When one goes beyond the post-route with his own equipage he has, fastened under the driver’s seat and behind his own, bags of oats and hay, which must serve as emergency-rations for the horses against the days in which none can be secured along the often deserted trail. Personal provender must be likewise stored away, bags of bread, frozen dumplings to make soup with, tea, sugar, milk-chocolate, milk, candles, cheese, matches, kettles, and whatever else one can think of, or that the ingenuity of Alexsimevich can devise. Hay is piled into the tarantass bottom to supply the want of springs. A driver who knows the trails has been found, André Banchelski, a tall Siberian, of timbering and hunting antecedents, who has a small stock of Mongol idioms regarding the price of hay and the location of water. He has reached a very good understanding with Katrinka, one of the household dependents, and Nicolai is taking an interest in him. To-night we go to sleep on Nicolai’s plank couch, ready for the march of the next day. All is ready. To-morrow we cross the Chinese frontier. V IN TATAR TENTS The shaggy ponies, white with the frost of the morning, stand harnessed to the tarantass; André in his belted sheepskin _shuba_, whip in hand, is perched on the bag of oats; Alexsimevich sits in a greatcoat of deerskin, with only a nose and a triangle of black beard visible. The host, in his gray surtout, and the red-bloused drivers of the sledges scattered in the courtyard, all have left their samovars to see the start. The children of the family peep from behind the mother with her gray shawl-covered head. They group at one side, under the eaves of the doorway, while Josef, one of the household servants, swings back the ponderous gates. The reins are drawn in, the whip is lifted, the horses are leaning forward into their collars, when the cry of “André!” comes through the opening doorway. From behind the gathered onlookers, who turn at the sound, runs out Katrinka, dressed in her best red frock. “André!” she cries. He pulls back the starting horses, and Katrinka lifts up to him a little bag embroidered with his initials in blue and red. “For your tobacco.” He looks down into her eyes and smiles. “_Spasiba_ _loubesnaia_,” he says, and pushes it into the breast of his shuba. “_De svidania_, André!” she whispers, then runs back, confused. The teamsters laugh, pleased and amused as big children at her blushes, and her brother shouts a commentary from the gateway. “_Vperiod! vperiod!_” says the interpreter. He has reached forty now without falling before the charms of any Siberian girl, and he does not sympathize. “On! on!” The horses swing out of the great gateway into the snowy streets, with “Good-bye! Good road!” called in chorus after us.