"Do you think I, a nobleman of Georgia, will show myself in my native town, torn and dirty as I am now? No, indeed, that I never could! We must wait outside till night. Let us rest here." We twisted up a couple of cigarettes from our last bit of tobacco, and, shivering with cold, we sat down under the walls of a deserted building to have a smoke. The piercing cold wind seemed to cut through our bodies. Shakro sat humming a melancholy song; while I fell to picturing to myself a warm room, and other advantages of a settled life over a wandering existence. "Let us move on now!" said Shakro resolutely. It had now become dark. The lights were twinkling down below in the town. It was a pretty sight to watch them flashing one after the other, out of the mist of the valley, where the town lay hidden. "Look here, you give me your bashleek,* I want to cover my face up with it. My friends might recognize me." I gave him my bashleek. We were already in Olga Street, and Shakro was whistling boldly. "Maxime, do you see that bridge over yonder? The train stops there. Go and wait for me there, please. I want first to go and ask a friend, who lives close by, about my father and mother." "You won't be long, will you?" "Only a minute. Not more!" * A kind of hood worn by men to keep their ears warm. He plunged rapidly down the nearest dark, narrow lane, and disappeared-- disappeared for ever. I never met him again--the man who was my fellow-traveller for nearly four long months; but I often think of him with a good-humored feeling, and light-hearted laughter. He taught me much that one does not find in the thick volumes of wise philosophers, for the wisdom of life is always deeper and wider than the wisdom of men. ON A RAFT Heavy clouds drift slowly across the sleepy river and hang every moment lower and thicker. In the distance their ragged gray edges seem almost to touch the surface of the rapid and muddy waters, swollen by the floods of spring, and there, where they touch, an impenetrable wall rises to the skies, barring the flow of the river and the passage of the raft. The stream, swirling against this wall--washing vainly against it with a wistful wailing swish--seems to be thrown back on itself, and then to hasten away on either side, where lies the moist fog of a dark spring night. The raft floats onward, and the distance opens out before it into heavy cloud--massed space. The banks of the rivers are invisible; darkness covers them, and the lapping waves of a spring flood seem to have washed them into space. The river below has spread into a sea; while the heavens above, swatched in cloud masses, hang heavy, humid, and leaden.* There is no atmosphere, no color in this gray blurred picture.