awkwardly here and there along the road or among the trees. The gloomy evergreen forest, lighted up from beneath by the flickering blaze and faintly tinged above by the glow of the northern twilight, the red and black Rembrandt outlines of the wagons, and the group of men in long kaftans and scarlet or blue shirts gathered about the camp-fire drinking tea, formed a strange, striking, and peculiarly Russian picture.

We traveled without stop throughout the night, changing horses at every post station, and making about eight miles an hour over a fairly good road. The sun did not set until half-past 9 and rose again about half-past 2, so that it was not at any time very dark. The villages through which we passed were sometimes of

great extent, but consisted almost invariably of only two lines of log houses standing with their gables to the road, and separated one from another by inclosed yards without a sign anywhere of vegetation or trees. One of these villages formed a double row five miles in length of separate houses, all fronting on the Tsar's highway. Around every village there was an inclosed area of pasture land, varying in extent from 200 to 500 acres, within which were kept the inhabitants' cattle; and at the point where the inclosing fence crossed the road, on each side of the village, there were a gate and a gate-keeper's hut. These village gate-keepers are almost always old and broken-down men, and in Siberia they are generally criminal exiles. It is their duty

and filled with smoke by an open fire on the ground.

On the next day after leaving Ekaterineburg we saw for the first time an étape, or exile station house, and began to pass parties of criminals on their way to Siberia. Since the establishment of regular steam communication between Nizhni Novgorod and Perm, and the completion of the Ural Mountain railroad, exiles from points west of the Urals have been transported by rail and barge from the forwarding prisons of Moscow, Nizhni Novgorod, and Kazan to Ekaterineburg. None of them are now compelled to march until after they have crossed the Urals, when those destined for points in western Siberia are

attempt to describe the life of such a party on the road.

On the second day after our departure from Ekaterineburg, as we were passing through a rather open forest between the villages of Markova and Tugulimskaya, our driver suddenly pulled up his horses, and turning to us said," Vot granitsa " ["Here is the boundary"]. We sprang out of the tarantas and saw, standing by the roadside, a square pillar ten or twelve feet in height, of stuccoed or plastered brick, bearing on one side the coat of arms of the European province of Perm, and on the other that of the Asiatic province of Tobolsk. It was the boundary post of Siberia. No other spot between St. Petersburg and the Pacific

is more full of painful suggestions, and none has for the traveler a more melancholy interest than the little opening in the forest where stands this grief-consecrated pillar. Here hundreds of thousands of exiled human beings — men, women, and children; princes, nobles, and peasants have bidden good-bye forever to friends, country, and home.

No other boundary post in the world has witnessed so much human suffering, or been passed by such a multitude of heart-broken people. More than 170,000 exiles have traveled this road since 1878, and more than half a million since the beginning of the present century. As the boundary post is situated about half-way between the last European and the first Siberian étape, it has always been customary to allow exile parties to stop here for rest and for a last good-bye to home and country. The Russian peasant, even when a criminal, is deeply attached to his native land; and heart-rending scenes have been witnessed around the boundary pillar when such a party, overtaken perhaps by frost and snow in the early autumn, stopped here for a last farewell. Some gave way to unrestrained grief; some comforted the weeping; some knelt and pressed their faces to the loved soil of their native country, and collected a little earth to take with them into exile; and a few pressed their lips to the European side of the cold brick pillar, as if kissing good-bye forever to all that it symbolized.

At last the stern order "Stroisa!" [" Form ranks!"] from the under officer of the convoy put an end to the rest and the leave-taking, and at the word " March!" the gray-coated troop of exiles and convicts crossed themselves hastily all together, and, with a confused jingling of chains and leg-fetters, moved slowly away past the boundary post into Siberia.

Until recently the Siberian boundary post was covered with brief inscriptions, good-byes, and the names of exiles scratched or penciled on the hard cement with which the pillar was originally overlaid. At the time of our visit, however, most of this hard plaster had apparently been pounded off, and only a few words, names, and initials remained. Many of the inscriptions, although brief, were significant and touching. In one place, in a man's hand, had been written the words " Praschai Marya!" [“ Good-bye, Mary!"] Who the writer was, who Mary was, there is nothing now left to show; but it may be that to the exile who scratched this last farewell on the boundary pillar "Mary" was all the world, and that in crossing the Siberian line the writer was leaving behind him forever, not only home and country, but love.

After picking a few flowers from the grass at the base of the boundary pillar, we climbed into our carriage, said "Good-bye" to Europe, as hundreds of thousands had said good-bye before us, and rode away into Siberia.

WH

HE golden hands of the parlor clock point glimmeringly to an hour after midnight and the house is still. The gas is turned almost out, but the flickering of the dying sea-coal fire in the grate fitfully illumines the forms and faces of two young women who are seated before it talking earnestly in low tones. It is apparent from their costumes that they have been spending the evening out.

The fair girl in the low chair, gazing pensively into the fire, is Maud Elliott, the daughter of the house. Not generally called handsome, her features are good and well balanced, and her face is altogether a sweet and wholesome one. She is rather tall, and the most critical admit that she has a fine figure. Her eyes are blue, and their clear, candid expression indicates an unusually sincere and simple character. But, unfortunately, it is only her friends who are fully conversant with the expression of her eyes, for she is very shy. Shyness in little people is frequently piquant, but its effect in girls of the Juno style is too often that of awkwardness. Her friends call Maud Elliott stately; those who do not like her call her stiff; while indifferent persons speak of her as rather

too reserved and dignified in manner to be pleasing. In fact, her excess of dignity is merely the cloak of her shyness, and nobody knows better than she that there is too much of it. Those who know her at all well, know that she is not dull, but with mere acquaintances she often passes for that. Only her intimate friends are aware what wit and intelligence, what warmth and strength of feeling, her coldness, when in company, conceals.

No one better understands this, because no one knows her better or has known her longer, than her present companion before the fire, Lucy Merritt. They were room-mates and bosom friends at boarding-school; and Lucy, who recently has been married, is now on her first visit to her friend since that event. She is seated on a hassock, with her hands clasped over her knees, looking up at Maud-an attitude well suited to her petite figure. She is going home on the morrow, or rather on the day already begun; and this fact, together with the absorbing nature of the present conversation, accounts for the lateness of the session.

"And so, Maud," she is saying while she regards her friend with an expression at once sympathetic and amused-" and so that is what has been making your letters so dismal lately. I fancied that nothing less could suggest such