and everyone traveling it stopped at the same inns at night. So he called the courier, a merry Chinese youth, and it was all arranged on the spot that a sleigh would call for me at three that afternoon.

It was then twelve. Mrs. Kosloff dumped the baby with a neighbor and went out to help me buy food for the trip and big felt boots. Everyone in Siberia wears felt boots to the knees, huge and shapeless and awkward to walk in, but the only things to keep feet warm in this bitter climate. I tried on a dozen pairs in as many little stalls in the market before I found some that were in the least comfortable.

The sleigh was waiting when we got home, and Mr. Kosloff with a bottle of vodka, which he said I must drink when I got cold but must not give to the drivers. I packed and got into my furlined leather suit in a great rush and swallowed some dinner and kissed all the Kosloffs. They had been so generous and hospitable that I wished I could have done more for them than leave some clothes behind that I said I had n't room for.

We drove to the inn from which we were to start and found fourteen sledges in the yard all loaded with crates of matches. It seemed that the courier and I were supposed to perch on top of the matches. The consul had told me that the courier was taking two sleighs and that I should have one all to myself, but the courier assured me that fourteen sledges were better than two because of bandits, and he had the drivers arrange one of them more comfortably for me.

The sledges are crude triangular little rafts made of a rough network of small logs and dragged along on very low runners. The usual passenger sleighs have covers over them, something like a Peking cart, and are pulled by two horses, but these were

quite uncovered, and as they were heavily loaded and had only one horse apiece my heart sank to think how slowly they would travel.

The Russian drivers, who look like pirates but seem to be good-hearted enough, fixed a little nest for me, put straw on the logs and my bed roll on top of that, and matches and my luggage all around the edge. There is n't room to stretch out my legs, so I get cramped, but it is better than being exposed to the weather.

They were hours getting ready to start, with a great bustle of roping boxes and feeding horses and mending harness. The sun had set and I thought they were really ready at last when everyone yelled 'Chai pit!' ('Drink tea!') and we all piled into the low, dark little inn. It was full of men sitting around long rough tables, and fitted exactly my picture of what a den of bandits ought to look like. The men were swarthy and unshaven and were dressed in rough, dirty sheepskin clothes with gay sashes around their waists.

A red-bearded chap at the head of one table, evidently the innkeeper, was settling accounts with a crowd of men, which consisted in much shouting and pounding of the table till I thought there'd be a riot. At another table there was a huge samovar and men were drinking tea out of wooden bowls and munching hunks of black bread. They called to me to sit down with them and gave me a bowl of tea and sugar for it. They all seem to know the Chinese courier, and call him 'Kitaiski,' which means 'Chinese.'

We were off at last, about seven. The drivers tucked me into my sleeping bag as far as I could get with my big boots and fur suit and big fur coat on top of that, and covered me over with fur and canvas till I thought I could never get cold, though the town

thermometer registered forty degrees below zero Fahrenheit when we left.

I could n't see out of my nest at all, and we went crunching along on the snow with bells jingling for what seemed like days and nights before we stopped. And when we did I was so numb that I could scarcely struggle out from under cover. When I got my head out the world seemed very weird indeed nothing but wide stretches of snow in every direction. Misty flurries of snow were falling and there was no light but the light from the snow. The air felt biting cold on my face. In the dim white light I could see that the drivers were unhitching the horses, which seemed mysterious, as there was no sign of any shelter.

Then I saw that they were leading them into a black hole in a snowdrift. Kitaiski went in, too, and I tumbled out of my sledge and followed him. He lit matches so I could see a little. We were in a great low square cave full of horses, on the far side of which was a mud wall and a little door in the wall about three feet high. It all seemed like the weirdest kind of an Arabian Night out of a completely white and empty world into that black cave of horses, the flare of a match lighting it a little way; the brown side of a great horse, heads of others; then darkness and stumbling till the next flare.

Then the little door pulled open and we climbed into another wide low room, smoke-filled, and lit with candlelight and firelight. Near the door a scrawny woman in a loose dirty white cotton garment and a once white kerchief was stuffing great branches of twigs into a crackling fire in a low mud fireplace. Behind her, in the centre of the room, was a round table about a foot high with a samovar beside it and pirate drivers sitting around it drinking tea. In dark corners sleepy heads were appearing from under bed covers and

brown arms and legs struggling into white clothes.

Kitaiski led me into an inner room, where the floor was covered with felts and a dozen figures were sleeping. I looked at my watch and it was two o'clock. Kitaiski helped me bring in my bed roll and I was soon asleep on the floor.

I was half conscious of a good deal of talking and shouting and opening and closing of doors all night, but the first time I really wakened daylight was beginning to creep in through the one tiny window, where a shaft was dug from the surface of the snow. An old woman crawled out from under covers on a wooden bed against the wall. I watched her dress and wash in a basin of water and go over to the little window, kneel, and bow her head to the ground, muttering prayers all the while, all this in the half dawn. Then children began to cry and other women appeared and dressed them. They brought out a low round table and a samovar and invited Kitaiski and me to have tea with the family.

I fished a loaf of bread out of the sack in my sledge to eat with my tea, and it was frozen as hard as a lump of ice. The old woman put it on the top of the samovar to thaw.

Kitaiski tells me these people are Kazaks, a tribe of Kirghiz. The Russians call them all Kirghiz, but the true Kirghiz live mostly in the Pamirs. They are Mohammedans, though not very strict about it. He can talk their queer guttural language. The women wear white kerchiefs with a square of red embroidery under the chin and loose calico clothes, full long gowns and tight short-skirted jackets, and silver rings, bracelets, and earrings.

The only pieces of furniture in the room are two wooden beds, curved up at the ends like a Chinese sacrifice table, but lower and wider. They are

Everywhere Catholic clergy and laity would follow it-everywhere but in Italy itself. Vale Roma!

I was no stranger to Rome. My experience both as American press correspondent and as an official of our government afforded me unusual opportunities for observation and study. The conclusions of the late twenties were not the results of an emotional Cook's tour of Italy, but the silted knowledge of several years in Rome. Gradually my Catholic faith had left me. My spirit, long troubled, was become strangely quiet. For the moment I was an agnostic. But my agnosticism was not the end but the beginning of constructive thought.

It was just a month after I had left Italy that I met the American priest in England. The attraction of mediaval church architecture had drawn me to the English cathedral towns. We stood together in the vast nave of Canterbury. In the past there had been other clergymen upon whom I poured the mingled currents of my soul. Not many-six or seven, perhaps; all Roman Catholics save one Episcopal bishop of happy memory. The Romans had become instantly 'professional.' I was a 'lost sheep,' or an 'intellectual upstart.' One beautiful exception there was an American Jesuit of 'the understanding heart,' now dead, whom I had met in the Gregorian University at Rome.

And now here was this indulgent 'Father,' standing in the shining beauty of the reredos of Canterbury! My youthful rationalism touched but did not revolt him. He was human enough to hear my dilemma and divine enough to comment upon it intelligently.

'Do you go to church now?' he kindly asked when I had finished.

'Occasionally to an Anglican service,' I replied. 'But even there I find that one is invited to sleep upon the stuffy

pillow of Theology. The fact that Theology has all but smothered religion in the Roman Church does not seem to trouble or influence anybody.'

At this remark the good Father's eyes lighted with sudden humor. For a moment only. The smiling twinkle passed and he spoke seriously.

"That's right. You are an apprentice. Go to some church and manifest a good intention toward the Master. In the end the God of humanity will set your topsy-turvy religious house to rights. Love is the divine housekeeper.'

'Do you mean, Father, that there is no essential error in individual religious thinking?'

'I say, my son, that there is essential religious error in your not thinking. The more highly organized, the more ecclesiastically authoritative the Church is, the less conspicuous the religion of good works among its members. Scientific history will not bear false witness against its neighbors!'

That was all. The priest went his way and I went mine. He took my American address, but did not offer his own. I had nothing but his ordinary family name. The time was almost a decade ago.

Upon returning to the United States I made some confidential inquiries about the background of this priest who so instantly and completely understood me. The findings had interest and significance. He was a prominent professor at a Catholic college in the West. For thirteen years his public writings on religious subjects had enjoyed the episcopal imprimatur of approval. To the hierarchy's outer eye he was orthodox, or at least sufficiently orthodox to be tolerated.

Indeed, I found out more than this during the investigation. Extraordinary facts came to light. The priestprofessor was one of a growing number of Catholic clergymen who in their