Then we discovered the exact extent of our yamtschik’s trick.  He had let us off on fairly easy terms, getting not quite half more than his due.  By the regular route, we might really have had three relays and made better time, had we been permitted.  By the short cut which our wily friend had selected, but one change was possible.  This left the price of two changes to be credited to his financial ability (in addition to the tea-money of gratitude, which came in at the end, all the same), and the price of the one which he would not make.  And, as I was so thoughtless as not to hire him to carry away those pounds of “relay” copper, I continued to be burdened with it until I contrived to expend it on peasant manufactures.  The postboy bore the reputation of being a very honest fellow, I learned,—­something after the pattern of the charming cabby who drove us to Count Tolstoy’s estate.

The village, like most Russian villages, was situated on a small river, in a valley.  It consisted of two streets:  one running parallel with the river, the other at right angles to it, on the opposite bank.  The connecting bridge had several large holes in it, on the day of our arrival, which were mended, a few days later, with layers of straw and manure mixed with earth.  We continued, during the whole period of our stay, to cross the bridge, instead of going round it, as we had been advised to do with Russian bridges, by Russians, in the certainty that, if we came near drowning through its fault, it would surely furnish us with an abundance of straws to catch at.

In one corner of the settlement, a petty bourgeois,—­there is no other word to define him,—­the son of a former serf, and himself born a serf, had made a mill-pond and erected cloth-mills.  His “European” clothes (long trousers, sack coat, Derby hat) suited him as ill as his wife’s gaudy silk gown, and Sunday bonnet in place of the kerchief usual with the lower classes, suited her face and bearing.  He was a quiet, unassuming man, but he was making over for himself a handsome house, formerly the residence of a noble.  Probably the money wherewith he had set up in business had been wrung out of his fellow-peasants in the profession of a kulak, or “fist,” as the people expressively term peasant usurers.

On the other side of the river stood the church, white-walled, green-roofed, with golden cross, like the average country church, with some weather stains, and here and there a paling missing from the fence.  Near at hand was the new schoolhouse, with accommodations for the master, recently erected by our host.  Beyond this began the inclosure surrounding the manor house, and including the cottages of the coachmen and the steward with their hemp and garden plots, the stables and carriage houses, the rickyard with its steam threshing machine and driers, and a vast abandoned garden, as well as the gardens in use.  The large brick mansion, with projecting wings, had its drawing-rooms at the