;
mid-day in a Russian forest in winter. These places and these times are
good for convalescent atheists and such as pose as unbelievers--the
cheapest form of notoriety.

Paul had requested Catrina and Maggie to drive as quietly as possible
through the forest. The warning was unnecessary, for the stillness of
snow is infectious, while the beauty of the scene seemed to command
silence. As usual, Catrina drove without bells. The one attendant on his
perch behind was a fur-clad statue of servitude and silence. Maggie,
leaning back, hidden to the eyes in her sables, had nothing to say to
her companion. The way lay through forests of pine--trackless,
motionless, virgin. The sun, filtering through the snow-laden branches,
cast a subdued golden light upon the ruddy upright trunks of the trees.
At times a willow-grouse, white as the snow, light and graceful on the
wing, rose from the branch where he had been laughing to his mate with a
low, cooing laugh, and fluttered away over the trees.

"A kooropatka," said Catrina, who knew the life of the forest almost as
well as Paul, whose very existence was wrapped up in these things.

Far over the summits of the pines a snipe seemed to be wheeling a
sentinel round. He followed them as they sped along, calling out all the
while his deep warning note, like that of a lamb crouching beneath a
hedge where the wind is not tempered.

Once or twice they heard the dismal howl of a wolf--the most melancholy,
the weirdest, the most hopeless of nature's calls. The whole forest
seemed to be on the alert--astir and in suspense. The wolf, disturbed in
his lair, no doubt heard and understood the cry of the watchful snipe
and the sudden silence of the willow-grouse, who loves to sit and laugh
when all is safe. A clumsy capercailzie, swinging along over the trees
with a great flap and rush of wings, seemed to be intent on his own
solitary, majestic business--a very king among the fowls of the air.

Amid the topmost branches of the pines the wind whispered and stirred
like a child in sleep; but beneath all was still. Every branch stood
motionless beneath its burden of snow. The air was thin, exhilarating,
brilliant--like dry champagne. It seemed to send the blood coursing
through the veins with a very joy of life.

Catrina noted all these things while cleverly handling her ponies. They
spoke to her with a thousand voices. She had roamed in these same
forests with Paul, who loved them and understood