Unfortunately I could not make myself distinctly understood by the Cossacks; and my two guides, after a consultation together, seemed to make up their minds to partly retrace their steps. They may have had good grounds for this resolution; and I myself strongly suspected that numerous small parties of the enemy were prowling about. The reason for this opinion was that I saw several patrols or squads join the enemy's battalion during the fight. We also passed a small wood, amongst the trees of which a dozen bivouac fires were still smouldering, and these, I saw at a glance, were not made by Russian soldiers. I likewise saw a single horseman watching us; he was soon joined by another; and the two followed us some distance, until one of the Cossacks fired his rifle at them, when they galloped away. But my escort was decidedly nervous. They were both young men--under twenty-five, I thought--and appeared to consider me something of a prisoner. I was surprised at this; but not sufficiently master of the language to protest or ask for an explanation. The men frequently changed their direction, and if they did not bewilder themselves, at any rate fairly perplexed me, so that I could not tell in which direction we ought to be travelling. We passed that night in a cottage which was but little better than a hut, the owner of which did not seem to be much pleased at being compelled to entertain us, almost the only occasion on which I noticed such a disposition in any person of the country, whatever his rank or position. There was hardly any food in the house, and that little was coarse and dirty-looking, so that even the Cossacks turned up their noses at it. One of them went out, and after an absence of more than an hour returned with two fowls, some potatoes and bread, and a stone jar of vodka. They then brought in a lot of wood from the yard of the cottage, and made the stove nearly red-hot, at which action the proprietor protested loudly and became very angry, while a woman I at first thought was his wife wept. The fowls having been prepared by the speedy method of burning off the feathers were put in a saucepan to boil. The woman and I skinned some of the potatoes, but others were cooked with the skin on. While waiting for supper the vodka was very liberally served out, the man and woman taking their share; and the behaviour of the lady with one of the Cossacks was such as to convince me I had been mistaken in thinking that she was the wife of the peasant. By the time the meal was cooked and eaten the woman and myself were the only sober persons there; and I am not sure that she had not taken too much of the fiery vodka. With the two Cossacks as partners she executed some extraordinary figures in what I suppose I must call a polka. It ended in the whole party falling to the floor, where they went to sleep.