their masters are having, of the feastings and the merrymakings, of
the laughter of the children, of the kisses of the lovers.

But the last line of every verse is the same. When you ask a Russian
to translate it for you he shrugs his shoulders.

"Oh, it means," he says, "that their time will also come--some day."

It is a pathetic, haunting refrain. They sing it in the drawing-
rooms of Moscow and St. Petersburg, and somehow the light talk and
laughter die away, and a hush, like a chill breath, enters by the
closed door and passes through. It is a curious song, like the
wailing of a tired wind, and one day it will sweep over the land
heralding terror.

A Scotsman I met in Russia told me that when he first came out to act
as manager of a large factory in St. Petersburg, belonging to his
Scottish employers, he unwittingly made a mistake the first week when
paying his workpeople. By a miscalculation of the Russian money he
paid the men, each one, nearly a rouble short. He discovered his
error before the following Saturday, and then put the matter right.
The men accepted his explanation with perfect composure and without
any comment whatever. The thing astonished him.

"But you must have known I was paying you short," he said to one of
them. "Why didn't you tell me of it?"

"Oh," answered the man, "we thought you were putting it in your own
pocket and then if we had complained it would have meant dismissal
for us. No one would have taken our word against yours."