My grandmother, Mme Horvat, _née_ Baroness Pilar, was the sweetest of women, and I loved her with a child’s passionate devotion. She used to tell me all kinds of stories, and our old nurse ably seconded her. Whenever we walked by the river, and I exclaimed at the beauty of the lilies, I was thrilled anew by hearing how, long ago, when the Tartar hordes descended on Beletskovka, the women and children used to wade into the water, and shelter under the broad green lily-leaves until the marauders had passed. The peasants at Revovka were extremely superstitious, and they believed implicitly in witches and warlocks. It was common knowledge that certain women possessed tails and bewitched the cows, and woe betide the widow who mourned her husband too much! He would assuredly return in the likeness of a big snake, and make an unwelcome descent down the chimney. I was terribly scared by some of these narratives, and I much preferred the pretty customs prevalent at certain seasons, now vanished, alas! under the Bolshevik regime, since the teaching of Lenin would seemingly only include the ritual of blood in its category. I chiefly remember the quaint methods of divination practised on New Year’s Eve, when the girls of the village went out to listen at the closed doors, and those who heard a man’s name mentioned were certain to marry within the year. They varied these proceedings by throwing their slippers over their heads, to see if they fell in the shape of anything that might be construed into an initial letter. Others preferred to try and catch the rays of the moon in a towel; all pretty gay conceits, dear to the heart of girlhood, and, on St. Catharine’s Day, cherry tree branches were put in water, and, if the bare wood blossomed by Xmas, then marriage bells were about to ring. Midsummer Day was sacred to the river, a survival doubtless of those pagan customs which are so difficult to destroy. Large fires were lighted along the river banks, and the village maidens, wearing wreaths, leapt into the water, across the fires, and left the wreaths in the river as an offering, perchance to the God of Streams. The next morning, they set out to look for their wreaths, and those who were lucky enough to find them discovered by the direction in which the wreath had been washed up the way by which marriage would come. The storks brought luck, and they were invited to sojourn with us by means of wheels placed in the roofs on which they built their nests. The solemn birds were family friends, and, whenever a baby stork fell from its nest, everyone went to enormous trouble to put it back.