between him and the ocean in the hundred miles of his arrow-like
path.

Something of this longing came upon the Cossack, as he suddenly remembered
the sour taste of the kvass, to the recollection of which he had been
somehow led by a train of thought which had begun with Vjera's love for
the Count, to end abruptly in a camp kettle. For the heart of man is much
the same everywhere, and there is nothing to show that the step from the
sublime to the ridiculous is any longer in the Don country than in any
other part of the world. But between poor Johann Schmidt and his draught
of kvass there lay obstacles not encountered by the reindeer in his race
for the Arctic Ocean. There was the wife, and there were the children, and
there was the vast distance, so vast that it might have discouraged even
the fleet-footed scourer of the northern snows. Johann Schmidt might long
for his kvass, and draw in his thin, wan lips at the thought of the taste
of it, and bend his black brows and close his sharp eyes as in a dream--it
was all of no use, there was no change in store for him. He had cast his
lot in the land of beer and sausages, and he must work out his salvation
and the support of his family without a ladleful of the old familiar brew
to satisfy his unreasonable caprices.

So, last of all those concerned in the events of the evening, Johann
Schmidt went home to bed and to rest. That power, at least, had remained
with him. Whenever he lay down he could close his eyes and be asleep, and
forget the troubles and the mean trifles of his thorny existence. In this
respect he had the advantage of the others.

Vjera lay down, indeed, but the attempt to sleep seemed more painful than
the accepted reality of waking. The night was the most terrible in her
remembrance, filled as it was with anxiety for the fate of the man she so
dearly loved. To her still childlike inexperience of the world, the
circumstances seemed as full of fear and danger as though the poor Count
had been put upon his trial for a murder or a robbery on an enormous
scale, instead of being merely detained because he could not give a
satisfactory account of a puppet which had been found in his possession.
In the poor girl's imagination arose visions of judges, awful personages
in funereal robes and huge Hack caps, with cruel lips and hard, steely
eyes, sitting in solemn state in a gloomy hall and dispensing death,
disgrace, or long terms of prison, at the very least, to all