had been the village reprobate and drunkard; he had clothed himself for years in the same filthy rags; his wife and children had led the life of dogs. Every one felt relieved when it was discovered that he had left Slavo. No one knew whither he had gone, and every one was surprised when one summer evening he returned. He had been away among the Germans, he said simply, and they had given him work, and had taught his stiff fingers to write a little, and had given him a book, a beautiful book, which he had learned to read, and he had seen from the book what a great sinner he had been, and how good God was. He could stay away no longer, but had come back to his home, and, God helping him, he would lead a new life, and look forward to a happy remainder of days. This old man was Ivan Kulmenko.

Like all true disciples the world over he began at once to tell to others the message that had brought such comfort to his own soul, that had brought so great a change in his life. The village drunkard had become the village model. The peasants flocked to his cottage, now transformed to a neat and cheerful abode, and gazed with wonder and admiration at the shining walls, and the neat thatch and the springing flowers and vegetables, at the smiling wife and healthy boy, the crude prints of Luther and Kaiser William on the wall which to them were works of art of the highest excellence, at his books, and clean clothes, and white shirts. Some

shook their heads and predicted that misfortune must surely fall on the head of this old innovator; others, the younger men, were stirred to emulation, and took away many a

useful hint.

But it was on Sundays that old Kulmenko had most visitors. It got abroad that as many as liked could come to his cottage on Sunday evenings, and be welcome. His wife made tea and baked famous pirogi, and when these were dispatched the old man would stand before all the people, and show them how the Germans worshipped God. He had brought home with him some rough Russian translations of German hymns, and in his memory he had stored away fragments of the tunes that the German colonists used to sing. Kulmenko used to piece the tunes and words together, and render the result to his hearers. But no one saw anything ludicrous in the scene; they were impressed and awed by words the like of which they had never before listened to; and before long they

sang the rudely improvised hymns better than Kulmenko himself. But it was not so much the hymns as the New Testament that impressed them. At one sitting old Ivan would read them a whole gospel, and they would all look sad when he read that Jesus wept, and would break into floods of tears when he recited the awful and pathetic story of the Cross and Passion. A few Testaments that Kulmenko had brought home with him found their way among the people, and were eagerly read. Hardly a year had passed before a little band of disciples were gathered round the old man. They hung on his words; they prayed, and sang, and read their gospels; they eschewed the village drink-shop, and ignored the ridicule of the Hebrew who kept it, and of the orthodox villagers who could only see in the great change that had been wrought some sort of madness which must surely end in catastrophe.

But the Stundists continued to meet year after year, and slowly and surely they added to their influence and numbers. When their position had been firmly established, not only in Slavo, but in many a neighbouring village as well, old Kulmenko died, but he had appointed Mikhail his son as his successor. When our story opens it was Mikhail who led the Stundists of Slavo.

Such was the village of the Ukraine in the early spring of the year 1877.

CHAPTER II.-A COURT LADY.

F Slavo and the southern steppe looked pleasant in the spring sunshine, if nature was there

putting on her vernal garments of green in those early days of April, the huge northern capital still remained shrouded in its deep winter covering of snow. The great rivers and the canals which everywhere intersect. the city were still frozen. The long, straightNevsky Prospect, the Regent Street of St. Petersburg, looked its best, for the roadway was in magnificent condition for sleighing, and everyone who knows a Russian city knows that when the sleighs are out the city is at its gayest. It was getting late in the afternoon, the lofty spire of the Admiralty, and the cupolas of a hundred churches, glowed in the red rays of the sinking sun; so did the long granite colonnades of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan, and thousands of windows as well flamed back the glories of the west. Pedestrians in a thick, dark

It

stream, and wrapped in furs, sauntered along the northern side of the noble street where the principal shops are, and along the Court quay by the Neva in front of the huge red Winter Palace. was a brilliant throng. No sign of want or poverty showed itself. The want and the poverty were hidden away in the thousands of low damp rooms in the back streets, and strong bodies of police and gendarmes were moving about either on foot or on horseback, taking care that they did not obtrude themselves unduly on the notice of the promenaders.

A Russian in rich furs and well fed feels an unpleasant sensation at the sight of a starving brother in rags when the thermometer is below zero, and is thankful to the police for keeping him out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind, is also a Russian proverb.

Not far from the Admiralty end of the famous thoroughfare of the Nevsky, stands a huge, palacelike structure faced all over with florid designs in stucco. You knew at a glance that a rich man had built it, and that he had employed an architect whose tastes were vulgar and ostentatious. The plaster garlands of tropical fruits and flowers around the windows, and the nymphs and naked cupids supporting them were as incongruous among the frosts and fogs of St. Petersburg as the stern cold front of Salisbury Cathedral would be rising from the warmth and colour of the plains of Lombardy. A long line of handsomely fitted-out sleighs was drawn up before the palace, and every now and then other sleighs would dash up to the gateway with jingle of silver bells, and discharge befurred officers or civilians. One could see their ribbons and orders, their medals and gold lace, as with more than feminine love of display they twitched their furs to one side to let the pedestrians get a glimpse of their quality. Counts and princes, generals, state-councillors and actual privy-councillors, important chinovniki and heads of departments came dashing up, some with ladies accompanying them, but mostly alone, for the ladies had arrived earlier. The meek crowd around the gateway was kept in line by policemen who stood at the salute as the greater notabilities passed in.

one of

The occasion of all the bustle was Countess Olga Navrotska's monthly receptions. These were among the most famous of the social celebrations in St. Petersburg, and invitations to attend them were in far greater request than commands to attend Court balls. At the latter there was the probability of meeting new men and women, people who, although famous enough in their own particular province, and who may have rendered invaluable service to the Empire, were nevertheless people without distinction in society, whose fathers and mothers were nobodies, and whose French smacked of the public schools; but at Countess Olga's, while one enjoyed the distinguished honour of meeting imperial personagesgrand dukes, and German serenities- -one need never feel that any advantage would be taken of your presence to palm off on you some person of bubble reputation who had only his abilities or faithful services to recommend him. They were leading members of the most exclusive Russian

aristocracy who were now filling the Countess's magnificent rooms. They all knew one another, and they knew no one else. There were no lions here, and among the large crowd, if there was anyone really eminent either as a scholar or as a servant of the State, his distinction gave him no title to be present, if he did not as well belong to some ancient line of Russian boyars who could reckon among their dead ancestors those who had fought at Poltava or Narva.

It was now twilight, and the great marble staircase and the suite of reception rooms were brilliantly lighted. Everything that wealth could purchase was here in lavish profusion. If the gorgeous salons were decorated with a splendour more barbaric than one finds in London or Paris, if more prominence was given to rich gildings, and crystal, and silken hangings than would suit the severer taste of the West, it must be remembered that in these matters, as in many another, Russia is the most westerly of Eastern countries, rather than the most easterly of Western.

But the great defect that one could not help noticing in these brilliant rooms was the utter want of homeliness. They were not rooms for living in, they were rooms for parades, with no sign of the taste of the owner, bare of nick-nacks and the little mementoes of travel, and friendship, and love. Away in a remote corner of the huge house there were two or three little rooms, dainty and homelike enough where the Countess lived. These grand salons were where she acted. On those she lavished taste and love, and the keenest sense of beauty. Art work and photographs, bric-a-brac, to each article of which a story was attached, souvenirs of friends, books-all in the happy confusion, the orderly disorder that she loved. There she was mistress, and was at home. Perhaps she was no less at home on parade, as she called it, but she left the management of that half of her life to her major-domo and the upholsterers, affecting little interest in it, and feeling absolutely

none.

Her life hitherto had been a varied one. Brought up in the strictest seclusion during her girlhood, in a school rigorously reserved for the daughters of nobles, she left it to become the wife of one of the wealthiest landowners in the Empire, Count Lyov Navrotsky. The Count was no longer young, and had formed objectionable tastes in his youth which he adhered to during his married life. Paris and Monte Carlo were his havens of rest when he grew tired of St. Petersburg and its monotonous distractions, and thither he took his girl wife, acquainting her with phases of life which she had never even dreamt of, but the vacuity and vanity of which she was not slow to discover. No such feeling as love ever entered the hearts of either of them.

He was proud of his brilliant young wife, and of her dark, radiant beauty. He felt gratified when he looked at his magnificent rubies twined in her black hair. He was pleased that she could speak so many languages, that her music ravished the hearts of all hearers, that she danced with so wonderful a grace, and dressed to the envy of Frenchwomen. He liked to remember one starlit night at Monte Carlo when she sang a Russian

ballad, accompanying herself on the piano, and as the sounds floated out into the hotel gardens how the crowd of wealthy pleasure-seekers flocked round the open casement in honest admiration of la belle comtesse and her perfect art. She had met hundreds of men who were only names to her, and who had repelled her by their openly-avowed admiration.

a

She entertained a high ideal as to what perfect gentleman should be, and her husband nearly reached it sometimes. He was gentle, generous, forgiving, a bon vivant it is true, but so were all men, she thought. He was perfectly dressed, and perfect in manners. He had been, moreover, a distinguished soldier, and Countess Olga, brought up in the society of soldiers' daughters, believed that no nobler profession than a soldier's could possibly exist. She kept his medals bright with her own hands, and when he went to Court, or otherwise had occasion to wear them, she fastened them on his breast with her own fair fingers, always touching with her lips the silver St. George's Cross which the Emperor himself had bestowed on the Count for signal bravery on the field of battle. But of the strong, deep stream of love there was no vestige, and the strangest part of this was that neither the Countess nor her husband knew of its absence, or felt the want of it.

They were married for two years when a chill caught by the Count in the uncertain climate of the Riviera brought on a series of disorders from which he never recovered. He returned to St. Petersburg, and for over a year he was nursed by his wife with an exemplary patience and skill beyond praise. He always did his best to alleviate the stress upon her, and, although at times suffering intolerable pain, he seldom uttered a petulant word or gave way to the carping querulousness of the sick. Indeed, in those last days, there was a light in his eyes, and an added tenderness in his voice which the young widow afterwards often recalled with tears in her own eyes; and in her heart she believed that the worn out old soldier, the battered old roué, at last, and when it was too late, loved her with all his soul.

The Countess Olga was far too distinguished a person, and far too much in request both at Court and in her own circle of society, to be allowed to remain long in retirement; but when she appeared again it was noticed that although her beauty remained unimpaired, had indeed matured and developed, there was no longer any of that freshness and spring of girlhood which had charmed so many. Her capacity for happiness was in no sense diminished, but an added seriousness rather indicated that her visions of what true happiness was had become loftier and more refined, and that, alas! these visions were subjected to eternal disappointment. If the qualities of kindness, sympathy, tenderness, and goodness were there in richer measure than ever, they could not altogether conceal, indeed, they rather tended to place in bolder relief, the flaws that had also developedwant of purpose and self-government, greed for the praise of her fellows, inordinate, if pardonable, desire to be among those who are renowned. It

was in this last characteristic that she drew apart from her surroundings, from men and women who had no ambition, no daring, no capacity for suffering, who had a holy horror either of rising above or sinking below the dead level of uniformity both of deed and thought that marked their narrow and selfish clique.

She stood in her drawing-room this April afternoon, among the throng of titled and dignifiedlooking nonentities, cool, self-possessed, restrained, appraising most of those around her at their true value, tolerant of their shortcomings it is true, but never failing to discern them.

There is a small and elderly gentleman in black buzzing beside her with a rose-coloured order round his neck, and from time to time she listens, half amused, to his brisk, bird-like chirpings. The man's heart is utterly callous, without a particle of sensitiveness; he is obstinate as a mule, and hard and harsh. But he is making court to her by trying to enlist her sympathies for some great humanitarian scheme for feeding the poor of St. Petersburg with one solid meal of porridge a day. He has no feeling for the poor, he knows his scheme will come to nothing, but he is anxious for his hostess's approval, and collapses altogether when she says that she has far too much respect for the poor to make them dependent on the rich, or expectant of their generosity.

So the little man flutters away, and, to an ancient lady at the other end of the room, expresses his grave doubts that Countess Olga is tainted with many pernicious novelties. But a fat, good-natured colonel of the Guards had overheard the Countess's remark, and asked her in simple terms what she would do if the people could find no work and were starving?

"Ah!" she replied, "I fear I would do nothing. I never have done anything. People have been starving since long before I was born. My own villagers are in want in a hundred ways, and what have I done? What can I do?'

"But we know to the contrary," said the smiling colonel. "We know your village is a model village, and that you give away thousands to the poor.

"If I give my steward a thousand roubles, and ask him to distribute them among the deserving poor, for you will observe it is only the deserving poor we help, the poor who give their humble duty and poor flattery in exchange for our alms-is this helping them in any true or just way? Do you know, Colonel, I would rather nurse a poor, overworked woman's baby for five minutes, and feel the pleasure of that act, than hand her five roubles? The money would corrupt her, harden her, make her greedy and calculating; if I take her child for a few minutes she feels that I'm a woman like herself, and she cries and is soft, and full of hope and courage."

The Countess broke into laughter at the perplexed face before her.

over, and when you next go home, try your hand on the babies."

She walked over to where a tall man in a general's uniform stood. He was General Alekhin, her father's cousin, and for forty years his companion in arms. He had sharp features and watery eyes, and lines about his mouth and eyes that care and dissipation had deeply graven. She put her hand in his arm, and together they crossed the salon to an outer room where the guests were already departing. Privy councillors and great officers of state, and dames of high degree gradually filed past their hostess with a few lightly spoken words of farewell, and out into the brilliant starlit evening where the hubbub and stir of departure had collected the same inane crowd of sightseers

ferred to remain a fine gentleman, a man about town, a flutterer about the court. He had filled light and ornamental positions, living a life full in the eyes of the public that had entailed enormous expenditure on him. Before he had reached his prime he was plunged in the gravest financial difficulties.

From that time began his rapid fall. The taste of the bitterness of life was no tonic to his moral nature, and he began to oscillate between wild outbreaks of frenzied pleasure-seeking and dark periods of abusive introspection.

He knew he was a failure, the most terrible of all knowledge, and all that he was sensible of now was the hardly varying record of his own sin and folly. Thumbing over this most dismal of all records he had few illusions left about himself, and at last, at the end of his days, the sight of pleasures in which he could not or dared not take part moved him at times to a species of madness.

He would frequently fly to the consolation of religion, and more than once he put on a penitential hair shirt in the very early morning and went to a holy monk of established reputation for sanctity, to confess his sins and seek pardon. There were periods when the terror of an avenging Deity was so present with him that he would lock himself into his room for days, and no superstitious notion was low enough or absurd enough to practise to avert the ire of an angry God. He had not married in early life, holding women in contempt, and hating the restraints which married life should impose.

But even in middle life he might have got over these objections. Like so many of his set he might have settled down to the dull decorum of the life of his married friends, and varied it with the usual sorry intrigues, had there not been the mordant memory of a terrible sin of years ago that haunted him, and which always quenched his gaiety even its wildest outbursts.

No one knew about that past but himself and his confessor, but this did not help him to bear the burden of it with greater ease; and often in the panic of his fits of repentance he felt tempted to tell the world what he had done, and then to skulk away from the world for ever, and hide his head in the silent monastery where his friend the monk would minister to his soul's comfort for the short remainder of his days.

In all the turmoil and trouble of his soul, in all his alternations of forced gaiety and profound gloom, he had kept a tender place of affection for

his two nephews, the sons of a long-deceased brother. If he had only an ordinary liking for Sergei the younger, he lavished on his brother Vladimir all the warmth of love which his seared and withered heart contained. He was living in the old house of his fathers at Slavo when the two boys were brought to him by their dying mother. He had no wish to be saddled with these encumbrances, for he could not but feel that he was a poor mentor to youth, and that he would find it next to impossible to fill the duties of a conscientious guardian. But he promised to take care of them, to educate and float them on the world.

With Sergei his task was easy enough. From the first the boy was strong, self-reliant, independent, and although his youthful escapades were numerous and serious enough they were never vicious or mean. The German

tutor on whom devolved most
of the responsibilities of
guardianship took to him at
once and forgave him much
of his disinclination to study
because of his frank genial
ways and his entire freedom
from everything that
false.

was

The great handsome fairhaired youth was adored by the villagers. He knew every one's cottage and strip of land, how many horses and dogs each peasant possessed; and on his idle days, and they were frequent, he wrestled, swam, fished and hunted rats with the village boys, obtaining a deep insight into the life of the place, and loving with all his simple heart everything that was pure, and natural, and true among those humble friends of his.

Young Mikhail Kulmenko, the Stundist's son, was his

studies or for a soldier's life should be drafted as a cadet to a crack dragoon regiment permanently stationed in the capital. During the term of his military studies Sergei made repeated visits to the old ramshackle place in Slavo, and renewed his friendship with his old companions, singling out young Kulmenko as the recipient of all his confidences. These saw in him no change in disposition or manner; he was as ready as ever to enter into all their sport, and to share and advise them in their troubles. But as soon as he was gazetted to his regiments his visits to Slavo ceased, and he finally took up his residence in St. Petersburg.

Perhaps no greater contrast could well be imagined than the careers of these two brothers, beginning, as it were, from the same starting

chief companion, a serious-minded and refined youth, and there were times when these two would separate themselves from the rest of their companions, and in long walks over the breezy steppe, or down among the sedge fringing the river, would hold converse on things that lifted their young hearts high above earth. When the time came at last that Sergei was to leave Slavo for the military academy at St. Petersburg, there was a good deal of hand-shaking between him and his friends; all the favourite places had to be visited for the last time; and when the General's carriage bore him away to Kief the big strong fellows who gathered at the ferry to see the last of him rubbed the tears away from their eyes, and Sergei turned his face away from his uncle and sobbed like a child.

General Alekhin did his utmost to further Sergei's interests at the great military school. He made friends with all sorts and conditions of men, and it was finally arranged that the young man who had shown no particular aptitude for military

point. Vladimir, the elder of the two by a year, had from the first the affection of the General in a far greater degree than his brother. His every whim was gratified. During their boyhood Sergei would be left in Slavo while he was selected to accompany the General on his visits to the capital, and uncle and nephew used to perambulate the toy shops and confectioners, making lavish purchases of the articles dear to the hearts of boys. But the purchases were for Vladimir; Sergei was always left out in the cold.

Often enough such tactless management led to quarrel and combat between the boys, and as Vladimir usually came off second best in these trials of strength he would run to his uncle with bitter complaints and untrue stories of their cause. Sergei accepted his punishment in silence and bore no malice.

Vladimir avoided intimacy with the young men of the village, never participated in any of their sports, and seldom visited their cottages. He