“Nowadays, there is no one to order us about like that, or to thrash us,” she remarked.

We found our fuddled old peasant guide hanging about for “tea-money,” when we bade farewell to my friend Domna, who, with her family, offered us her hand at parting.  He was not too thoroughly soaked with “tea” already not to be able to draw the inference that our long stay with the milkwoman indicated pleasure, and he intimated that the introduction fee ought to be in proportion to our enjoyment.  We responded so cheerfully to this demand that he immediately discovered the existence of a dozen historical monuments and points of interest in the tiny village, all invented on the spot; and when we dismissed him peremptorily, he took great care to impress his name and the position of his hut on our memories, for future use.

We had already seen the only object of any interest, the large church far away down the mile-long street.  We had found a festival mass in progress, as it happened to be one of the noted holidays of the year.  As we stood a little to one side, listening to the sweet but unsophisticated chanting of the village lads, who had had no training beyond that given in the village school, a woman approached us with a tiny coffin tucked under one arm.  Trestles were brought; she set it down on them, beside us.  It was very plain in form, made of the commonest wood, and stained a bright yellow with a kind of thin wash, instead of the vivid pink which seems to be the favorite hue for children’s coffins in town.  The baby’s father removed the lid, which comprised exactly half the depth, the mother smoothed out the draperies, and they took their stand near by.  Several strips of the coarsest pink tarlatan were draped across the little waxen brow and along the edges of the coffin.  On these lay such poor flowers as the lateness of the season and the poverty of the parents could afford,—­small, half-withered or frost-bitten dahlias, poppies, and one stray corn-flower.  The parents looked gently resigned, patient, sorrowful, but tearless, as is the Russian manner.  After the liturgy and special prayers for the day, the funeral service was begun; but we went out into the graveyard surrounding the church, and ran the gauntlet of the beggars at the door,—­beggars in the midst of poverty, to whom the poor gave their mites with gentle sympathy.

Russian graveyards are not, as a rule, like the sunny, cheerful homes of the dead to which we are accustomed.  This one was especially melancholy, with its narrow, tortuous paths, uncared-for plots, and crosses of unpainted wood blackened by the weather.  The most elaborate monuments did not rise above tin crosses painted to simulate birch boughs.  It was strictly a peasant cemetery, utterly lacking in graves of the higher classes, or even of the well to do.