which I intended to pass.  Several of the more intelligent peasants with whom I spoke advised me strongly to visit Alexandrof-Hai, a village situated on the borders of the Kirghiz Steppe.  “We are dark [i.e., ignorant] people here,” they were wont to say, “and do not know anything, but in Alexandrof-Hai you will find those who know the faith, and they will discuss with you.”  This prediction was fulfilled in a somewhat unexpected way.

When returning some weeks later from a visit to the Kirghiz of the Inner Horde, I arrived one evening at this centre of the Molokan faith, and was hospitably received by one of the brotherhood.  In conversing casually with my host on religious subjects I expressed to him a desire to find some one well read in Holy Writ and well grounded in the faith, and he promised to do what he could for me in this respect.  Next morning he kept his promise with a vengeance.  Immediately after the tea-urn had been removed the door of the room was opened and twelve peasants were ushered in!  After the customary salutations with these unexpected visitors, my host informed me to my astonishment that his friends had come to have a talk with me about the faith; and without further ceremony he placed before me a folio Bible in the old Slavonic tongue, in order that I might read passages in support of my arguments.  As I was not at all prepared to open a formal theological discussion, I felt not a little embarrassed, and I could see that my travelling companions, two Russian friends who cared for none of these things, were thoroughly enjoying my discomfiture.  There was, however, no possibility of drawing back.  I had asked for an opportunity of having a talk with some of the brethren, and now I had got it in a way that I certainly did not expect.  My friends withdrew—­“leaving me to my fate,” as they whispered to me—­and the “talk” began.

My fate was by no means so terrible as had been anticipated, but at first the situation was a little awkward.  Neither party had any clear ideas as to what the other desired, and my visitors expected that I was to begin the proceedings.  This expectation was quite natural and justifiable, for I had inadvertently invited them to meet me, but I could not make a speech to them, for the best of all reasons—­that I did not know what to say.  If I told them my real aims, their suspicions would probably be aroused.  My usual stratagem of the weather and the crops was wholly inapplicable.  For a moment I thought of proposing that a psalm should be sung as a means of breaking the ice, but I felt that this would give to the meeting a solemnity which I wished to avoid.  On the whole it seemed best to begin at once a formal discussion.  I told them, therefore, that I had spoken with many of their brethren in various villages, and that I had found what I considered grave errors of doctrine.  I could not, for instance, agree with them in their belief that it was unlawful to eat pork.  This was perhaps an abrupt way of entering on the subject,