Far down the street is heard the jingle of his sledge. It brings every girl to her peep-hole window, and every boy from his sawing to the courtyard door. At the gateway where the newcomer turns in, he is heralded by the commotion of the household guardians, wolf-like in appearance and nature. Everybody within the important house runs to the door. The village knows now which family is making local history. The arrival is accompanied already by two or three men who have recognized him as he descends. He tramps in with military firmness of tread, head erect. Before he greets the grandfather even, he makes the sign of the cross to the holy ikons, and, bowing down, touches his lips to the floor. Then comes the respectful kiss to the old man, next to the mother, while the younger brother, soon to go to service himself, stands awkwardly by, and the little children look half-dubiously at a form scarcely known after his four years of absence. Then there is a scurrying of the grown and half-grown daughters to prepare _chai_ and to produce the _pelmenis_ and brown bread. The villagers drift in one by one, cross themselves, and speak their greetings, until the little house is packed, and as hot as the steam-room of a _banno_. The vodka-bottle is out and everybody has settled down for an indefinite stay. The soldier’s tales of war and garrison duty and government and revolution hold the family and the audience breathless through the long evening. As you drop asleep, the hero is still reciting and gesticulating. The guests in departing will be careful not to stumble over you, so _nietchevo_. In one of the houses where we put up, a shop adjoins the big living-room. It has dingy recesses from which hatchets and the commoner farm utensils can be produced, shelves of homespun cloth, and gaudy cottons for the men’s blouses, and beads for the women’s bonnets. Here, as in the country-stores of our own land, during the long idle winter days there is always a crowd and endless discussion of the village events,--the health of each other’s cows, births, marriages, deaths, drafts into the army, taxes. Even in this remoteness something of the echo of great Russia’s struggle is heard over the shopkeeper’s tea-cups. We hum, unthinking, a bar of _Die Beide Grenadier_, in which a refrain of the _Marseillaise_ occurs. A peasant looks quickly up. “It is not allowed, that song,” he says. “Why not?” “That is the song of the strikers.” “But the _gaspadine_ is a foreigner. He may sing it.” “Yes,” says the peasant, “he may sing it, but I may not. Would that I might!”