To visit St. Petersburg, or not to visit it? was the question to which for a long time he could discover no answer. Still in doubt he looked one night from his hotel window, and saw the face of the sky as one dark cloud. But while he gazed, there presently came a rift, and through the rift one planet sparkling bright. Hesperus, the star of Love! It seemed like an answer to his thoughts. Love in the shape of a fair princess was beckoning to him. His mind was made up—he would go to her! CHAPTER III THE INN OF THE SILVER BIRCH A winter night, frosty and still. The northern stars, set in a sky of steely blue, twinkled over a plain of frozen snow—a plain so vast that its visible border touched the horizon. In all the wide landscape no town, no hamlet, not even a solitary dwelling was to be seen; the view, a monotonous blank, relieved here and there by clumps of dark firs, the darker by contrast with the surrounding white. Lofty posts, painted with alternate bands of black and white, and situated a verst distant from one another, indicated the ordinary line of route over the wintry waste, and along this route a hooded sledge was moving with all the speed that three gallant mares could supply, the bells upon the duga, or wooden arch, ringing out musically over the crisp snow. Two persons occupied this sledge, one, the _yamchik_ or driver, Izak by name, an active little Russian, who sat partly upon the shaft, in order when necessary to steady the vehicle by thrusting out a leg upon the snow; the other, Wilfrid Courtenay, who, voluminous in fur wrappings, sat, or rather reclined at the rear under cover of the hood. It was over Russian ground that the car was speeding, its goal being St. Petersburg, distant now about one hundred miles. Wilfrid had met with considerable difficulty in entering the Czar’s dominions. Twenty days had he been detained at the frontier-town of Kowno for no reason whatever as far as he could see, save the caprice of petty officials, whose insolence and greed had so galled the spirit of the Englishman that several times he was on the point of turning back. However, he thought better of it, and when at last leave _was_ granted him to go forward, forward he went. Having learned by experience that travelling in one’s own equipage is more convenient, and, in the end more economical, than the ordinary method of posting, Wilfrid had purchased at Kowno a covered car, together with three steeds to draw it, accepting at the same time the proffered services of a yamchik, who boasted that he knew every verst of the way from Kowno to St. Petersburg. And here he was speeding along at the rate of twelve miles an hour. The keen cold air, combined with the rapid swaying of the car, caused him to fall into a semi-slumber, from which he was roused by the voice of Izak. “If the little father will condescend to look, he will see the village of Gora,” he cried, pointing with his whip to a light shining far off like a star.