would take until the invitations were out, a few days before the wedding. She entered church to the wedding march, with a pensive paleness instead of the proper blush on her face, and clasping in the crook of her elbow two bouquets, the bridegroom's white roses and his rival's red ones. Another belle discovered that the man to whom she was engaged was "dissipated, my dear!" They were desperately in love, this man and maid. He vowed that he would take his life if she discarded him, and she believed that to do so would cause her own death of a broken heart. So she continued to be engaged to him, and let him visit her every evening and walk from church with her every Sunday, but would not marry him. Upon his death, when both were old, she "went into black" for the rest of her life.

For the type poignant pleasure or pain in living is over. Romance or adventure no longer waits around the bend of the road or over the hill. So, till the last great adventure of all, they zestfully content themselves with living again in the lives of younger generations. No dread of that last adventure disturbs their serenity. They expect to fall to sleep erelong, to wake in a still happier world. Meantime, they placidly sit, with hands folded in black silk laps, and shed around them sympathy and affection while they wait.

On what a very few years ago was one of the quietest of down-town blocks, deserted as a residence street and so remote from the marts of trade that there were few passers-by to read the legend on its wall, stands a plain, substantial brick house which was, in its

prime, a type of what was considered in Richmond a suitable home for a gentleman of comfortable means, with a family of cheerful size and servants enough to make life easy. This became in time the war residence of General Robert E. Lee, and now for thirty years has made a congenial home for the Virginia Historical Society. Of late, tides of business have eaten their way into even this quiet cove. Newness and progress press it hard, but it calmly watches the world go by.

It was to this home that General Lee returned from Appomattox. One of the dear, black-bonneted old ladies described, who from her porch near by was an eye-witness of this return, loves to tell of it. She says:

"He rode Traveller, and was, as usual, a commanding figure, though his gray coat was dingy from hard service, and both he and his horse looked tired and dispirited. His expression, though calm, was unutterably sad. With him came his staff, gaunt and pallid, in ragged uniforms, on bony, weary old horses. Dilapidated camp-wagons creaked after them. One of these was

covered with an old quilt in place of the customary canvas. Not a very inspiring cavalcade, it would seem, yet when the blue-coated soldiers of the winning side, who then occupied the demoralized city and filled its streets, recognized the defeated hero, the air rang with cheers, loud and prolonged. General Lee acknowledged this tribute by gravely lifting his hat. Again and again the cheers rang out. Again and again they were acknowledged in the same manner until he reached the gate of the iron railing inclosing his small yard. Here he dismounted, and, still acknowledging the vociferous greetings of the men in blue, backed up the stone steps of his house and through its door, which immediately closed behind him."

Next morning a little before eleven o'clock the same witness saw him emerge from the house, still looking very sad, but much refreshed by a night's rest, and clad in a handsome new uniform of Confederate gray, the gift of friends. He walked off toward St. Paul's Church, where there was to be a service, with an air of deep meditation, but the very picture of soldierly grandeur.

T

of his mate.

HE stars sparkle like burning salt, and from the woods comes the bark of a wolf-the bark of a dog wolf answered by the howl

The same old woods, the same sky, the same night, but across the arch of the sky to-night, of all nights that ever shone on this world of snow and wrong and regret and exile, there is written in letters of fire, leaping like the stars, the words, "Russia is free! Russia is free!" The chains of the people are broken, and God has come to rule.

I have been six years in exile; or is it seven? I was forty when I came here, but now feel sixty, and the hands that were the hands of a journalist and man of letters are the claws of a beast; but my soul is still the soul of a man.

I have no hate left. It burned itself out long ago and left me in peace; there is not an old scar on my body that has not ceased to cry out against the ruler that made it, for I have recognized that he was a condition, not a man.

Well, well, it is easy to pride oneself. It was not I that told myself that, but the wind and the sun and the stars and the silence; for this is the country of silence and the country of signs. Here the stars beckon, and all nature talks to the heart in the alphabet of the deaf and dumb.

All things go forward, pressed by a tide that has its ebb and flow. It is useless to hate the ebb or love the flow; and look, if you doubt, out of the silence, which is the world beyond this silence, a hand has reached and written those words across the sky, "Russia is free!" Yet the wolf howls on the same.

We are free; we have been free a long time, yet we did not know. This little post is so far, so far, that the news forgot

Perhaps he was ashamed, perhaps he himself did not know; his very coming was an accident. That is Siberia.

He was a fat man in furs, with the face of a Mongol, and he sat in the warmth of the main hut, with his hands crossed on his big belly, half drowsy, resting before he went on. He seemed to care about nothing but that he and his horses were fed, and the number of versts between here and Berizov. He showed the guards papers; he told us we were free, that we could go back. How he did not say; where he did not say. "You can go back." We did not ask; we knew, and I sat for a long time, when he was gone, walking in the streets of Moscow. Moscow! with all things realized, and the past a bad dream.

Then comes the moment of grief: but why have my brothers forgotten me? And the answer, How could they know? I was moved here a year ago, the archives of the old Government may have been destroyed, they were busy completing that which I long ago lent my hand to, and the best men are men, and men are small. The wind has told that.

Then I woke to hear the others. The guards were one with us, as though they had been plotting revolution all their lives. Eight words dropped by the messenger had broken everything for them that had to do with the past: "The people are living in the Winter Palace."

THERE are fifteen of us here, which, with the guards, makes twenty-two; yet when I woke from my reverie there might have been a hundred men talking. I have come to believe that there were forty-four men here, not twenty-two, each man being double; for, now when I heard them talking, each man was a different man from what he had been only an hour before. Truly the word "revolution" has its meaning, for here were men brooding who had been careless and laughing, and men laughing who had

been brooding, and Chicherin, my friend and confidant, idealist, dreamer, was talking like a drunken man about women!

I had seen much, but this was the most extraordinary thing I had ever seen. Here was a man with one burning ideal, freedom; in a moment it had been realized, and, behold! in the next he was talking like an animal! It was as though the idealist had completed its cycle of existence and died; just as a butterfly completes its existence and dies.

Oppression made Chicherin great, made him even renounce those women whom he evidently loved so much, risk all, lose all. And now that oppression has vanished

They say a business man, when he retires, deteriorates; relieved of hard work, he dies. Hard work, oppression, the things that seem to destroy the mind and soul, after all, may they not contain the true food of the mind and soul?

And yet, again, there is Katkoff, another friend of mine, and a relative of him who once edited the Moscow "Gazette." Exile and brooding had made him seem like an animal; one would swear that he had forgotten all things. Food was his great concern, and, behold! now he was sitting with head raised and the light that had vanished returned upon his face like the dawn of the new world.

And I myself? In my reverie I was walking the streets of Moscow with Sonia, whose dreams never rose above the level of millinery, but whose eyes were of the deepest, strangest blue. A little type-writer girl, she was the first thing that came to me out of the new world. Man is man.

Katkoff, here, has always been nicknamed the Dog. Not out of derision or contempt, but fondness. He has the look of a faithful dog, and his mind is instinctive. That is perhaps why he is higher than us all.

I HAVE said that we are a small post, so far, so far; yet we are only fifty versts south of Berizov, the town of birchtrees-Berizov, beneath whose snows lie buried the flower of the Russian court and army; Berizov, where Menzikoff, prince and courtier, found his tomb; exiles all. Has the trumpet of the Revolution found these? What would they

say? How could they believe, "The people are living in the Winter Palace"?

BOOM! boom! boom! The drum that rouses us to work or brings us to meals is beating; Chicherin is the drummer, and we are huddled together, making our last preparations for departure. Guards, exiles, all of us, are off, taking everything. For Berizov? Never. West.

The sun is rising in the west, which has so long risen in the east. Across the Urals and beyond, on foot, on our hands and knees, anyhow; beyond.

Sledges packed with provisions, the axes we have laid to trees, the rifles that have been leveled at our hearts-everything goes with us but the agricultural implements we have used and shall use no more. We shall fish no more in the Obi, nor send our logs down in rafts in summer, nor take furs in winter. The black fox, the lynx, sable, marmot, marten, squirrel, are free of us. Boom! boom! boom!

We have become different since last night. Then every man was thinking differently from his neighbor; now we are all thinking the same. Free men in a free world, we are not free; an imperative magnetism draws us, a whirlwind drives us, we move as a train moves on its metals. West.

Then, close together as if for company, and ever looking back at the log houses we shall not see again, across the snow in the early spring dawn, at the birch-trees and the firs marking the line of the Obi, we move off.

One thing small stands out-the drum which Chicherin flung away and is lying there near the door of the general hut. It will never beat again. The drummer has gone west, and the noise of his drumming fills the world from the far sea to the Urals and beyond. We follow his call to freedom across the Urals and beyond. Boom! boom! boom!

THE snow is covered with the tracks of beasts, wolf and fox, and the spoor of reindeer who went north in the night. There is not a cloud in the sky. We notice that now for the first time, though the sky has been cloudless for many days. The sun is shining. We notice that now for the first time since

exile took us; the wind is blowing, our hearts are beating, we have faces and hands and arms and legs.

Men fight with one another to pull on the sledges, laughing all the time. Chicherin, suddenly running backward before us with arms outspread, cries:

"Brothers, we can go east or west, north or south; it is only our will that matters."

"We can say what we want," cries another. "Curse the Romanoffs!"

"And have what we want," cries another. "The world is ours."

And the wind blows in our faces like the breath of God.

We reach the great fir forest, which is two, being divided by a street of snow half a verst broad. It goes due west. We have no compass. Katkoff, the Dog, is our compass. He has the instinct of an animal for direction.

Here, suddenly, distance rises up before me and appals me, the distance to be covered on foot, and I say to myself, "We are surely mad."

At noon we halt to rest and eat, the forest still on each side, and on the wind that stirs the branches comes a voice, "They are surely mad." No one hears it but me.

We have gone one inch on our journey. While I am eating I am thinking. There are seven passes across the Urals, and that from Perm to Yekaterinburg would be the best for us, but that is far south. Could we cross there and continue south, we would find the railway at Ufa or even Samara. We must find the railway.

But what made us start like this in such a small band? Why did we not make for Berizov, where we could have joined a party bound for Russia, better supplied, better led? I think it was

Katkoff.

He wanted to get "there," and "there" lay west, and Berizov north, and he said he knew the way and would lead us. We scarcely heard him before we had agreed.

Two years ago he escaped, crossed the mountains and reached Ust Woina, where he was captured.

Then, breaking silence, I speak about the railway. Katkoff answers: "Which railway?"

I reply: "The Transiberian.”

He laughs at me, pointing out that to reach that we should have to march across Russia.

Even to reach the railway from Perm to Solvitchegod would be useless. No, our destination is Archangel, and from there by rail to Moscow. It would be only three hundred and fifty versts. Once we had crossed the Petchora River, it would be easy.

He draws a map on the snow, kneeling with the sun upon him, his cap off, and his hair hanging over his eyes.

The others all agree. The railway from Archangel to Moscow, what could be better? There would be no fares to pay. Returned exiles, and the railways in the hands of the people.

I suddenly see a Pullman dining-car that took me six years ago from Moscow to Spask, the food on the table before me, the bottle of wine. Then it vanishes, leaving nothing but the snow and the fir-trees and Katkoff rising up and brushing his knees.

The sledges go on again, and now the forest breaks up, and now before us lies the Sosva River, frozen, and the great plain beyond, and away, far away in the blue sky, a summit-Toll Poss. The Urals!

"See! see!" cries Chicherin, moving his arm from north to south, where the dazzling sun shows a line of ridges, the Urals, cut as if with a graver's tool, unspeakably distant.

We could never see them from the post. The rising ground and the forest hid them; but they are there, standing forever, heedless of all things; barriers once, but barriers no more.

And the great summit is not of these, but beyond them. He is in Europe, we are in Asia. He is in Russia, we are in Siberia, and he beckons us home.

"Two days' tramp," says Katkoff.

Away, far away, to the northwest, things are moving on the dazzling plain. Reindeer, making north, and overhead a great bird is flying toward the mountains. The birds have always been free.

Away to the north, there, lies Munkeshsk on its bit of river, sixty versts or so away. Then we go on.