There's no getting through the horses in the market--no possibility of penetrating through. There stands one great solid crowd. Quick people even slip about under the horses. What the prices are you may judge from separate exclamations. "If there's such a bargain anywhere else on God's earth I'd like to hear of it!" says a fugitive, turning over and turning over again the dirty notes which he has received. "Don't get rid of them here. Better sell their skins in Kalutsk." "Take the twelve rubles now. Take them now. To-morrow you'll be glad to sell at ten." "By to-morrow she'll drop down dead if you go on!" "What! Fifteen rubles not good money? Did you say that? You?" "Ten rubles as they stand! From hand to hand!" says a tall, dark peasant with a long beard, standing beside a cart to which are tied six horses, all skin and bone. He says in a contemptuous tone: "You see the horses. A red note for each. Altogether. Take them. It will mean money. Without money there's no doing anything." I say to a fugitive: "Don't you know that in Muchin yard, beyond the town, they're buying for the Government. There you would get a fairer price." The fugitive does not succeed in answering for himself. Once more the crowd of people with quick movements and feverish eyes. "The Government? There, you'll never get a turn! It's necessary to stand three days. He's got to hurry for the train. See what a lot of people are coming in. He will be late, and have to wait a month in the open. The autumn rains will start. And cold. All his children will freeze. From Bobruisk another five hundred thousand are coming. Who are you, Mister? Are you someone from the Government or a Relief Committee?" "Our little children are just freezing to death," says another fugitive. And at this market where horses and people are crushed in one compact mass where from the heat of bodies and the smell of horses it is difficult to breathe, if any one is cheerful, it is only the purchaser. The fugitives have not much to say for themselves, and that in a low voice--as if stunned. They sell their horses and stand as if in perplexity. They go away--horseless, peasants no longer, wordless. In appearance so calm and indifferent: as if nothing had happened. No expression of the grief, of the deadly melancholy which is in the soul. V--STORY OF THE HOMELESS PEASANT WOMEN A silent land. In the same street as the market-place, by the Petrograd Hotel, from dawn until late evening, the crowd is like stone. There's no getting through. The hotel is occupied by the Committee--of "Northern-Help." Here it is arranged for the fugitives where each has to go. I attempt to pass through the crowd and get as far as the gateway. Farther is impossible. The stench is such that the head simply goes round. May God give strength to the Relief delegates working in this stench--to remain healthy! "We've been waiting for days!"--complain the fugitives,--"and standing without a bite of food from morning."