One hour is past, and still the air keeps moderately fresh, although the increasing glare warns us that it will be what I once heard a British tourist call "more hotterer" by and by. So far, however, we have not turned a hair, and the second hour's work matches the first to an inch. As we pass through the little hamlet which marks the first quarter of our allotted distance we instinctively pull out our watches: "Ten miles in two hours! Not so bad, but we must keep it up." So we set ourselves to the third hour, and out comes the sun--bright and beautiful and destroying as Homer's Achilles: Bright are his rays, but evil fate they send, And to sad man destroying heat portend. Hitherto, despite the severity of our pace, we have contrived to keep up a kind of flying conversation, but now grim silence settles on our way. There is a point in every match against time when the innate ferocity of man, called forth by the exercises which civilization has borrowed from the brute creation, comes to the front in earnest--when your best friend becomes your deadly enemy, and the fact of his being one stride in advance of you is an injury only to be atoned by blood. Such is the precise point that we have reached now; and when we turn from exchanging malignant looks with each other, it is only to watch with ominous eagerness for the coming in sight of the painted verst-posts, which somehow appear to succeed one another far more slowly than they did an hour ago. By the middle of the fourth hour we are marching with coats off and sleeves rolled up, like amateur butchers; and although our "pace" is as good as ever, the elastic swing of our first start is now replaced by that dogged, "hard-and-heavy" tramp which marks the point where the flesh and the spirit begin to pull in opposite directions. Were either of us alone, the pace would probably slacken at once, and each may safely say in his heart, as Condorcet said of the dying D'Alembert, "Had I not been there he _must_ have flinched!" But just as the fourth hour comes to an end (during which we have looked at our watches as often as Wellington during the terrible mid-day hours that preceded the distant boom of the Prussian cannon) we come round a sharp bend in the road, and there before us lies the quaint little log-built post-house (the "halfway house" in very truth), with its projecting roof and painted front and striped doorposts; just at which auspicious moment I stumble and twist my foot. "You were right to reserve _that_ performance to the last," remarks P---- with a grin, helping me to the door; and we order a _samovar_ (tea-urn) to be heated, while we ourselves indulge in a scrambling wash of the rudest kind, but very refreshing nevertheless.