Ukrainian peasants remained out of sight, like clusters of boats hidden
in the hollows of a running sea. And everything was very still.

"I don't know now how I had managed to escape at eleven o'clock in the
morning from the schoolroom. I was a boy of eight, the little girl,
my cousin, a few months younger than myself, though hereditarily more
quick-tempered, was less adventurous. So I had escaped alone; and
presently I found myself in the great stone-paved hall, warmed by a
monumental stove of white tiles, a much more pleasant locality than the
schoolroom, which for some reason or other, perhaps hygienic, was always
kept at a low temperature.

"We children were aware that there was a guest staying in the house. He
had arrived the night before just as we were being driven off to bed.
We broke back through the line of beaters to rush and flatten our noses
against the dark window panes; but we were too late to see him alight.
We had only watched in a ruddy glare the big travelling carriage on
sleigh-runners harnessed with six horses, a black mass against the snow,
going off to the stables, preceded by a horseman carrying a blazing ball
of tow and resin in an iron basket at the end of a long stick swung from
his saddle bow. Two stable boys had been sent out early in the afternoon
along the snow-tracks to meet the expected guest at dusk and light his
way with these road torches. At that time, you must remember, there
was not a single mile of railways in our southern provinces. My little
cousin and I had no knowledge of trains and engines, except from
picture-books, as of things rather vague, extremely remote, and not
particularly interesting unless to grownups who travelled abroad.

"Our notion of princes, perhaps a little more precise, was mainly
literary and had a glamour reflected from the light of fairy tales, in