seemed rare and precious, death gained in its power of inspiring fear.
It is different in crowded cities, where an excess of human life seems
to vouch for the continuity of the race, where, in a teeming population,
one life more or less seems of little value. The rosy hue of sunset was
fading to a clear green, and in the midst of a cloudless sky,
Jupiter--very near the earth at that time--shone intense, and brilliant
like a lamp. It was an evening such as only Russia and the great North
lands ever see, where the sunset is almost in the north and the sunrise
holds it by the hand. Over the whole scene there hung a clear,
transparent night, green and shimmering, which would never be darker
than an English twilight.

The two living men carried the nameless, unrecognizable dead to a
resting-place beneath a stunted pine a few paces removed from the road.
They laid him decently at full length, crossing his soil-begrimed hands
over his breast, tying the handkerchief down over his face.

Then they turned and left him, alone in that luminous night. A waif that
had fallen by the great highway without a word, without a sign. A
half-run race--a story cut off in the middle; for he was a young man
still; his hair, all dusty, draggled, and bloodstained, had no streak of
gray; his hands were smooth and youthful. There was a vague suspicion of
sensual softness about his body, as if this might have been a man who
loved comfort and ease, who had always chosen the primrose path, had
never learned the salutary lesson of self-denial. The incipient
stoutness of limb contrasted strangely with the drawn meagreness of his
body, which was contracted by want of food. Paul Alexis was right. This
man had died of starvation, within ten miles of the great Volga, within
nine miles of the outskirts of Tver, a city second to Moscow, and once
her rival. Therefore it could only be that he had purposely avoided the