e cemetery--myself walking,
this time, beside him. His stature placed his head on a level with my
shoulder only, and caused his straw hat to conceal his features. Hence,
since I wished to look at him as he discoursed, I found myself forced
to walk with head bent, as though I had been escorting a woman.

"No, that is not the way to do it," presently he continued in the soft,
civil voice of one who has a complaint to present. "Any such proceeding
is merely a mark of barbarism--of a complete lack of observation of men
and life."

With a hand taken from one of his pockets, he traced a large circle in
the air.

"Do you know the meaning of that?" he inquired.

"Its meaning is death," was my diffident reply, made with a shrug of
the shoulders.

A shake of his head disclosed to me a keen, agreeable, finely cut face
as he pronounced the following Slavonic words:

"'Smertu smert vsekonechnie pogublena bwist.'" [Death hath been for
ever overthrown by death."]

"Do you know that passage?" he added presently.

Yet it was in silence that we walked the next ten paces--he threading
his way along the rough, grassy path at considerable speed. Suddenly he
halted, raised his hat from his head, and proffered me a hand.

"Young man," he said, "let us make one another's better acquaintance. I
am Lieutenant Savva Yaloylev Khorvat, formerly of the State Remount
Establishment, subsequently of the Department of Imperial Lands. I am a
man who, after never having been found officially remiss, am living in
honourable retirement--a man at once a householder, a widower, and a
person of hasty temper."

Then, after a pause, he added:

"Vice-Governor Khorvat of Tambov is my brother--a younger brother; he
being fifty-five, and I sixty-one, si-i-ixty one."

His speech was rapid, but as precise as though no mistake was
permissible in its delivery.

"Also," he continued, "as a man cognisant of every possible species of
cemetery, I am much dissatisfied with this one. In fact, never
satisfied with such places am I."

Here he brandished his fist in the air, and described a large arc over
the crosses.

"Let us sit down," he said, "and I will explain things."

So, after that we had seated ourselves on a bench beside a white
oratory, and Lieutenant Khorvat had taken off his hat, and with a blue
handkerchief wiped his forehead and the thick silvery hair which
bristled from the knobs of his scalp, he continued:

"Mark you well the word kladbis