“Your first relay-station is Nijniouboukounskaia, twenty-seven versts.” The fare is set out in a printed placard posted up on the wall; as is the price of a samovar, fifteen kopecks, and all the other items that the traveler may require. The agent hands you the slip: “One rouble, eighty-two kopecks, for two persons, the _gaspadine_ and his courier”; something under three cents a passenger-mile. As you wait for the harnessing of the post-sledge, the courier overlooks anew the bags and counts out again the parcels. As light as possible must be the impedimenta. Now is the last chance for change. The big station-clock ticks on. The agent moves about in the warm dusky silence of the house. The courier straps tighter the dunnage-bag. “Look that your furs are snugly fastened,” he says. There is trample of footsteps by the door. A fur-clad, ruddy-faced driver stumbles in, makes the sign of the cross before the ikon on the further wall, and beckons to you. “Ready!” he says. Three shaggy ponies stand hitched to a wooden sledge, not high like those of city _isvoschiks_, but low and shaped like a wide bath-tub. The bottom is cushioned with hay and you are to sit some six inches above the runners. The bells hanging from the big arched _duga_ over the centre horse jingle as he frets. The side horses, that will run loose between rope-traces, look around at the _yamshik_ who stands by. He holds in his mittened hands four reins of leather, twisted into ropes--two for the centre trotter, one each, on the outside, for the gallopers. You climb into the nest of rugs and furs superimposed upon your baggage! The _yamshik_ leaps to the precarious perch that serves as his seat. The whip falls, and with a bound the horses are off. Always one starts at top speed, however bad the way. Always one finishes at a gallop, however jaded the horses. It is the rule of the Russian road. With bells jingling, the driver shouting to clear the way, and a white cloud rising behind, the sledge skims out between the log houses which flank the straggling street. Dogs bark and the idle passers-by stare. Fur-covered pigs scramble up with a squeal, and scurry from their resting-places in the road. Girls, with shako-capped heads, peer through the windows. Little chubby boys, in big brown felt boots, cheer.