ambrose declared war against Stundism, and expressed his implacable hatred of the Protestants and their leader, poor Shalkoff had to bear a burden which nigh pressed him doAvn. But all the time there had been a leaven slowly at work, permeating the whole village. Shalkoff's gentle THE PKIEST'S DAUGHTER. 33 demeanour and persuasive address, his tact, his sunny smile, his sympa- thetic ways, first won over his o^vn people to join together their forces and present an unbroken front in the presence of those who opposed them ; and then, little by little, they did their work also among the Orthodox yillPcgers. He was no longer reviled and sworn at when he apjpeared out- side his own room. Friendly greetings and kindly nods of the head met him wherever he went. He would write the villagers' letters to their friends away from home ; their petitions to the authorities were drawn up by him ; his slight knowledge of medi- cine was utilised in prescribing for the sick babies and the old bed- ridden men and women ; and from being the best-hated man in the village, he rose in a month or two to be a popular hero. 34 THE priest's daughtee. Now, during his walks up and down the principal street of the village, Alexei Shalkoff used to notice outside Father Ambrose's house the beautiful, fair-haired daughter of the priest, as she tended her hollyhocks and geraniums, or busied herself with old Agrippina, her nurse, among the beehives below the privet hedge surrounding the house. When she was quite a child her father had sent her to Kieff, to the gymnasium there, and she had had ten years of the best education obtainable by a girl in Eussia. Her eager nature had readily absorbed all the knowledge that could be acquired in the various schools she attended, and when she returned to Uspenskaya at the age of nineteen she was an accomplished and well- read woman. For three years she had lived with her father in the village. THE priest's daughter. 35 In many a way she had sought to keep up the shadow, at any rate, of her intellectual life. She opened a school for girls ; she induced her father to permit her to read church history and the lives of the saints to the villagers assembled in the school- room ; she introduced horticulture in a small way into the village, and round many a squalid izba there were now scented mignonette beds and trailing nasturtiums, where the pig used to wallow in unutterable mire. If Alexei Shalkoff had become the hero of the village, surely Elena Ambrosovna was the heroine. Now, Shalkoff seemed always to know when Elena should be in her garden, or perhaps it was Elena who knew when Shalkoff took his walk down the village street. At any rate, they used to see one another every 36 THE peiest's daughtee. afternoon, and although Elena looked upon the young preacher as a dan- gerous heretic, and Shalkoff regarded the beautiful, cultured girl as plunged in superstition, they gradually came to pay less regard to such unfavour- able aspects of one another's character, and to welcome and look forward to the afternoon's salutation, and the pleasant exchange of opinion about the weather at the gate of the little garden. It happened that when spring had far advanced towards summer, Father Ambrose was called away to Kieff , to attend a conference of the leading clergy of his diocese. Before he left home he instructed his daughter to keep a watchful look-out on the Stun- dists, and to report their doings to him on his return ; and he made the remarkable suggestion that she should THE PEIEST'S DAUGHTER. 37 go once or twice to their meetings, to see that nothing was said against the Orthodox Church during his absence. Elena, in her secret heart, had long- wished for this opportunity ; so when Sunday came round the priest's daughter was one of the first to enter the heretical meeting. Her presence there caused no little amount of stir and comment, and Shalkoff, the preacher, all through the service, thought more, I believe, of that one golden-haired maiden than of the hundred men and women who hung upon his words. And when the meeting was over, and he noticed that Elena lingered about the door, he felt sure it was his duty to leave his ros- trum, and offer to accompany her to the little garden gate. And when they slowly walked through the fading light of evening down the 38 THE PEIEST'S DAUGHTER. long village street, Elena asking many questions arising out of the simple Gospel story she had just heard, and Alexei answering them in his gentle, modest way, they were both supremely happy, and felt that some strange cord of sympathy was begin- ning to bind them together in bonds that would last for ever. Human nature away beyond Vis- tula and Danube, on the intermin- able plains of Eussia, is much the same as the human nature we know about in London — swayed by the same im- pulses, following in the same well- worn tracks, longingly looking for- ward to the same goals. Does it seem strange that this impressionable Russian youth, with the magnificent hopes, and the noble girl whose smile and voice were heaven to him, should grow more and more attached to one THE priest's daughter. 39 another, should long for every oppor- tunity that brought them nearer and made them dearer to one another ? Elena, besides, felt a deeper motive impelling her to be where Shalkoff was. Her soul was stirred to its depths by this man's message, and she was fast realising that the futili- ties and formalities of her past re- ligious life were little better than husks devoid of the precious germi- nating power which is the test of all true spirituality. And so it was not once or twice only that she bent her way to the Stundist meeting-house, but five or six times, and each time she lingered for Alexei's appearance, and for the delicious walk with him through the village at evening. Elena before long gave herself unreservedly to this man, lavishing her treasures of passionate love on him, and he 40 THE priest's daughter. in turn found her God's richest gift to him, and was supremely happy. The day soon came when Father Ambrose was to return, and both Elena and Alexei felt that although they had not dared to speak, or even to think, of this, it would bring danger and perhaps destruction to them both. Elena was far too high- spirited to conceal anything from her father, so as soon as the first oppor- tunity presented itself she told him everything that had happened in his absence between herself and Shalkoff . The fury of the old man knew no bounds. He poured out scorn and contumely on his daughter for for- getting her fair fame by associating with such damnable heretics and blasphemers as the Stundists ; for lowering herself in his eyes and in the eyes of the world by her love of THE priest's daughter. 41 a low-minded peasant fellow, a dis- ciple of Antichrist, and an enemy of the true Church. But his calmer thouolits were reserved for Shalkoff. How would he most effectually deal with this man who had entered as a wolf into the fold ; whose insinuating ways and dangerous doctrines were undermining the orthodoxy of the villagers, saj)ping the very founda- tions of their faith ; who, forgetting himself utterlv, had crawled into his only daughter's heart, and sown dis- sension and difference where peace had once reigned ; who had en- dano'ered the eternal welfare of her who was as the apple of his eye and the delight of his old age ? He thought it all out deliberately enough, and he resolved to ruin this Stundist preacher. Nothing, alas ! was easier. Father 42 THE PEIEST'S DAUGHTEK. Ambrose speedily drew up a grossly- exaggerated narrative of Slialkoff's proceedings since he arrived at Uspen- skaya four months ago ; he elaborated an infamous travesty of the Stundists' teachings ; declared that those schis- matics were tinctured with the grossest immorality ; declared, fur- ther, that they were tainted with Socialistic and Nihilistic views which threatened the stability of good government in Eussia, and were not only a menace to the Orthodox Church, but to the very Czar on his throne. This report he dispatched to the Metropolitan of Kieff ; and, sternly informing his daughter that she was to hold no further communication with Shalkoff, he impatiently awaited the issue of his calumnious report. He had not long to wait. A commission of chinovniki was sent to Uspenskaya THE PEIEST'S DAUGHTER. 43 to investigate the charges against Shalkoff and his Stundist adherents. They took the priest's evidence and the evidence of a few of his sup- porters ; but not one witness on the other side was called. The heresy and immoralitv, the rationalism and socialism of Shalkoff, were held to be clearly proven, and the local com- missary of police at Uspenskaya was directed to arrest Shalkoff and wait instructions from Kieff. Nor had the commissary long to wait. The prisoner was to be sent under escort to Kieff, and to be delivered over to the police-master. This was accord- ingly done, but in the usual brutal Eussian manner, every effort being made by the authorities to accentuate the unfortunate position in which the prisoner found himself. Taken before the police-master in 44 THE PEIEST'S DAUGHTER. Kieff, Slialkoff was curtly informed that instructions had been received from the GoYcrnor to deport him to a district near the frontier of Persia, and that he was to remain in that region for a period of six years ; fur- ther, that he was now to go to gaol to wait until an etape proceeding in that direction was formed. Shalkoff re- mained two months in prison, treated like an ordinary felon, and then, in company with some thirty criminals, he began his long journey to the East. Of course, Elena Ambrosovna knew all that was happening. Her father, with ill-concealed triumph, had told her. But she was of nobler material than to despair. She pa- tiently waited until she heard from the Stundists in Uspcnskaya that Shalkoff had arrived at his destina- THE PraEST'S DAUGHTER. 4.") tion, and then, through one of those mysterious channels, resorted to by persecuted Eussians when under police surveillance, she wrote to him, and poured out her love for him, and gave sweet expression to her longing to be with him. Through the same channels the answer came : that if she were prepared to brave hardships and trials without end ; if she were ready to live for six years a life of labour and struggle among a hostile and barbarous population, cut off from all that had hitherto made life pleasant to her — if she could consent to all this, to come. Consent ! Prepared ! Of course she was. She would have consented to pass through fire to join the man who had created a new life for her. She was prepared to die for him, and, God helping her, she would either die 46 THE peiest's daughter. or go to him. So she made her pre- parations silently and cautiously, and one morning in early autumn stole away from her father's house. All trace of her was lost until, after a month, she arrived among the breth- ren on the Persian frontier to seek and to find her betrothed. There were great rejoicings as soon as she appeared among them. They had heard her story from Alexei. For the noble girl who had braved and suffered so much they had only enthusiastic admiration and love. After a few days had passed, it was decided that Elena and Alexei should be united together in marriage. A beautiful grassy hilltop, dappled with the shadows of a great oak, and over- looking a lovely valley through which a glittering stream rushed over its rocky bed, was chosen as THE priest's daughter. 47 their house of God. Here the hand- ful of brethren assembled, and an aged presbyter, whose sufferings in the cause had been great, was selected to celebrate the rite. It was a joyful little gathering, and they all strove to forget their sorrows, and the sorrows of their friends in the old homes beyond the mountains, but still they were not sure whether they should laugh or cry. PIOTR VOROB. 4, STUNDIST VILLAGE WOMAN. PIOTR VOROB. His real name was not Yorob but Yassilieff. I never knew when or why he acquired this nickname among the neighbours. It means " sparrow." Yorob, before I knew him, had been a house-servant, and in his early youth he had been a shepherd. He had not been a good servant, and he used to be often whi^Dped for carelessness and inep- titude. He himself confesses that no butler could have broken more plates and dishes than he did. His master treated him very badly — it was in the old serfdom days. He once broke the drum of his poor servant's ear, so that one ear always remained more 52 PIOTR VOROB. or less a superfluity. If further per- sonal details are necessary, I might mention that Vorob suffers very much in his eyes from a disease known among the villagers as " chicken blindness " ; also, that small-pox has exerted all its terrible malignance to disfigure his face. He has the air of a man morally and mentally unde- cided, irresponsible, easily frightened. Can you judge from the type of face he presents to you that in his heart reigns inward spiritual peace ? The best years of his life, Yorob thinks, were those when he tended the sheep out on the breezy steppe. Even now, in advanced life, his sweetest pleasure is to lie on his back facing the sky, and recall to recollection the varied details of that happy period. He recalls how plea- sant it was to lie on some green bank PIOTR VOROB. 53 and examine the natural objects around liim ; to follow the white cloudlets floating in the heavens, and in his childlike way to wonder where they all went to ; to watch the dark thunderclouds, and to image out of their huge shapes terrible miraculous beasts. Such songs as he sang then ! How well he played on his shepherd's pipe ! He even dared to love a little in those days. As a youth, phantasy easily bore him on her wings, unto the land of wonders. At times he was Piotr a Czarewitch, or Piotr a holy apostle in heaven, or Piotr a brave ataman^ charging at the head of -his troops. His mental and spiritual fibre used to change with every meteorological variation. Cold and clear weather, and he sings joyful songs ; warm, he lies on his ^ Leader. 54 PIOTE VOROB. back and dreams ; a cold wind blow- ing, or the rain pouring down, he stands and chants war- songs ; a dull day comes and he sings without ceasing queer little sad songs, the most part of his own improvisation. In those days his mother's image used to come about him — poor fellow ! he had lost her when very young — and to his songs he added sorrowful little variations, in which he tried to ex- press some of his grief for her loss. The music itself played the chief part — never the words. There were always some simple expressions, as " my little mother, my little loving mother," &c. — nothing more. So Piotr lived, divesting the world of all effective purpose, or etherealising it through the medium of his simple imagination. Three things drew him from his PIOTR VOEOB. 55 slicpherd life — first, laziness, or, better described, a dislike to hard physical toil ; secondly, the ability to sing, although until now he had sung only for himself, and that out on the open steppe. He says that even now, not- withstanding his partial deafness, he is still able to execute several of what he describes as his " little thoughts " in almost an artistic manner. He is rather proud of his gift. Especially does he love those songs which are set in sad minor keys. He says they remind him of something either far away, or long passed, or dearly loved. And, finally, he left his shep- herd life because he possessed, in too developed a form, the power of ab- stract thought, the power of concen- trating all his faculties on problems which bothered him. Both he and his employer came to the conclusion 56 PIOTE YOROB. that thinking and herding were in- compatible. When I first knew Piotr he was very poor, he possessed no business, he knew no handicraft, his children served strangers, and he himself and his wife always hired themselves out during the time of field work. Piotr was universally desi)ised, counted a fool, a lazy fellow, unwilling and un- able to work. The old people mocked him, the young amused themselves at his expense. But he was consistently quiet, and paid no attention to these persistent annoyances. His wife, a splendid worker, toiled for both, and as she was a woman with a tongue, allowed no one to molest her hus- band in her presence. Unfortunately, she often drank, and then her drunken hands bestowed on her hus- band marks that he long remem- PIOTR VOROB. 57 bered. His own chiklren laughed at him, and were disobedient. The fun and jokes at poor Piotr's expense were often carried to serious lengths. It has happened that parties of the villagers meeting him in the street would push and hustle him from side to side, until he fell senseless to the ground. But our Yorob kept quiet, and, therefore, one villager would say, "Yorob has no courage"; another, " Yorob is chicken-hearted." But Yorob had, nevertheless, a great, good, human heart. After these attacks from the villagers his heart, he says, boiled, and he resolved all sorts of wild plans of revenge. But when the moment approached for executing these plans they were all altered. Those wicked thoughts and all bitter feelings would pass away, and he is now sure that he was up- 58 PIOTE VOROB. held through all his trials by a heavenly hand. The critical part of A^orob's life now approached. It was a year of bad harvest, and poor Piotr felt the mordant touch of winter and hunger. His wife and children were wretched ; there had been nothing earned, and there were many mouths to fill. Our Piotr for a while bore up against the hunger and the cold, bore what was still harder to bear, the bickerings and grumblings of family and neigh- bours. Suddenly he disappeared from the village. For over two years he sent no message, but early in the third year of his absence he sud- denly reappeared. It was difficult to believe that this was the same Piotr. In place of the old tattered sheep- skin he now wore a comfortable jacket, in the pocket of which was PIOTR VOEOB. 59 Avliat the villagers called a " cloth for his nose." His ragged "lapti" he had exchanged for good black boots, with a " creak" too. His entire figure had assumed a sort of gentlemanlike exterior, and attracted considerable respect from those who had once jeered at him. This is what had happened. Sixty versts from his vil- lage lay a German colony. To this colony he had walked. A German farmer at once engaged him as a shepherd, with good wages. It was here that Yorob for the first time in his life heard the meaning of man's conversion. Here he became ac- quainted with the doctrines of the Protestants. One might perhaps be inclined to think that his conversion to Protestantism was easilv brouHit about. Quite otherwise. It is true he spoke little, but he sat receptive. 60 PIOTK VOROB. reflective, attentive. Occasionally lie would ask the preacher to explain something which was not quite clear to him, and if the explanation were unsatisfactory he would repeat the question, or turn to a neighbour for fuller light. No one was ever quite able to say what spiritual progress Vorob was making. But when all his questionings and introspective studies had been satisfactorily ended he came to the meeting, and simply said, " Brothers, forgive me, and let me be one of you." So he joined the Protestants. A short time before this moment- ous event in Piotr's life, one of the brethren had emigrated from the vil- lage of N to the Kuban district, in Cis- Caucasia. Before leaving N he had transferred his farm there to Piotr's care, and the new convert had PIOTR VOROB. 61 now returned to his own village to take his wife and family to his lately-acquired property. Yorob con- tinued to flourish. At first, the brethren were not particularly satis- fied with their new member. He appeared to them a latitudinarian sort of man, tolerant to a fault, gently disposed, even towards great sinners. In their meetings he was alwavs silent, and his face never ex- pressed either sorrow or pleasure, either spiritual ecstasy or religious melancholy. Once only the brethren were astonished when he unex- pectedly threw himself on his knees in their midst, and said, " Lord the Creator, I thank Thee for Thv great mercy. Thou, heavenly Father, knowest how I have suffered and borne troubles, and how bitter it was to live, how the heathen mocked 62 PIOTE VOROB. me, and even spilt my blood." Here one of the brethren interrupted him with, " Brother Piotr, do not grumble ; it is sinful." But Piotr continued, " I bore it all, and I thought that there must be no such thing as Thy holy justice on the earth. Now, Lord, I see it all. I thank Thee for all Thy grace in opening mine eyes and in showing me the true path to peace. I forgive them all. Lord ; forgive Thou them. Amen." Piotr, indeed, is the most taciturn man at these meetings ; he never puts his feelings into words ; but what his heart feels only those tears testify that fall from his eyes down his ugly, marred face. They are not tears of sorrow any longer, or of remorse or misfortune, but tears of blessedness, and joy, and happiness. I cannot describe the deligiit which possesses riOTE YOKOB. 63 the whole meeting when Piotr, leaving his silence, raises his voice higher than all the choir, and sings with his still fresh tenor some particular hymn which he may specially admire. But that happens very seldom. COFFIN PEOPLE. COFFIN PEOPLE, EuMYiS^SKOE is a lonely steppe village, hundreds of miles away from the beaten track of tourists. A wander- ing dealer in crudely coloured reli- gious pictures and almanacks, or an Armenian vendor of cheap haber- dashery, may once or twice a year visit it from the middle reaches of the Volga — that great artery of Eastern trade; but so deadly quiet and apathetic are the ways of the villagers, that even the arrival of these traders, men who have seen the world, and journeyed through many provinces, stirs but a quickly passing ripple of interest. It was still, grey, April weather as 68 COFFI^N' PEOPLE. we aj)proached Eumynskoe ; tlie damp lay in cloudy patches in tlie hollows of the steppe, and in the even morning light we could see away across the interminable plain the shining cupola of the village church rising above the surrounding- mist like a light - tower from a northern sea. We put up at the elder's house, and here in a sleepy, heavy way the people attended to our wants, foddered our horses, and so on ; but their dull leaden eyes ex- pressed no sign of curiosity, no vestige of interest in their stranger guests. Nevertheless, a few years ago Eumynskoe was the scene of unusual excitement, and its calm and quiet existence was stirred to the depths by the queer events which I will now nar- rate. Two years of bad harvests had been succeeded by some mysterious COFFIX PEOPLE. 69 outbreak of disease among tlie sheep and cattle, and a terrible visitation of tlie Siberian plague had carried away nearly half the village. It has been often noticed by Eussian writers that when any general calamity overtakes the peasantry their naturally pious minds turn with peculiar intensity to the extremes of mysticism. Hunger, poverty, plague, desolating wars have always been connected with a marked development of mystic ideas among Eussians. It is to be noted, more- over, that as soon as this peculiar outgrowth is observed, there is always some designing person ready to prey ux^on the simple peasantry, and to turn their pietism and lack of worldly prudence to his own profit. Such was the case in Eumynskoe. Many of the villagers, although afflicted bv disease and want, their 70 COFFIN PEOPLE. nearest and dearest dying or dead, were in a state of delirious ecstasy, calling upon God day and night to raise them to " Tabor " and " Zion " ; others, again, were sunk in the lowest depths of religious despondency. One of the latter, the schoolmaster, I was told, took to writing hymns, despair- ing and pathetic little verses, full enough of music and rhythm in their Eussian dress. Literally translated, one of them runs thus : — When, Eedeemer, shall I behold Thee In heaven ? When, Christ, shalt Thou raise me To heaven ? I live still in this world, But not of it. I long for Thy heavenly home ; May my death-hour draw nigh. And another — Hard and full of sorrow The days of transient life. COFFIX PEOPLE. 71 Here only endless trouble ; Wo lose, the battle vain ; But the grave is rest. In the midst of their troubles the peasants of Eumynskoe were visited by a man of venerable aspect, in the garb of a mendicant monk. He was a man of huge frame, but wrinkled and bent, and his hoary beard reached to his waist. His name was Father Fedor, and he came, he said, from Astrakhan to deliver to the people of Eumynskoe and other villages a divine message which had been revealed to him. The villagers assembled in hundreds to hear his message. He was eloquent, emphatic, convinced: "The end of the world draws near hour by hour," he cried ; " the general resurrection of mankind from the dead approaches. Eepent. Cease your work. Let all your care 72 COFFIN PEOPLE. and trouble about money cease, for the fearful day of the Lord draws nigh. Pray, and prepare to meet the Christ." About fifty of the poor mujiki* of Eumynskoe put their whole trust in Father Fedor, in this venerable man of God, and at his request they collected together all their money and little valuables, in order that he might destroy them as hindrances to their perfect withdrawal from the world. In a few davs Father Fedor announced that the date of Christ's coming had been revealed to him. It was on a Thursday he made this statement, and Christ was to come on the night of the following Saturday. He drew his following of fifty persons of both sexes into a lar^^e cottasre, and instructed them as to final '■^' Peasants. COFFIX PEOPLE. 78 arrangements. Each was to prepare a coffin made of pine wood, and on the following night they were to lay these coffins in rows in the house where they were then assembled. They were likewise to prepare white garments, and, clad in these, they were to lie in their coffins, and await the advent of Christ. Friday evening arrived ; the coffins — rough boxes of deal, painted black — and the shrouds were all prepared, and the poor creatures lay down in their appointed places — long rows of ghastly enough objects. Father Fedor then began a service : he lit a multi- tude of candles, burnt quantities of incense. All through the night he continued an incessant praying and chanting, working up the feelings of his disciples in the coffins to the pitch of madness. On Friday prayers were 74 COFFIX PEOPLE. said at frequent intervals by the monk, and more incense was burnt ; but as Saturday morning approaclied he told his disciples tliat he must leave for a little in order to pray by himself in the woods. Saturday dawned ; the ecstatic coffin-people knew nothing of liunger or thirst; they only longed for night to come when they would be called home at the sound of a trumpet. They wondered a little that Father Fedor did not come, but they knew that the holy man was rapt in prayer and pious contemplation. The dread night arrived, and the excitement of those people lying in their coffins there in the dark was so intense, and the strain on them so terrible, that eight men fainted, and the women became hysterical. But the night wore on, and nothing happened. The COFFIN PEOPLE. 75 iinmilkcd cows beside them lowed with pain, and the horses in the stable moaned with hunger. The doors of the cottage had been locked and the windows barred, so that no one from outside could approach to see what was going on. Drearily the night dragged its slow length along, and Sunday mornino: dawned on those mad fanatics, screaming, groaning, weeping, praying wildly — but no Christ came, no trumpet was heard, not even Father Fedor came to com- fort and encourage them. And so, as Sunday morning passed, and still nothing happened, one man, probably less trustful than his fellows, hinted to his neighbour that perhaps Father Fedor had been in error about the date. His neighbour agreed with him that this was possible, and both thought that they should urge on the 76 COFFm PEOPLE. other brethren the necessity of seek- ing Father Fedor, and ascertaining if there had not been a mistake. Yery little persuasion was required. All rose, donned their worldly clothes, and went forth in search of the monk. Whoever has read this story care- fully will not be surprised to hear that the " man of God " was nowhere to be found. But a young peasant narrated how he saw a massive figure, no longer bent or decrepid, mounted on one of the swiftest horses belong- ing to the coffin people, and riding as for life towards the Yolga. It was on Saturday, just as dawn was breaking, that he saw this figure, and he thought it bore a strong re- semblance to Father Fedor. "But what about the money and valu- ables ? " I asked the man who told me this story. The dull- eyed narra- COFFIN PEOPLE. 77 tor brig'litcned up a little, made a grimace which I took to be Enssian for winking, and pointed with his thumb over his shoulder in the direc- tion of the monk's flight. TWO ACT3 OF A DKAMA. TWO ACTS OF A DRAMA. Boris Pliaskin was the editor of the Svoboda, a Moscow weekly paper of pronounced liberal views, and enjoying a considerable reputation among the educated young people of that city, the InteUigentia, as they call themselves. It is a curious little world by itself this Eussian intelli- gentia^ altogether distinct from the militarv, the official and commercial compounds, of infinitely more value and interest than any of them from the point of view of the moralist and political student, who would see in this purer young world the fiery and patriotic faith that will remove mountains of abuses. Pliaskin was 6 82 TWO ACTS OF A DEAMA. the idol of the Moscow intelligentia. His articles in the Svoboda were serious and earnest, passionate for justice and civil freedom, often enough tinged with Kussian pessi- mism, still more frequently, perhaps, lacking in the nervous equipoise shown by writers in countries where conscience is freer. "When the Svohoda was at the height of its popularity it happened that a curious undercurrent of dissatisfac- tion, undetermined and vague, agi- tated the students of the University. Perhaps it was caused by certain re- cent regulations of a very obnoxious rector ; X3erhaps it was deepened and intensified by Pliaskin's incisive articles on the shortcomings of the Eussian University system ; perhaps, and more likely, it was a stronger wave than usual of the ever-present TWO ACTS OF A DRAMA. 83 unrest and fret of intelligent Eussians against a system of despotic repres- sion of every vestige of freedom of thought. Whatever the reason, the police spies among the students were not slow to inform the authorities of the state of affairs, and the authorities were swift with retribution on the supx30sed ringleaders. Twenty - five students were arrested and lodged in ,the j)olice cells, and a proclamation, issued by the prefect of police, warned all whom it might concern to con- duct themselves properly, under pain of arrest and instant expulsion from the University. Next morning the Svohoda appeared with an article in leaded type entitled '• Our Masters." It was a sweeping denunciation of the tyrannous pro- ceedings of the previous day. With a fury of language overleaping all 84 TWO ACTS OF A DEAMA. bounds of prudence, ignoring all con- sequences, Pliaskin poured forth the vials of his contemptuous wrath on the rector, on the student spies, on the police prefect, and condemned, in burning sentences, the system of administration that could produce and tolerate such cruel despotism. In conclusion, he urged the students of Moscow, and of all other Eussian Universities, to unite in asserting the grand fundamental right of liberty of thought. This was the match to the powder. The students in great crowds thronged round the University buildings, and cheered for Boris Pliaskin, until the mounted Cossacks rode them down and whipped them from the square. Two hundred of them were arrested. In the meantime a body of police had marched to the office of the Svohoda^ TWO ACTS OF A DllAMA. me, so I opened my Testtimcnt, read for them, told them the whole truth, aud was not afraid. I don't know exactly what I said, but they told me I had offended the priest. God forgive me. A week later, when I had begun to think that all had quieted down, an oider came from the Governor that I was to leave the province of Kieff within seven days. And that is all I know about why I had to lose my farm and my crops, to sell everything at a ruinous loss, and with niv wife and two little ones to come to this strange town. And now, God forgive them, they have taken away my passport, and I am unable to obtain work, as no one will have anything to do with a man whose passport the iDolice have taken. I have still a warm fur coat, so has she, but everything else is gone. 104 LITTLE VANYA'S BUEIAL. We'll sell these, as the weather will soon be milder, and so tide over trouble until I get back my pass- port. Perhaps then we will try to gather enough money to go to Eou- mania. Do I know where Koumania is ? No ; but I have heard it is on the other side of the frontier, and that there are many of the brethren already settled there. Perhaps we may end our days in peace after all.'' A QUEER COMPANION. A QUEER COMPANION, I HAPPENED to be in Moscow during the winter of 1886, just at the time when the students of the University of that city broke out into one of their intermittent states of rebellion. There has always existed a sullen undercurrent of dissatisfaction and fret among these young men— partly the result of the intolerable restric- tions placed upon them as students, partly owing to their hatred of the administrative abuses and the arbi- trary nature of the Government of their country. The outbreak of 1886 was one more far-reaching than usual. Prominent professors and students of recognised social position 108 A QUEER COMPAXIO:S\ had ideiitifLed themselves with it ; words were spoken and pamphlets circulated in manuscript more pro- nounced and radical than any- thing that had hitherto appeared ; and the police were at their wits' end to crush the rebellion in such a way as to combine the greatest amount of severity to the students and the least amount of publicity to their own pro- ceedings. They arrested about 250 students and others ; closed the Uni- versity for three weeks ; and placed mounted Cossacks in the chief approaches to the University build- ings, to prevent the students as- sembling in the streets. Many of the ringleaders, however, escaped — some to Europe, others to districts remote from Moscow, and I heard only the other day that the police still continue their search for these unfortunate A QUEER COMPANION. 109 Youtlis. The police in Eussia, it may be mentioned, forget nothing and forgive nothing. Breathe a breath of suspicion against any one in that police-ridden country, and he is ever after a marked man. AVhile the Government were taking these drastic measures against the disturbers of what Eussian officials call the public order, or what we, with greater truth, would call the general apathy, I had to leave Moscow for the South. I remember it was about eleven o'clock at night when the train was to leave, and that the snow was swirling and drifting in oTcat masses in the streets, choking up oatewavs and doorways, and shroud- ino' the few wayfarers and sledge- drivers in thick garments of white. It was a terrible night, and I can per- fectlv recollect the howling of the 110 A QUEEE COMPAXIOX. arctic storm through the almost deserted thoroughfares. The well- warmed railway carriages were a welcome relief, and I was glad to notice that in the through carriages for the South there were hardly any passengers. A good night's rest was before me, I thought, as I surveyed the compartment in which I was the only person. But just as the third bell was ringing a young man, en- veloped in a thick overcoat laden with snow, and carrying a large canvas-covered portmanteau, hurried up, and finding that my compartment contained only one passenger, shook the snow off his coat, and entered it. Had he not brought such a chilly atmosphere with him I would have gladly welcomed his companionship, for he seemed a nice vouno- fellow, well-bred, well set-up, modest-looking A Ql'EER COMPANION. Ill — probably a comfortable mcrcliant's son. A moment after he had taken his seat the train moved slowly ont of the station, and we began our preparations for the night. Bather, I began my prexDarations. All he did was to j)ut up the wet fur collar of his coat, which quite concealed his face, and throw himself at full length, as though tired and worn out, on the long cushioned seat of the car- riage. When I got my rug and pil- low into position the guards came to look at our tickets. AVe were both bound for Kharkoff. I soon discovered that my companion was not of a talkative disposition, as he turned his back upon me ; so, shading the light, I lay down and closed my eyes. Hardly ten minutes had passed, when I could see through my slightly 112 A QUEER COMPAXIOX opened eyelids that the young man had raised himself, and was peering into my face to see if I were asleep. Not quite satisfied, he held his ear close to my lips to hear if my breath- ing were regular. I presume this latter test satisfied him, for he im- mediately began a strange operation. He divested himself of his boots, great coat, jacket and cap. Then, unlocking his portmanteau, he took from it a grey wig, which he placed over his own hair, a false beard, whiskers and moustache, which he deftly fastened on his smooth face, a pair of long, malodorous boots of clumsy make, in which he encased his feet and legs, and a huge padded overcoat in which his rather meagre figure appeared burly and preten- tious. Over his grey wig he drew a fur cap, and he stood transformed. A QUEER COMPAXIOX. 113 He had entered the carriage a slight youth, well-dressed and refined-look- ing ; he was now a bluft' trader of sixty, dirty and raw-looking, a man who had evidently spent the day in the muddy streets of some provincial town in contact with the most sordid surroundings. The cast - off clothes were placed in tlie portmanteau, which, after being locked, was silently taken outside the door of the car- riage.* After a moment's absence he re- turned, and my impression was that he had given it either to some one waiting on the outside platform of the next carriage to ours, or else had * Kussian railway carriages are built on the American system. There are no side doors as in England, entrance and exit being effected tlu'ough doors at the ends, communicating not only with the platform, but also with the neighbouring carriages. 8 114 A QUEEK COMPANION. thrown it into the deep snow bank along the line. These extraordinary doings had, of course, effectually banished all sleej) from my eyes ; but for some moments I debated with myself whether I should continue to feign asleep and watch, or sit bolt upright, and, as soon as an oppor- tunity occurred, enter into conversa- tion with my metamorphosed travel- ling companion. I decided on the latter course ; but as soon as I began to move this queer individual lay down, and turned his face from me, displaying only a few grey locks and the back of his coarse, heavy overcoat. The train was now slowing for the first stop after leaving Moscow; but notwithstanding the whistling of the engine, and the increased noise made by the brakes, my companion fell A QUEER COMPANION. 115 asleep, and began to snore — sus- piciously loud snoring it seemed to me. AVe had hardly stopped when a railway official carrying a lantern, accompanied by three gensdarmes^ entered our carriage. '' I wonder what the gensdarmes want ? " I said in Eussian, half to my- self. My companion had ceased snor- ing, and was listening, I suppose. But the moment the gensdarynes entered our compartment the snoring was resumed, and its intensity redoubled. The shade was remoTcd from the carriage lamp. " Gentlemen," called out the official, " show your tickets." I produced mine,bu.t there was no re- sponse from the sleexoer. He was taken by the shoulder and shaken, and I never saw a man so difficult to rouse. " Your ticket." 116 A QUEER COMPANION. With an inimitable assumption of sleepiness, and a perfect simulation of the accents of a peasant, my companion growled : " What d'ye want ? " " Your ticket, please." The ticket was produced. *'Both these gentlemen are for Kharkoff," said the railway man. *' Your passports, please," demanded the sergeant of gensdarmes. I produced mine, which was at once returned with politely expressed regrets for troubling me. My com- panion's passport was a dirty crumpled piece of paper, and it was read out by the sergeant to his companions : "Ivan Yakovleff," "second guild merchant," *' from town of Yoronoj," " age 62," " grey," " full beard, &c." The pass- port was returned without further remark. A QUEER COMPAXIOX. 117 u Pass on to the next carriage," said the sergeant, and my companion again lay down, turned on his side, and recommenced snoring. After a few minutes' delay the train resumed its journey, and I thought I would enter into conyersation with my curious vis-a-vis, I knew all his sleep was pretence, so I began : " Wonder what the gensclarmes are up to." No answer. " I fancy they must be searching for some one." Still no answer. I felt nettled at my gentleman's reticence, so I deter- mined to make him speak. " Funny sort of toilet that was which you made a while a^o." The snoring suddenly ceased, and "lyan Yakoyleff " sprang up and looked at me ; but I neyer wish to see 118 A QUEEK COMPANION. a ghastlier face, or a sadder, as he said, " For God's sake don't betray me, and don't speak to nie." " Oh, I won't betray you, only you have roused my curiosity consider- ably." No answer — so I thought I would not persevere in trying to entice him into conversation. But I noticed that he did not lie down again, but com- menced writing] with a pencil on a scrap of paper. He finished his writing, folded up the paper, and left the carriage, and I suspected he took his letter or message to the recipient of the canvas port- manteau. On his return he busied himself with an okl newspaper he carried in his pocket, staring at the same paragrapli for five minutes at a thnc — certainly not reading. When we stopped at the next sta- A QUEER COMPANION. 119 tion, about two in the morning, ho left the carriage, and I saw him walk quickly through the snow, past the window of my compartment towards the back of the train, but I never saw him afterwards I remained in Kharkoff a few days, and once, in the dining-room of the hotel at which I was staying, I read in a Berlin paper that the Eussian police were in active quest of a student of the Moscow University who had been one of the chief insti- gators of the late disturbances, and who was said to have been instru- mental in introducing all kinds of dangerous revolutionary literature among his companions. I have often wondered since that time if the burly merchant, " Ivan Yakovleff," of Yoronej, knew anything about him. BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION. BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION. Those who knew Gustav Bernadsky, a Eussian of Polish extraction, united in testifying that he was a man of unblemished life, an excellent neigh- bour, and a man who looked after his wife and children in an altogether irreproachable manner. He was a book-hawker, and lived in a good- sized town in the South of Eussia, which, for very obvious reasons, will be nameless. But, although Bernadsky occupied so high a position in the estimation of his neighbours, I fear his position would have been sadly jeoiDardised had they known that he was not all that he appeared to be, that his life in and his life 124 BRIBEEY AND COERUPTION. on his book- selling expeditions did not quite harmonise. They would have been astonished to hear that although he passed at home as a good son of the Orthodox Church, with an icon in the corner of his room, and a priest with holy water in the house just before Easter, he was yet known in a good many country districts as a fervid Stundist and social reformer, who used his exceptional opportunities for travel- ling as a means of j)^c>pagating the tenets of that new Protestantism to which so many of the peasantry of the South are attaching themselves. In his ca^Dacity of Stundist joreacher, Bernadsky carried on a wide and varied correspondence with many sorts and conditions of men : a Count in Petersburg, who sympathised with the movement, and largely sux3ported BllIBEEY AND CORRUPTION. 125 it ; young and struggling commu- nities of peasants in the villages, that wanted advice on how best to organise themselves ; one or two per- sons in Zurich, who had managed to escape from Eussia, and who hailed the Protestant movement as the dawn of a brighter day, in which all poli- tical as well as all ecclesiastical miasmas would be scattered and banished — hopeful enthusiasts ; men in Germany, who sought to attach the Protestants to the Lutheran Church ; men in America who had left Eussia and had communicated with their friends at home through him ; men in prison and exile for the cause, who would write about their sufferings and urgently entreat assistance, — these were all Bernadsky's correspondents, in the eyes of the Eussian Government about as incri- 126 BEIBERY AXD COERUPTION, minating, compromising, and unsatis- factory a body of correspondents as could well be conceived. A discreet man, Eernadsky was able for a long time to steer a clear course by shroud- ing his doubtful life from the curiosity of his townsmen and the ubiquity and all -seeing eyes of the police spies. It was indeed marvellous that he esca]ped detection so long. Detected, however, at last he was ; but to this day he is unable to say who it was that informed the police about him. One night, rather late, Eernadsky returned from a prolonged journey into the interior. He found his wife excited, and in tears. Asked what was the matter, she replied that the gensdarmes had just left ; that they had broken into all the locked places in the house, in- BRIBERY AXD CORRUPTION. 127 eluding Bcrnadsky's own desk and a small strong box, and had taken away a great quantity of j)ftpors and letters. The man stood aghast, quickly running over in his mind the different papers that he kept at home, and slowly realising the gravity of his position. " Yes," said his wife, " and they told me that as soon as you returned home I was to send you to the chancery, as they had some ques- tions to ask YOU." Bernadsky made his way through the silent streets of the town — it was past midnight — to the chancery. The gendarme on night duty took him to an inner room, where a man in the uniform of a military officer lay asleep on a dirty sofa, covered with American cloth. The atmosphere of this room was foul with the smell of stale tobacco smoke, yodka, and new boots. On the walls 128 BRIBEEY A]N^D COREUPTION. were two or three pictures of French dancing girls, and in a corner a little red lamj) burned before an icon. The individual on the sofa was wakened by the (jendarme^ and informed that Bernadsky had arrived. Slowly rising, Colonel Kryloff , of the secret police, or celebrated Third Section, at present serving in the gendarmerie^ stared stupidly at the newcomers, yawned, clawed into position his dishevelled, greasy hair, rubbed his bleared and bloodshot eyes, yawned again, and when at last he spoke, ordered his subordinate to leave the room. Ber- nadsky and Kryloff were alone to- gether. *' Oh ! you're Bernadsky, the Protes- tant Nihilist, are you ? Nice sort of fellow you are ! And so quietly you kept it all to yourself ! Cunning son of a dog you are, eh ? " Another BRIBERY AXD CORRUPTION. 129 yawn. " I fancy wc have run you to earth this time. Nice little collection of letters you had at your house," and the Colonel hiughcd loud. "Guess we have got some threads in our hands now that will be easy to follow up." He rose to his feet, turned the lamp up a little, and stared Eernadsky full in the face. Then unlocking his desk, he took out some of the Stund- ist's j)apers, and turned them over. "You'd better not try to snatch any of these papers ; you'll notice I'm armed. A\Tiat's your business ? " "'A book-hawker." " Have you a family ? " " A wife and four children." " Any means of support but book- selling ? " " No." "You lie ! You have an income from your Stundist patrons." 9 130 BEIBERY AND COERUPTION. " Absolutely nothing." "Any money saved, or in the bank ? " " No." " Now, see here, friend. Here is matter that will inevitably send you for life to Siberia — you and a lot of your precious friends. I reckon I can make out about forty individuals that we will be able to put hands on to accompany you to that interesting province," and the Colonel laughed unpleasantly. " There need be no trouble in proving from these letters that you are a Socialist of a very dangerous character ; that 3"ou are in league and in correspondence with the enemies of the country ; that your object has been to upset the government of the Czar and the holy Orthodox Church. Well, that means the mines for life, and perhaps you BRIBERY AXD CORRUPTION. 131 have some notion of what that means — the mmes for life. Of course, it woukln't be a verv lono- life, there's that comfort, eh ? " " I'm no Socialist," interrupted Bernadsky. •' I'm loyal to the Czar. I have nothing to do with politics. It's true I'm a Stundist preacher, and that I have sought to spread the truth as it is in Christ Jesus." " Don't preach to me," and the officer scowled. "You're a Nihilist, and I'll 23rove it." Then, suddenly altering his mood to one of com- parative amiability, " You'd better go home now. I don't wish to hear anything more at present. Come to-morrow evening at seven, and in the meantime think the matter over." The torrent of false charges brought against him sufficiently 132 BKIBEEY AND COEEUPTION. bewildered Bernadsky ; but wlien Iviyloff suddenly yeered round to his good-natured way at parting, lie was utterly nonplussed. The more he thought of this the more he sus- pected that the Colonel had some object in yiew, at which he would probably hint during their next in- teryiew. Next eyening Eernadsky was again ushered into Kryloff's waiting-room. Kryloff rose from his seat to meet him, extended his hand cordially, and inyited his yisitor to a seat. Eernad- sky waited for him to oj)en the con- yersation. " AYell, haye you thought OA^er matters — your yery precarious posi- tion — the ruin this thing will bring upon you and your family, and upon a hundred others as well ? All I haye to do is to send these papers to the BRIBERY AXD CORRUPTIOX. !;):> Governor- General, and the blow will fall within twenty-four hours. Now, why don't I ? Well, friend^ I'm not a hard man." and he smiled, or, rather, leered, at Bernadsky. " I don't want to ruin you and those other people, and I candidly tell you that if vou see a wav to ^et out of it. and smooth things over. I'll put no obstacles in your way, and no ques- tions need be asked. You just go home now, think it over, and let me know your final decision to-morrow at this time." Bernadsky retired, a new light be- ginning to dawn upon him. '" This Kryloff," he thought, '• according to all accounts, is in ditticulties. He lives expensively, far beyond his in- come. I expect he'll have no objec- tion if I offer to square him. I fancy this must be what he is driving at." 134 BEIBEEY AND COERUPTION. So Bernardsky called on a well-to-do friend of his who lent him two hundred roubles, on a Jew who lent him a hundred, and on various per- sons of his acquaintance who made up two hundred more — altogether five hundred. Of course, he was very careful not to tell his creditors for what j)^^POse the money was re- quired. As evening darkened he called on the expectant Colonel, who smiled upon him, and carefully closed the door and windows, looking out into the corridor to see that no one was about. "Well, do you think you can get out of this difficulty ? " Bernadsky said nothing, but look- ing carefully around, he unfastened his pocket-book and took from it five one-hundred-rouble notes, saying: "If I understand you, Colonel, you will BRIBERY AND CORRUPTIOlSr. 135 give me back my papers and things if I make it worth your while ? " " AVell," replied the Colonel, " that's rather a coarse way of putting it. All the same, I accept your version of my meaning ; but I must tell you plainly that for 500 roubles it is not worth mj while. Double it, and then we'll do business." Eernadsky once more returned home. He spent the next day tramp- ing about among his acquaintances in , raising small sums at ruinous rates of interest, until another 500 roubles had been collected. Once more at nightfall he repaired to the Colonel's room. This time he was received with stately dignity. Eer- nadsky, a direct man, produced his thousand roubles, " May I receive back my papers now ? " " Impossible, my dear sir — quite 136 BEIBERY AXD COERUPTIOX. out of the question ; but I give you my word of honour not to use them to your in j ury . ' ' This was a guarantee that did not sufficiently impress Bernadsky, and the Colonel, quick to notice his hesi- tancy, suggested a comj)romise. " If I burn the papers as soon as I have an oiDportunity, will that satisfy you ? " Even this did not satisfy Bernadsky. Then the Colonel, after thinking for a moment or two, held out his hand for the roubles, saying that he would burn the papers in Bernadsky's presence. This offer was agreed to, and the Stundist paid over to the Colonel 1,000 roubles. Kryloff, taking the arrested letters and docu- ments in his hand, invited Bernadsky to follow him. First peering into a passage, the Colonel led the way to a disused kitchen. Here, in Bernad- BRIBEKY AND CORRUPTIOX. 137 8ky's presence, lie struck a match, and burned pai)er after paper until all were consumed. Letting his visitor out by a private door, the Colonel returned to his room. Kryloff, now a general, at present fills a verv lucrative office in a large northern city, and enjoys the reputa- tion of being an energetic and incor- ruptible public servant. Poor Ber- nadsky, of , struggling to pay off his debts to the Jews who are pestering his life out, would perhaps give him a different character — if he dared. A LOST LEADER. Ll li. O < X o < a u X I- < o Q z < CO GC LlI > z 3 A LOST LEADFAl. The University of Kharkoff is not a very famous seat of learning ; never- theless, nearly a thousand students crowd its lecture-rooms to receive such instruction and training as may be there gathered up in fragments by the diligent. One of the best-known of the law students was Count Michael Sherbin, the younger son of a famous Siberian administrator, who had now retired from the service of the State, and was leading a life of lazy luxury at his palace in the Crimea. Count Michael received a liberal allowance from his father, and had positive in- structions not to bother the old poten- 142 A LOST LEADEE. tate by writing letters to him, or by getting into debt or trouble of any kind. Eich, handsome, only nineteen years of age, graced with exquisite tact and a winning manner, the young Count had troops of friends who caressed, flattered, tempted, and sought to corrupt him. Also the pro- fessors of the University courted him, invited him to their houses, played cards with him, endeavoured to teach him to drink, and threw their daugh- ters at him. It is to Sherbin's credit that he passed through these ordeals of youth unscathed, that he kept him- self free and unspotted, a thoroughly lovable gentleman amid a sink of vice and iniquity. Under the kindly and simple ex- terior of the young Count there dwelt a watchful and acute nature, and the mind of an adventurous thinker. Ho A LOST LEADER. 143 refused to be tranimelled within the narrow limits of a university curri- cuhini ; and, besides, his thou^^lits and intentions, his aims and ambi- tions, were as far outside the lecture- room as they were above the card- table and the society of his impure companions. To be of some use in the world, to transform ignoble lives into noble, to fill the homes of his poorer countrymen with health and happi- ness, to redeem the peasantry from besottedness and superstition, and to give himself up, body and soul, to this herculean task, were the ideas that gradually took root in the mind of the young student. It was not X3ride, but love, that made him often think of himself wandering over leagues of frozen steppe, making soft day where- ever he went — a gleam of real light amid that hyperborean Russian dark- 144 A LOST LEADER. ness. And this feeling it was that brought a beam of daylight to illu- mine a whole brainful of observation and fancy stored up from his earliest childhood. To bring light to Eussia ! This was his mission. But the more he thought of this the less satisfied he grew with his surroundings. The evil lives, the ungodly ideas, of his com- paniorLS and tutors ; their cynical in- difference to evervthino^ in the world that suffered or bore, as long as it suffered unmurmuringly ; the shame- less striving after 'place, power, and pleasure — all this disgusted the pure- hearted young enthusiast, and made him resolve to be free, and commence the work to which he had consecrated his life. Sherbin was in this frame of mind when the summer vacation came round. Previous holidays he had RUSSIAN UNIVERSITY STUDENT. 10 A LOST LEADEK. 147 spent with an aunt and cousins in Ekaterinoslav, but now he resolved to go into retirement, to fit himself by two or three months of preparation for the new life he intended to lead. He purchased a few books on the most improved methods of agriculture, as practised in France and America ; he bought treatises on dairy work, on spinning, weaving, hut-building, on primary schools and gymnasiums. To these he added a large store of Tolstoi's pamphlets to the Eussian peasantry, and another store of New Testaments. Leaving the bulk of his personal effects in Kharkoff , he started with his books for the province of Vladimir. As a child he remembered having been there with his mother when she came for the sake of the pine forests. There was one of his father's estates here, and he had a 148 A LOST LEADEE. hazy recollection of the old ramblmg country house, the looselv crowded huts in the village of Chistoye Polye hard by, and an impenetrable wall of dark spectral pines that shut in the distant view. He would go to Chis- toye Polye, and there, all unknown, commence his work among the peasantry on his father's estate. Travel- stained, footsore, and thirsty, young Count Sherbin arrived among the mnjiJci of Chistoye Polye. He had doffed his town apparel, and now appeared in the coarse rags and lapti of a peasant. He would more readily gain access to the villagers, he thought, coming in this guise. A led horse bore his books and belong- ings in two boxes slung across his back. He inquired where he might put up, and the peasants, looking at his tattered condition and gaunt. A LOST LEADER. 149 tired face, aclvised him to go to '' Old Yanya's " hut. Old Yanya lived at the end of the village, the end nearest the pine forest, and thither Sherbin dragged his weary feet. It was worth all his hardships, he thought, to hear Yanya's wel- come of him ; it was worth another journey to see Yanya. He was a pea- sant of sixty-five years, of gigantic stature and strength, his thick hair of raven blackness, his beard white as snow, not one wrinkle on his ruddy face, and an indescribable look of feminine gentleness soft- ening his eyes and mouth. Seeing the tired traveller approach, Yanya called aloud to him : " Whv, little grandson, thou art tired and all dusty ! Lead thy horse here and stop and eat a bit with me, and here also, for Christ's love and in His Name, 150 A LOST LEADEE. is some cold water fresh from the well." Here was a harbour of rest for the traveller ; here a real miaii after the artificialities, the banal futilities, of the city. Count Sherbin began to teach. Yanya and he talked long and earnestly, the old man wondering if ever peasant talked in this strain before — none that he ever heard of. The young teacher showed Yanya his books, read long passages from them, especially from the Gospels ; taught Yanya gentleness, unselfishness, and love for his fellows ; taught him^ moreover, about the evil of war and strife, the evil of amassing property, of living in luxury and idleness, illus- trating and illumining his discourse by the example of One who was the greatest of Teachers and the most mer- ciful of men. Yanya was a ready con- A LOST LEADED. 151 vert, and acknowledged the youth of nineteen as his master. They con- sulted together how they shoukl brin<>- the rest of the viHagers to join them. They had been in every house in Chistoye Polye distributing New Testaments and Tolstoi's pamphlets ; but nearly everywhere they had been received with coldness and suspicion. A few young men, however, attached themselves to Sherbin, accepting oladlv his sole condition, that each disciple should also be a teacher. Not many weeks passed when the vil- lage police took action, and gave old Yanya notice that he would be punished unless he got rid of his young guest, and ceased to trouble the people with his new-fangled notions. This was an event that had been antici^^ated. Sherbin and Yanya had already built a rough log 152 A LOST LEADEE. hut in the pine wood, and as soon as the j)Osition of affairs in the village became critical they removed to their new home. Here Yanya's devotion to his young teacher knew no bounds ; he tended him as a mother her only child, he followed him about, he hung upon his words in love and admira- tion, and the young noble returned the love of this great, true, and trust- ing man. They began tilling a little patch of ground, they kept bees, bought a cow, and tried to make improved butter ; these and many another adventure in husbandry and household economics were under- taken by the two friends. The young disciples from the village occasionally came to talk with their teacher and receive his instructions, and woukl then return to their houses, or make little journeys to A LOST LEADER. 153 neigiibouring villages to spread the light. Autumn faded into winter, and Michael Sherbin's work progressed, but the teacher himself was waninof. The delicately nurtured youth was succumbing to the hard life in the woods. No one noticed it much, save old Yanya, who redoubled his atten- tion and care of his master. He sought softer hay for the bed of the vouno' Count, bread less sour than usual, purer water. He sedulously strove to patch the roof of pine branches, through which the rain would drip and freeze into icicles ; he nailed his old sheepskin across the gaping seams in the door, through which the arctic blasts from the north w^ould whistle of nights. But it was all of no use. The gallant lad whose youthful hope it was to bring light 154 A LOST LEADEE. and life to his country was fast sinking, and his hope was all that was left him. Stretched on his low bed he would lie with his hand in Yanya's, looking lovingly into the sorrowing eyes of his old follower, and speaking comforting words to him. " If I'm not here, Yanya, the cause remains. I am nothing ; don't grieve about me ; but when I'm gone be spurred to new endeavour." One night of terrible storm, when the pines outside the hut were creak- ing, and straining, and tossing their arms about in the wild blast, when the whirling snow and sleet beat fiercely against the frail sides of their abode, the two friends were alone. Old Yanya was on his knees beside the bed, pleading that the Most High would spare the life of his darling, pleading with great drops of sweat on A LOST LEADER. 155 his brow. But death was already there, laying inexorable hand on his victim. A lull in the storm and the dvino' boY raised his frail hand a little and whispered something. Old Vanya stooped to listen, and the words his master said were : " Yanya, Yanyushka, I hear the rustling of the palms in Paradise, and smell their fragrance the King's face " The old disciple knelt long, speech- less, beside that lowly death-bed. Next day also he sat and watched and wept. Towards nightfall he dug a grave under the big pine, and here he laid all that was mortal of the single-minded young Count. He re- turned to the village to live, but every evening at sundown he goes to the pine woods, and sobs his heart out over the lonely grave of his lost leader. LEADING INTO TEMPTATION. LEADING INTO TEMPTATION. IRINEI Merejnikoff was a draper in a small way of business in Moscow. He had just returned from church, where he had been preparing for his annual Lenten confession and com- munion. At church he had placed several thin wax candles before his favourite saints, and distributed lar- gesse among his poorer brethren assembled in the church porch, to the extent of a ten-copeck piece changed into single copecks. On his return he found his shop without customers. " Well, this sort of business is dis- gusting ; it's enough to drive a man mad," and he spat with vexation in the usual emphatic way of a Eussian. 160 LEADIIN^G IXTO TEMPTATION. " Lord, foroive me o^ettino- anorv. Here I am raging about on the very day of prej)aration for communion, and allowing my unclean nature and love of gain to overmaster me. I did try to keep watch on myself, but business is so horribly bad that even mourning can't be sold. Did you sell anything in my absence ? " turning to the boys who assisted him, and who were keeping Lent by steadily munch- ing rye bread and salted cucumbers. " Hardly anything," replied one of them, gulping down a mouthful. " Hardly any thing ! "repeated Merej- nikoff. " Enough, however to buy yourselves cucumbers and bread. What are you grinning at ? What are you crunching there for ? You young rascals, I believe you're both glad when no customers turn up. Don't look me in the face like that or LEADING INTO TEMPTATION. 161 you'll lead me into temptation again," and ]Merejnikoff turned from abusing his apprentices. " I have barely entered the shop, and yet I have fallen into sin. sin, sin ! If I had only oone to the tavern instead, I might have sat down there quietly and modestly — no scolding necessary, no one to worry me there. Could sit and eat my innocent greens and drink a little mead. But here — " Merejnikoff turned to the icon hang- ing in the corner, and piously and repentantly crossed himself. " Here, boys, put out this icon lamp. Service is finished long ago. AVliy on earth do you keej) on burning the oil ? I do hate waste." The two bovs rushed tumultuouslv to extinguish the lamp. " Easy, you monkeys ! What are you up to ? Can't you see how you 11 162 LEADING INTO TEMPTATION. are soiling the goods ? Look at that white cashmere with the marks of your dirty, oily paws. How dare you destroy my cloth ? Lord, forgive me, here I'm at it again." Then turning to the boys, "Wait until I have confessed, you young scamps, and see what I'll give you." Merejnikoif was silent, and deep stillness reigned in the shop, save for the persistent crunching of the cucumbers. One of the boys suddenly recollected something, and, standing fearfully before his master, told him that the sewing- woman whom he em]3loyed had been to the shop during his absence, that she had brought three dozen of shirts, and had asked for her money. " AYe said that you had gone to church to prepare, so she said she would return in an hour." LEADING INTO TEMPTATION. 163 Merejnikoff onco more began to boil. '' Oh, she wants money, does she ? Did yon tell her that we onrselves mnst often sit here days together withont any ? " Yes, we told her so, bnt she said : ' I must have money for food.' " " She's a greedy fool. Is food necessary in Lent ? Why can't she do with less food ? Food ! Let her get her money somewhere else." " We told her all that, but she paid no attention, and said she could only get money from you, as she had had no work from other shops." " Then tell her to pawn her jacket. Goodness gracious ! surely in such a mild winter as this she can go well enough without furs. What are you grinning at ? Is it fun to see your 164 LEADING INTO TEMPTATION. master in the lurch ? Why did you not tell this woman that if she returned she would only lead me into temptation by making me swear ? Lord ! what sort of a confession am I to make ?" Merejnikoff began an examination of his account-book, counting up the proceeds of his sales. Then to himself he growled : "I have not taken enough to-day to pay my expenses at church. There is Father Cyril to pay, that's three roubles. He's an acquaint- ance, so I suppose I can't offer him less. Then there is the deacon for writing the notice — another rouble, confound him ! Next the sacristan must have somethins: for conofratulat- ing me after Communion on receiving a pure heart. Then there are the candles ; then beggars ; then holy water. Lord ! " LEADING INTO TEMPTATION. 165 He shut the book with a bang, and called one of the lads to fetch Inm soniethmg to eat. " AVliat shall I bring?" inquired the boy. " What ! Some rye-bread and a little fruit ; but no fish. I think I'll try some radishes and salted cucum- bers. Only for the love of heaven see that the things don't touch oil." A neighbour entered the shop. " How's business ? " he asked. "Business ! Why everybody in Mos- cow is dead, it seems to me." "Well, it cannot be worse than mine. Let's have a game of draughts ! " " I'm confessing ! How can I ? Here I am eating without, oil, and you wanting me to play draughts." 166 LEADING INTO TEMPTATION. *' But it's no sin. Now, cards if yoir like. There you have the twelve antichrists* all before you at once. That, of course, would be a mortal sin." " So are draughts. I should bo at home now reading Father Gyrene's book on ' How to prepare,* because in the shop here one temptation just follows on the heels of another — scolding, swear- ing, desire to eat food prepared with oil, to play draughts, and so on." The boy returned with certain queer-looking condiments on a plate. Merejnikoff turned upon him in wrath. '* I told you to fetch me some sort of fruit, and you bring this rub- bish. Mushrooms ! Is that fruit, you brat ? There again, Lord, pardon * Court cards. LEADING INTO TEMPTATION. 167 me my anger. Why didn't you bring radishes ? " " Eecanse everything: else had oil on it, and you told me not to touch anything prepared with oil." " Salted cucumbers — are they pre- pared with oil ? " " I forgot the cucumbers." "Forgot ! Take these things back again," shouted Merejnikoff . "Another temptation," turning to his visitor, " Another sin to be atoned for, seven more prostrations on the earth. Horrible I " "Yes," argued the visitor, "but if you said all this to the boy by way of instruction, and to better his ways, it is no sin. You did it all for the bov's good." "Of course, for his good," and Merejnikoff reflected, feeling some- what comforted. 168 LEADING INTO TEMPTATION. " Then don't bother about those additional prostrations. It was not done in sin." " Eight times 1 have scolded and sworn at those boys to-day, and each time counts seven prostrations — fifty- six altogether. But 1 believe I did it for their good, and I won't worry about it. That's a big load off my mind." " Certainly," and the visitor incon- sequently quoted Scripture. " ' It is not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man ; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.'" " Still, 1 don't think 1 should have come to the shop to-day. When I am sitting in the tavern I find peace and quiet there. No evil thoughts take possession of me there ; no evil words escape me. Salvation is easier LEADING INTO TEMPTATIOX. 169 there. Come along; well have a glass of tea together, and perhaps we can lincl a nice bit of something to eat." So Merejnikoff led his visitor to the tavern. OSIP STAROTCHOK. OS IP STAROTCHOK, AVE Eiigiisli would call him Old Joseph, Starotchok being, an affec- tionate Eussian diminutive for " old." It was not that Osip was so very old — he was only sixty when I saw him last vear — but he was verv venerable and old-looking, and wore a long white beard. He was of rather ignoble stature — very spare, and sharp, and weakly ; but his eyes were quick and flashing, and his eager soul seemed to make his frail bodv instinct with movement and fire. His left arm had been shot off in Sevastopol, and the wound, hurriedly treated by the surgeons, would often break out. Moreover, his daughter told me that 174 OSIP STAEOTCHOK. he had a rifle bullet m his side, which of late years caused him terrible suffering. When the Crimean War broke out Osip was a gunner in Pavloif 's brigade — a wild, harum-scarum, quarrelsome young fellow, but withal an ardent and painstaking soldier. As he was able to read, and wrote a good hand — accomplishments much rarer in those days than now — he soon became a sergeant. But as the war went on, and the Eussian arms met with reverse after reverse, and suffering and disease became his lot and the lot of his comrades, he sobered down into a patient, observant, and, at times, a despondent man. He told me he was never able to understand how the change came about, but with the Angel of Death constantly hovering near him, ready to strike, he began to OSIP STAROTCHOK. 175 tliink, that if there was nothinfr brighter and better beyond the sorrows and uncertainties of this life, he was of all men most miserable. He was in this state of mind one day towards the close of the war when heavy cannonading broke out in the English lines, and his battery was ordered up to answer it. Colonel Pavlolf was a brave soldier and a noble-hearted gentleman, and every man in his brigade adored him ; so when an unexploded shell fell near him as he was busilv enofaofed in attending to the unlimbering of the guns, it was thought not much of a wonder that Osip should rush for- ward and tear away the burning fuse a moment before the shell would have exploded. This day's fight, however, was to put an end to all our Osip's soldiering. An English 176 OSIP STAKOTCHOK. cannon-ball tore off his left arm close to the shoulder, and Sergeant Osip was put on the "invalided home list." Pavloff, who heard of his mishap, cast about how he might best serve this mutilated man who had saved his life, and as he had estates in the Government of Kherson, he appointed Osip his steward, and gave him a house in the estate village. Osip was as ardent a steward as he had been a gunner ; he could do nothing by halves, and in a very short time he was entirely engrossed in raising turnips and wheat, and more especially in improving the breed of horses. But as years went on he nevertheless found time to bestow a good deal of attention on the pretty face of Yera Yoronina, the village blacksmith's daughter, and, Yera liking the attention paid her, OSIP STAROTCHOK. 177 they were married. But lie had her only one year — it was some sort of plague resembling small-pox that took her from him. Little Vera, two months old, Avas left, however, to be his comfort. Quiet, peaceful, prosperous years followed, in which Osip taught his daughter all he knew, and saw her grow up intelligent, handsome, strong, the pride of the village. Here comes the terribly cruel part of my story — it is the old tale of innocence betrayed, of the trusting heart and the lying tongue. AVhy should I go over its miserable details. . . . ? Vera fled to Moscow and left Osip to grow grey at home, broken-hearted, without either hox3e or passion of spirit, inconsolable and mute in his sombre home, wdth the unbroken 12 178 OSIP STAEOTCHOK. cloud of sorrow upon it, and the darkness of enduring. He nourished^ or tried to nourish, a feeling of hatred of his child, and reyenge against her seducer. The villagers came to com- fort him, but he sat as one dazed, answering never a word ; the priest came, a religious man, but he was thinking more of the broken law than of the broken hearts of father and daughter, and Osip felt chilled by his visit. But the priest suggested a pilgrimage to the holy reliques at Kieff, and the sad-hearted man caught at this as a possible distraction, whereby he might rid his mind of the image of one who had brought such disgrace and humiliation upon him. So he procured the bast sandals, the canvas wallet, and the hollowed gourd of a pilgrim, and set out on his long walk of 500 miles. In his OSIP STAROTCHOK. 179 own soul ho felt dissatisfied with himself. AVhv this o^reat sorrow on him ? Had he offended the Almiohty ? Yes ; he saw it now. In all these long years of comfort and prosperity he had neglected God and His law, and he and his child had lived as the heathen live. Then he began to think the old thoughts that came into his mind in the trenches at Sevastopol, and more and more he longed to renounce the world, and in a monastery, amid the society of holy men, to serve God all the remainder of his days. Tramping wearily along the dusty, hot roads for two months, he came in sight of the crowded golden domes of the Eussian Jerusalem. Kieff, unlike Venice, or Seville, or Eheims, is not full to the supersensuous ear of the echoes of a wonderful past ; but it has 180 OSIP STAEOTCHOK. a solemnity and beauty of its own utterly indescribable ; and the quiet dignity of the holy city entered the soul of the pilgrim as he climbed up the steep hill from the Dnieper banks through the shady laurel groves to the monastery beside the catacombs. He carried a letter from his village priest to an old monk here, and the old .monk tried to prescribe for his wants in the old monkish way — fasts and multitudinous prayers and genu- flexions, and visits to bones, and rags, and bits of wood. Osip paid a high price for a splinter of some holy piece of stick, and for a picture of the " Mother of Consolation " ; he said hundreds of prayers, he studied lives of saints, he gave himself up to the practice of austerities and mortifica- tions, and the other outward acts of a devout life : he exhausted all the OSIP STAKOTCHOK. 181 ordinary excitements, and still the cravings of his religious nature were unsatisfied, and he had to return for fresh advice to the holy and ignorant monk. " Through my sorrow and humiliation the Holy Spirit was working and showing me the way of salvation, showing me that I was helpless without a Eedeemer, showing me, moreover, that I had an Ekler Brother who would bear all my trouble." This was how he afterwards explained his mental state at that time. Among the holy things Osip had bought at Kieff was a New Testament, which a young lad showed him among strings of blessed glass beads, and dread pictures of the Day of Judg- ment. Bouo'ht more as a charm than for actual use, Osip had left it on one side until the day before he intended leaving Kieff. On that day he opened 182 OSIP STAKOTCHOK. it and read — read it for the first time. He read it all day, and as he perused its sacred pages the clouds brooding over his spirit gradually dispersed, and light came to him. He read wonderful things. They thrilled him. " I came to seek and to save the lost." What was all this about forgiveness until the offences were seventy times seven ? He asked himself why he had not known all this before, and he formulated and uttered many a prayer not found in any prayer-book, always like this, " God and man, Jesus of Nazareth, come and seek and save me and my Yera ; forgive me my hard thoughts of her ; bring her back to my frozen heart ; and make her again the joy of my days." That evening, prostrate on the cold flags of the great St. Sophia Cathedral, the dim glories of the apostles and OSIP STAllOTCHOK, 183 prophets on the walls and away up in the dusky lioht of the domes ^rowinH" dimmer, Osip was sure he heard the Yoice of the Lord crvincy in his ear, ^' Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," and Osip humbly said, " Lord, I come, and I will seek Vera that she come too." Two days more and he was in Moscow feverishly hunting the streets at night. His quest was long and heart-rending enough, but at last crowned with success. He found the wretched girl, and laughed and cried in turn for very joy. He told her he had come for her, and he spoke to her a new language of the love of One who came to seek and to save the lost. Her dazed eves melted at the recital, and she had no answer but to flins: her arms around her father's neck. 184 OSIP STAEOTCHOK. Yera was finally persuaded tO' come home. Oh, they were kmd to them, those tender-hearted Eussian villagers ! The women came around and kissed Yera, and called her, with tears in their eyes, Verotchka dusia nasha^ our darling little Yera, and Yera's heart felt like bursting The men held Osip's hand in long, stead- fast grasps, and said nothing. For many months they lived quietly, seldom appearing among their friends. Then Osip invited one and another of the peasants to his house, and told them of his experi- ences at Kieff , and of the book he had bought there. Then he would reach the book down, and in his eager way read portions of it, and they would talk over what had been read. Osip sent to Kieff for more New Testa- ments, and distributed them among OSIP STAROTCHOK. 185 his friends, and as they read li^iit broke in on them also — that ^lorious light of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Until this day those peasants meet in one another's cottages, and talk of the things of the Kingdom, and comfort and edify one another. Osip is now, as I have said, very weak and frail, often in the greatest pain, and cannot live much longer ; but he has put himself into communi- cation with a kindred society of peasants in another village fifty miles away, and hopes to arrange that when the Master's time comes to call him home his place among his fellows may be filled by a worthy successor. It is a pathetic sight to watch the one-armed old man teaching the little flaxen-headed children of his friends to read and write, and an odd desire from his " worldlv davs," a^ he calls 186 OSIP STAKOTCHOK. them, still remains dominant with him — it seems almost incongruous to note it here — that the peasants would exert themselves and improve their breed of horses. THE MOENING OF ST. ISAAC'S DAY. Amniy ri\rom teg's, Aiiif i>ta CDkt;\jiiv mux m prsc e/\\^ A\\\\^\y, THE MORNING OF ST. ISAAC'S DAY, TowAEDS the close of a day in late winter Dmitri Knrtin sat at the door of his log izha"^ reading. He was a man of about fifty, tall, dark, emaciated, with narrow, high forehead, piercing small eyes, and compressed lips — the face of a fra redemptor^ stern, forbidding, sombre. The sun was like a lamp of alabaster, hanging a little above the western horizon, dimly seen through the naked birch boughs on the other side of the snow-covered paddock. A few weather - stained huts, resembling Kurtin's, lay scattered around, snow * A peasant's hut. 190 THE MOEOTNG OF lying deej) on their roofs, and away beyond them the thin and level out- line of the desolate steppe stretching into the infinite distance. By the fading afternoon light Kurtin sat with his book — an old Slavonic Bible, inherited from his grandfather. It was the eve of St. Isaac, and he was reading the history of the ancient patriarch, reading and pondering, reading and praying. He had read and re-read the terrible story of Abraham's interrupted sacrifice of his son, and the old Hebrew tale seemed, somehow, to possess a strange fascination for him, filling his mind with awful thoughts that would come surging in upon him, he knew not whence. He explained afterwards that the thought of the wickedness of the world, and the utter hopelessness of salvation coming to men, had been ST. ISAAC'S DAY. 191 for a long time weighing liim down with grief. That all must perish because of their iniquity and distance from God, was an idea that for wrecks had been taking firmer hold of him. What could he do to prevent the inevitable doom that was to fall on mankind ? Filled with this notion, he sat and read the old story of Abraham and Isaac, and the awful thought entered his mind that he and his wife and son would be eternally lost unless they found some means of satisfying Divine justice. "Jehovah- jireh, Jehovah - jireh," he would mutter to himself, " in the mountain of the Lord it shall be provided." He would reason with himself, ''If the Lord asked me to offer up Grisha to prove me, would I be found want- ing ? Lord, don't prove me, he is my only son, little Grisha. But 192 THE MORNING OF shouldest Thou have it so, it will be grand to hear Thy voice saying, 'Because Thou hast obeyed My voice, and hast not witheld thy son, thine only son Grisha, that in bless- ing I will bless thee, and make thy faith an example to the nations, and accept thy sacrifice to the blessing of the nations of the earth.' " I will now translate a portion of the statement made by Kurtin some few days after this to the examining magistrate of the town of Yladimir. It instructs us as to his state of mind on that terrible eve of St. Isaac. " When it became too dark to read I entered my izha and went to bed, but during the night my sorroAV so in- creased upon me that I could not sleep, and several times I rose to light more, and yet more, candles before the holy icon. During the greater ST. ISAAC'S DAY. 193 part of the night I prayed on my knees for my own and my family's salvation, all the time the thought growing stronger and stronger within my breast that little Grisha must be sacrificed. He was a sprightly, joyful chikl, and clever beyond his years — such wise tliinos he would sav some- times. If I sacrificed him I would thereby save him from the tempta- tions of life, from the temptation, when he grew up, of forsaking the faith, and making shipwreck of his soul. I concluded to prepare for him a sure path to heaven. Early in the morning, long before daylight broke upon the world, I went out into the dark, to the garden behind the izba^ knelt down, and asked the Eedeemer for a sign. I asked that if it be His will that I offer up my Grisha, the desire to do so should come from the 13 194 THE MOENING OF right side ; if not, from the left. You must know that, according to our belief, angels give all thoughts from the right side, and the devils all from the left. After long praying the thought came from the right side, and I returned with a joyful heart to the izba^ for I now knew that my sacrifice would be acceptable." On a broad bench in the inner room Grisha slept with his mother, a gentle woman, loving her boy passionately, and admiring his precocious wisdom. Kurtin, fearing opposition from his wife, sent her on some pretext to the neighbouring village. Then, turning to his son, he said, " Eise, Grisha, and put on a white shirt that I may re- joice over thee." Kurtin afterwards explained to the examining magis- trate that in the society to which ST. ISAAC'S DAY. 195 lie belonged it was considered sin- ful to die in striped or coloured clothes. AVhen the boy had put on the white shirt he was told by his father to lie down again on the bench. Kurtin folded up a fur coat, and carefully placed it under his son's head ; then, sitting down beside him, he drew a knife from his sleeve, and stabbed him several times. The child was sinking fast as the red dawn grew brighter and brighter in the eastern heavens, sending level beams through the little window of the izha^ and luridly illuminating this terrible fanatic in the execution of his awful deed. Kurtin noticed the crimson light stealing athwart the ghastly face of the faultless sacri- fice. He was aw^estricken, trembled convulsively, and, tottering to the 196 THE MORNING OF corner where the icon hung, he fell prostrate on his face, and implored the Almighty to accept his offering. Then, returning to his still living son, he cried, " Forgive me, Gris- henka, that I have made thee suffer ; it is all for thy good, little boy." The dying child, not yet unconscious, murmured " Good-bye, little father." But Kurtin, still unsatisfied, placed the boy in an easier position, and made him say, " God will pardon thee, little father." Then he lighted fresh candles before the icon, and prayed for the soul of the boy one of those pathetic Eussian prayers for the dying, asking the child to try to repeat the words after him. The poor little fellow did so as well as his trembling voice would allow, and, quavering out the last word of the prayer, his terrible sufferings ended. ST. ISxVAC'S DAY. 197 When Kurtin's wife returned home she saw at a ghince what had hap- pened. Horror-stricken, she ran to the village elders. The neighbours flocked to the scene of the fearful tragedy, and found the murderer lying senseless before the icon About a fortnight afterwards the Governor of the State gaol of Vladimir invited the doctor and the chief war- den to a consultation on the state of a prisoner confined in the lunatic ward, who liad refused for days to take any food, and who passed his days and nights in agonising cries for forgiveness and help. They went to see the prisoner. Opening the door of the cell in which he was confined, they saw through the imperfect light a shapeless bundle, liuddled close up to the wall, motionless. But all suffering had ceased. It was the 198 ST. ISAAC'S DAY. body of Dmitri Kurtin, starved ta death. After some general remarks on the terrible sight,|they returned to the governor's room. The doctor^ who was writing a philosophical treatise on the aberrations of the human intellect, took out his note- book, and under the heading " Theo- mania," described Kurtin's case in unexceptional scientific phraseology. The warder departed to tell the chaplain that as the prisoner had committed suicide his services would not be required. The governor thought he would accept the ex- amining magistrates' invitation to a game of vint. * "^ Literally ** screw," a game of cards resembling "whist. THE WATER DEMON. THE WATER DEMON. Night. The rain is coining clown as through a sieve, and a thick mist seems to hang in the air. It is the month of March, the month of the raw, unpleasant St. Petersburg spring. The ice in the Neva has been long swelling, turning bluer every day, and now awaits hourly the time of breaking up. On the approach to one of the wooden bridges across the Neva a policeman is on duty, his head wrapped in a hashlik* There also a huckster takes refuge under a cover- ing of light oil- cloth. He sells cigarettes, matches, rolls, and salted cucumbers. A candle burns in a * A warm woollen covering for the head. 202 THE WATEK DEMON. wooden lantern, dimly lighting his wretched little shop. The fur coat of the trader has been long wet through, and is heavy as lead, although he has tried to protect it by bast matting round his shoulders. No one seemed to be crossing the bridge ; even home- going droshkies were absent. The weather was such that a decent man would not hunt a dog out of doors. Amid the drip of the rain the clock from the fortress tower was heard to strike two. The policeman sauntered up to the trader. "Wet?" " Through. If I took off my fur coat I'd be able to wring out my " So am I. A plague this rain ! And in the newspapers they say that if we are to be healthy we must avoid plagues. What a plague, also, is our THE WATER DEMOX. 203 service ! I'd like to know how we are to keep healthy. This clamp is simply killing me. Don't envy the life of a policeman. Anythino- hot to drink ? " "A dog's life. What else can I call it ? " consented the trader, fastening the bast matting round his neck. "Worse than a dog's. A dog- shelters in his kennel, can go under cover, finds a dry place, and snuoiv lies there until the wind and rain cease. If only the tea-stall were here I could have something hot." " Would you like something cold ? '* suggested the trader. " Have you anything ? " " A little : like what vou had before." " Let's have it." The trader drew from under his 204 THE WATEE DEMON. coat some salted fish, which the policeman soon made to disappear. " Well, it was a small one, but it brought comfort to my teeth, at any rate." " You're welcome, brother." The policeman, wiping his hands, nodded towards the Neva, and said : " To-morrow, I think, will be the end. It is already cracking and split- ting. He's preparing. The stillness of the air detains it. If there had been any wind it would have gone long since." " A curious thing, brother," said the trader, " we don't hear any groans or sighs from it this year." " Why on earth should he groan ? The ice can surely clear away without groaning." " Oh, it isn't the river of itself that moans in that queer way. It moans THE WATER DEMON. 205 only wlioii pressed down by the heavy load of ice. He wants to bo free, and his strength is not enough, so he groans and rages over it. I come from the Oka.* AVitli us the groaning of the river is awful just before the ice breaks. We sit in our huts at nio'ht, and listen to the dread- ful cries he makes.'* " Yes, but that is in a village ; this is St. Petersburg. Of course he is much freer in the village," returned the policeman. " Oh, it groans here also. The year before last how it did groan and sigh — frightful ! And when he opened the ice. and came to the surface, he began all sorts of wicked pranks in his rage. How he did rage ! God avert such things from us poor men ! Such misfortunes as there were ! It "^ A tributary of the Volga. 206 THE WATER DEMO]\'. only ceased when we pacified him and soothed him. In our country we throw a sucking pig to him ; and somehow or other he becomes much quieter after that." " Here also a lot of damage is done. Every year the bath-houses are in- jured, rafts are carried away, and boats broken up into splinters." •' He is not gained over a bit by that," explained the huckster. " He must be treated in such a manner that he will of his own accord soften his prankish ways. Who is to do that here ? Now in the village the entire Qnir^ bring him presents. He loves respect to be paid him." " Yesterday a boy fell through the ice near the Samsonieff Bridge, and was drowned," said the policeman. " Ah, he likes that," replied the * Village community. THE WATER DEMOX. 207 trader. " He will eat a boy, but will have mercy on ten grown-iip persons. Some one, however, "tnust drown. No sinoie river without drownin<^. As soon as the time for the breakinof of the ice approaches the drownings begin. The river must have strength to burst the ice, and therefore the victims are allured to the side, and devoured. All winter he is weak- ened by fasting, and he has to be strengthened." " The other day a mujiliy^ fell into a hole in the ice near the Nicolai Bridge, sank and was drowned," said the policeman, continuing his grue- some enumeration. " He drew the mujik below, because he must eat something. If the people had only known they might have thrown in a horse, and the mujik ''' Peasant. 208 THE WATER DEMON. would have been safe. The people here don't seem to know the old ways. The taverns have stupefied them." " But if they had thrown in a dead horse ? '* " No, no, no. Dead things he won't eat. He must have something living. If you throw in anything dead he will revenge himself for the insult. He remembers injury like anything. If you throw in even a useless old beast let it be living — then he is thankful and contented." " Is that so ? " and the policeman smiled. " Don't laugh, for God's sake. Why do you want to laugh ? He hates that also, and in future you had better not stand too near the water." " I'm not one of the river police." " That makes no difference. Do you think vou'll never be in a boat cross- THE AVATEll DEMON. 209 ini>; over ? Cross over and see whether he remembers your hin<>h." In the meantime a droshky had driven up. The driver jumped down, took off his hat, and, producin*^ a coloured cotton handkerchief, pro- ceeded to wix^e the rain from his face and beard. " Give me a cigarette and a copeck box of matches." •' xVll the matches are damp, worse luck. But you can get a light at the lantern." "How is the ice on your side ?" in- cj[uired the policeman. ''At Fontanka we are almost free," answered the driver. '' There it is always earlier and leaves quietly," added the huckster. "Not only does it break ux3 easily, but it quietly sinks to the bottom. And why ? Simply because the 14 210 THE WATEE DEMOX. fishermen in the gardens there know the order of thmgs, and observe it. From every garden they throw him some living thing. I know, because I buy salt fish there, and the fisher- men told me how they manage." " What's that you're talking about ? " asked the driver, much interested. "About the water, about making the river happy before the ice moves." "Ah, about the ice. That's quite true what you said. In our district we appoint okl women in all the villages to throw buns and cakes to him." "And where are you from ? " "Novgorod, near Yolkhoif . Before the ice begins to crack these old women bake their cakes, they roll them in an arsheen* or two of calico, * A measure, 28 inches. THE WATER DEMON. 211 and throw them into the river that he may eat them." " On the Oka we throw in a sucking pig, something living, and then we get mercY shown us." " Oh, we get mercy also through the cakes. The girls besides take the ribbons off their hair, and throw them to him, so that he may never at any time drown them ; and our millers sprinkle flour on the water in order that their mills may not be torn away by the floating ice." "And is it enough?" sceptically inquired the policeman. "Certainly. AVTien he is satisfied he injures no one. And what is more, if one of our girls has shown him particular respect he gets a good lover for her in the summer. I don't know how it is in your place, but with us he only plays his tricks until 212 THE WATER DEMON. the summer St. Nicolas. After that he is quiet." " The same in our country. After St. Nicolas he sleeps. As soon as. they dip a cross in the water he goes to sleep." "He doesn't like the cross ?" in- quired the policeman. " Oh, he is terribly afraid of it. After the apple and honey feast no one dares to bathe in the river, no matter how warm he may feel," said the driver, paying for his cigarette, and adding, " I must get home. It's about time, I think. Good-bve, you fellows." LONDON : W. SPEAIGHT AND SONS, PRINTERS, FETTER LANE. JAMES CLARKE & CO.'S LIST. One Volume Novels. 1900 ? a Forecast and a Story. By Marianne Farn INGHAM, Author of "The Cathedral Shadow," &c., &c. Price 3s. 6d. Crown 8vo, cloth. For Pity's Sake, and The Lost Leader. By Mary LiNSKiLL. Being The Christian World Annual for 1892. Price IS. A Man's Mistake. By Minnie Worboise. Crown 8vo, cloth, 5s. All He Knew. A religious Novel. By John Habberton, Author of " Helen's Babies," &c. Crown 8vo, cloth, 2s. 6d. Roslyn's Trust. By Lucy C. Lillie, Author of "Prudence," " Kenyon's Wife," "The Household of Glen Holly." Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s 6d. For the Right : A German Romance. By Emil Franzos. 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By Marianne Farningham. A Companion Volume to " Girlhood." Eighth Thousand. Fcap. Svo, cloth, is. 6d. ; gilt edges, 2s. /AMES CLARKE ^ CO. S Little Tales for Little Readers. A Book for the Little Ones. By Marianne Farningham. Uniform with "Girlhood/' "Boyhood," and "Home Life." Fcap. 8vo, cloth, IS. 6d. ; gilt edges, 2s. The Moral Pirates, and the Cruise of "The Ghost." With Twenty-five Illustrations. By W. L. Alden. Crown 8vo, cloth, 2s. 6d. Reedham Dialogues. A Dozen Dialogues for Children. By late John Edmed, Head Master of the Asylmii for Fatherless Children, Reedham, Croydon. Eighth Thousand. Imperial 32mo, cloth, is. 6d. What of the Night? A Temperance Tale of the Times. By Marianne Farningham. Fourth Thousand, Crown 8vo, Illuminated Cover, is. The Baby's Annual. The Rosebud Annual for 1892. The Twelve Monthly Numbers of 7 he Rosebud. In handsome cloth binding. . Nearly 300 charming illustrations. Quarto, 4s. Daily_ Chronicle : " The genial Preston Guardian : " To many humour tn which children take such hojnes this book comes as a yearly visitor delight distinguishes a large number of eagerly looked for by the children, the tales, sketches, and rhymes; and whose expectations this year we are the illustrations, %vhich reach a total sure will be more than realised." of nearly three hundred, possess excep- tional merit." One Volume NovelSv 1900 } a Forecast and a Story. By Marianne Farningham, Author of "The Cathedral Shadow," &c., &c. Price 3s, 6d. Crown Svo, c'oth. For Pity's Sake, and The Lost Leader. By Mary Linskill. Being The Christian World Annual for 1892. Price Is. A Man's Mistake. By Minnie Worboise. Crown 8vo, cloth, 5s. All He Knew. A religious Novel. By John Habberton, Author of " Helen's Babies," &c. Crown 8vo, cloth, 2s. 6d. Roslyn's Trust. By Lucy C. Lillie, Author of "Prudence," " Kenyon's Wife," "The Household of Glen Holly." Crown Svo, cloth, 3s 6d. For the Right : A German Romance. By Emil Franzos, Given in English by [ulik Sutter (translator of " Letters from Flell"). Preface by Dr. George MacDonald. Crown Svo, cloth, 3s. 6d. Third Edition. '' I have seldom, if ever, read a work of fiction thit move I me w't'i so in Jich admiration." —GtEoiUiK MacDosald. PUBLICATIONS. Dinah's Son. By T.. ?>. Walford. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6<1. Ha(;ar : A North Vorksihre Story. By Mary LlN.sKii.i., Author of " Between the Heather and the Northern Sea." " The Haven under the Hill," &c., &c. Crown 8vo, is. LiLLO AND Ruth ; or, Aspirations. By Helen Hays. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. Mertonsville Park ; or, Herbert Seymour's Choice. By Mrs. Wood\vard. Fifth Edition. Crown 8vo, cloth, 5s. Clarissa's Tangled Web. By Beatrice Bristowe. Crown 8vo, cloth, 55. Sister Ursula. By Lucy AVarden Bearne. Crown 8vo, cloth, 5s. Priscilla ; or, The Story of a Boy's Love. By Clara L. WiLLMETS. Cloth, IS. 6d. The Cathedral SHADO^v. By Marianne Farn- INGHAM. Fifth Thousand. Crown 8vo, cloth, 3s. 6d. ; gilt edges, 4s. The Snow Queen. By Maggie Symington. Third Thousand. Ficap. 8vo, cloth, is. 6d. ; gilt edges, 2s. BY AA^ELIA E. BARR. "Mrs. Barr's stories are always pleasant to read. They are full oj sweetness and light." — Scotsman. "/« descriptive ^vriting, in simplicity and gracefulness of style, and in perfect mastery over her characters, Mrs. Barr can hold her own with any living English novelist," — Glasgow Herald. NOW READY. Friend Olivia. Crown 8vo, 6s. In a variety of handsome cloth bindings, or bound uniformly, crown 8vo. THREE SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE EACH. A Sister to Esau. | In Spite of Hkmself She Loved a Sailor. A Border Shepherdess The Last of the Mac- Paul and Christina Allisters. The Squire of Sandal Side Woven of Love and Glory The Bowof Orange Ribbon Feet of Clay {tuith portrait Between Two Loves A Daughter of Fife Jan Vedder's Wife of aut/ior) The Household of McNeil *^* A nezu and cheap edition of "Jan Vedder's Wife" is now issued. In paper cover, price \s. 6d. The Harvest of the Wind, and Other Stories. By Amelia E. Barr. Crown 8vo, paper, is. JAMES CLARKE &- GO'S PUBLICATIONS. NOVELS BY EMMA JANE WORBOISE. AEW AND CHEAP EDITION. *^* These No-oels, which have hitherto been sold at Five Shillings each, are nozv isstied at THREE SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE EACH. Thornycroft Hall MiLLICENT KeNDRICK St. Beetha's Violet Vaughan Margaret Torrington The Fortunes of Cyril Denham Singlehurst Manor Overdale Grey and Gold Mr. Montmorency's Money Nobly Born Chrystabel Canonbury Holt Husbands and Wives The House of Bondage Emilia's Inheritance Father Fabian Oliver Westwood Lady Clarissa Grey House at Endlestone Robert Wreford's Daugh- ter The Brudenells of Brude The Heirs of Errington Joan Carisbroke A Woman's Patience The Story of Penelope SiSSIE The Abbey Mill Warleigh's Trust . Esther Wynne Fortune's Favourite His Next of Kin. The follotving "^s. 6d. Voliunes are nozv issued at Three Shillings each. Married Life ; or, The Story of Phillip and Edith. Our New House ; or, Keeping up Appearances. Heartsease in the Family Maude Bolingbroke Amy Wilton Helen Bury BOOKS FOR THE HOLIDAYS. SPECIAL OFFER. A limited number of the following Novels, published at Four Shillings and Sixpence, are now offered at Two Shillings and Sixpence, Campion Court Evelyn's Story Lottie Lonsdale Sir Julian's Wife The Lillingstones The Wife's Trials 1/3/92 -> r.1 * r4V; ■■il^^S'Ji W- '-'■'^ 7 ' '>.j» ~jtji*» IH i'lil^CziK^^