The hot July sun shone on the dusty streets; through the open windows of the white-washed barrack-like Government office the scratching of pens could be heard; the "factors," agents who offer their services to strangers, lolled in the shade, keeping a watchful eye upon any stranger who might happen to pass by, and looking out eagerly for a "geschaft," or stroke of business. The townspeople eyed me distrustfully as I wandered aimlessly about the streets, where tumble-down hovels alternated with endless expanses of grey moss-grown wood fences and plots of waste ground heaped with rubbish and offal. The place was full of horrible smells, filth, rags, and dirty children, who enjoyed themselves by rolling in the soft white dust. At either end of the noisy, evil-smelling place, a post-road led out along the bank of the sluggish yellow stream, and at the entrance to the town on the German side was a "schlagbaum," a pole painted with the national colours that served as toll-bar, in charge of a sleepy invalided soldier in a dingy old uniform with a tarnished eagle on his cap, who looked the very incarnation of undisturbed slumber. Life in Kovno was by no means diverting. Truly Skerstymone was a wretched, half-starved, miserable little place of terribly depressing aspect, notwithstanding the brilliant sunshine and blue sky. The long, gloomy days dragged by, but no tidings could I glean of Sonia Korolenko. It was evident that if she had ever been there she had passed under some other name, and that her identity had been lost before arrival there. One warm morning, while seated outside a "kabak" moodily watching the old women in the market selling their twisted rolls of bread called "kalach," an ill-dressed man approached me, and, touching his shabby cap respectfully, pronounced my name with strong Russian accent, at the same time slowly sinking upon the wooden bench beside me. He was tall and square-built, with coarse but expressive features. His long grey hair was matted and unkempt; his low brow, protruding jaws, and the constant twitching of his facial muscles reminded me of a monkey, but the stern eyes shining from beneath a pair of bushy, overhanging brows, spoke of indomitable energy, cleverness, and cunning. They never changed; and while the rest of his face was a perfect kaleidoscope whenever he spoke, the expression of his eyes remained ever the same. His confidence surprised me, and I immediately asked him how he had ascertained my patronymic, to which he replied, not without hesitation,-- "I am fully aware of your high nobility's object in visiting Skerstymone. You are seeking Sonia Korolenko." "Yes," I replied, in the best Russian I could remember. "Do you know her whereabouts? If you take me to her you shall have a handsome reward." He smiled mysteriously, and glanced so wistfully at my vodka that I at once ordered for him a second glass of the spirit so beloved of the Muscovite palate.