"Never mind!"--and again whirled wildly down from the old Cathedral to the Volga, where the boats and steamers plied amid the deep-blue, massive ice-floes, so sparkling and luminous in their snowy raiment. But the general had now worked himself up to a state of great excitement. He rushed indoors and roused everyone: "I tell you, it will freeze and the pipes will burst unless you let the water run a little. There are 27 degrees of frost!" "But the tap is in the kitchen and Leontyevna is sleeping there," objected Lina. "Well, waken her!" "Impossible!" "Damn rot!" snarled the general and went into the kitchen and shook Leontyevna, explaining to her about the pipes. "I will go to the Exchange and complain! Not even letting one rest!...Stealing in to an undressed woman!..." Lina jabbered her words after her like a parrot. Sergius ran in. "Leave off, please," he begged. "It is I who am responsible. Let Leontyevna sleep." "Certainly, I am not one of the heirs," the general retorted smoothly. The night and the frost swept over the Volga, the Steppe, and Saratov. The general was unable to sleep. Kseniya and Lena were crying in the attic. Constantine arrived home late, and noiselessly crept in to Leontyevna. Bluish patches of moonlight fell in through the windows. The water pipes froze in the night and burst. THE CROSSWAYS Forest, thickets, marshes, fields, a tranquil sky--and the crossways! The sky is overcast at times with dove-coloured clouds; the forest now gabbles, now groans in the glittering summer sunshine. The crossways creep and crawl like a winding thread, without beginning and without end. Sometimes their stretch tires and vexes-- one wants to go by a shorter route and turns aside, goes astray, comes back to the former way. Two wheel-tracks, ripple grass, a foot- path and around them, besides sky or rye or snow or trees, are the crossways, without beginning or end or limit. And over them pass the peasants singing their low toned songs. At times these are sorrowful, as endless as the crossways themselves: Russia was borne in these songs, born with them, from them. Our ways lie through the crossways as they ever have done, and ever will. All Russia is in the crossways--amid the fields, thickets marshes, and forests. But there were also those Others who wanted to march over the bog- ways, who planned to throw Russia on to her haunches, to press on through the marshlands, make main-roads straight as rules, and barricade themselves behind granite and steel, forgetful of Russia's peasant cottages. And on they marched! Sometimes the main-road is joined by the crossways, and from them to the main-road and over it passes the long vaunted Rising, the people's tumult, to sweep away the Unnecessary, then vanish back again into the crossways.