A saddle girth breaks as we near a village, and one of us (I won’t say which) rolls over on the ground. It’s an ill wind that blows no good. The hour we spend held up in that village is one of surprise and delight. This is no haphazard collection of dwellings, with untidy little shacks and ambitious modern houses putting each other to shame. There is no distinction here between rich and poor; there are no rich and no poor; or rather, all are rich, though not one has more than trifling possessions. The whole village has been built on an intelligent design, not allowed to spring up anyhow. The houses are symmetrically arranged in two long rows, with a broad avenue between. Each cottage, standing on its own lot, comprises “a but and a ben,” as they say in Scotland. The gable of the ben, or better end, faces the street, while the doors open sideways into the yard. The walls, substantially built of logs, present a neatly smoothed surface of white-washed earth. The roofs also are covered with earth, but even they are clean and neat. A raised ledge of earth runs along the foot of the wall, under the wide overhanging eaves, to form a sort of veranda seat. A little red and green pattern over each window adds a pleasant touch of color to the whole. Just outside the village is a ring of hard smooth earth, with a mound in the middle; this is the flax-breaking floor, the flax straw being crushed by a big wooden roller with small logs nailed lengthwise on its surface like cogs on a wheel. They are a pleasant folk, these villagers. A woman, embroidering linen at her cottage door, rises to welcome us. She is ignorant of our tongue, and we of hers, but we both know the ancient universal language of signs, invented long before words. She guides us to the community saddler, and while he fixes the girth she takes us home and spreads before us bread, from an enormous rye loaf, butter, wild raspberry preserve, and milk—a royal feast. Jutting out from one corner of the room is the great clay oven, which projects into the next apartment too, and has sleeping accommodation on the top. A shining table and benches, with a long bench around the wall, are the only furniture. Everything is marvellously clean: we might eat our dinner off the floor. Music floats in at the open door; seven girls have come to entertain us, sitting on the ledge outside and singing hymns while we eat. For this is a village of Doukhobors.