understood its character and capabilities, and paid no attention to its
ominous threats. Once, indeed, a wheel came off, but it was soon fished
out of the mud and replaced, and no further casualty occurred.

The horses did their work so well that when about midday we arrived at
a village, I could not refuse to let them have some rest and
refreshment--all the more as my own thoughts had begun to turn in that
direction.

The village, like villages in that part of the country generally,
consisted of two long parallel rows of wooden houses. The road--if a
stratum of deep mud can be called by that name--formed the intervening
space. All the houses turned their gables to the passerby, and some of
them had pretensions to architectural decoration in the form of rude
perforated woodwork. Between the houses, and in a line with them, were
great wooden gates and high wooden fences, separating the courtyards
from the road. Into one of these yards, near the farther end of the
village, our horses turned of their own accord.

"An inn?" I said, in an interrogative tone.

The driver shook his head and said something, in which I detected the
word "friend." Evidently there was no hostelry for man and beast in the
village, and the driver was using a friend's house for the purpose.

The yard was flanked on the one side by an open shed, containing rude
agricultural implements which might throw some light on the agriculture
of the primitive Aryans, and on the other side by the dwelling-house and
stable. Both the house and stable were built of logs, nearly cylindrical
in form, and placed in horizontal tiers.