The speaker finished his remark with a short laugh. He was a big, stout
man; his name was Karl Steinmetz, and it is a name well known in the
Government of Tver to this day. He spoke jerkily, as stout men do when
they ride, and when he had laughed his good-natured, half-cynical laugh,
he closed his lips beneath a huge gray mustache. So far as one could
judge from the action of a square and deeply indented chin, his mouth
was expressive at that time--and possibly at all times--of a humorous
resignation. No reply was vouchsafed to him, and Karl Steinmetz bumped
along on his little Cossack horse, which was stretched out at a gallop.

Evening was drawing on. It was late in October, and a cold wind was
driving from the north-west across a plain which for sheer dismalness of
aspect may give points to Sahara and beat that abode of mental
depression without an effort. So far as the eye could reach there was no
habitation to break the line of horizon. A few stunted fir-trees,
standing in a position of permanent deprecation, with their backs
turned, as it were, to the north, stood sparsely on the plain. The grass
did not look good to eat, though the Cossack horses would no doubt have
liked to try it. The road seemed to have been drawn by some Titan
engineer with a ruler from horizon to horizon.

Away to the south there was a forest of the same stunted pines, where a
few charcoal-burners and resin-tappers eked out a forlorn and obscure
existence. There are a score of such settlements, such gloomy forests,
dotted over this plain of Tver, which covers an area of nearly two
hundred square miles. The remainder of it is pasture, where miserable
cattle and a few horses, many sheep and countless pigs, seek their food
pessimistically from God.

Steinmetz looked round over this cheerless prospect with a twinkle of