A group of boys with tattered newspapers gathered about Peter, noting his furs and his brown field-boots with curious eyes. These boys were wrapped with long woolen scarfs, and wore uncouth clothes and men’s boots long since thrown away by the original owners—boots lacking soles except for rags bound round the feet. If the lads stood still for but a minute, it was to shiver violently, so they kept jumping up and down like marionettes moved by a string. Peter’s eyes filled with tears at the sight of them, and he threw them a handful of paper rubles and kopecks that they might have hot cabbage soup. “Poor little chaps!” he said, and, getting into a droshky, told the _iswostchik_ to drive to the best hotel. The horses broke into a gallop at once, straight across the square, and it was then that Peter noticed an ancient building in the line of the street ahead. It was built of logs in the old style. “Is that the old post-house?” he shouted to the driver. “Yes, that is it,” said the driver. “Then stop! In front of the post-house!” cried Peter, slapping the driver on the back with a lusty thump. “Turn, please—and stop!” “But it is a restaurant now,” said the driver. He seemed bewildered, but he swung his horses into the street before the old building and brought them up abruptly, muttering in his whiskers. “You said to go to a hotel, and this is a restaurant,” he complained. “How am I to know what you want, when you say two different things to me about where you want to go?” “I wish to stop here but a minute,” said Peter. He jumped out of the droshky, and, standing in the street, looked up and down its length, and turned to survey the old post-house. Sure enough, the sign over it said it was a restaurant, and through the tops of the partly clear windows he could see the gaudy colors of curtains hanging within. “The Sofistkaya!” whispered Peter. “I would never have known it.” He studied the square, the big white station, and the buildings of the street. He walked through the loose sand to a spot directly in front of the door of the old post-house, but well out from it, and crossed himself twice with both hands in the old way. He looked down at the sand and dirty snow. “Blood of my father!” he whispered. “I have come back to keep the vow! I pray that I am not too late—that Kirsakoff still lives!” He stood there a few minutes, the tears streaming down his cheeks and freezing on the flesh. He uttered prayers, and then strode back to the droshky, entered it, and was once more rolling up the Sofistkaya. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ V THE ATAMAN’S DECISION WHEN Captain Shimilin raised his hand to the window, there was a sharp command in the courtyard below, followed by the crash of a volley from the rifles of the soldiers Katerin had seen standing before her father.