sposed we relinquished all designs on his pelt,
consoling ourselves with the reflection that it would not be good at
this season of the year. We camped out on the crest of the hill, upon a
huge rug, soft and thick, the work of serfs in former days, representing
an art now well-nigh lost, and feasted on nut-sweet crayfish from the
Volga, new potatoes cooked in our gypsy kettle, curds, sour black bread,
and other more conventional delicacies. The rain pattered softly on us,
--we disdained umbrellas,--and on the pine needles, rising in
hillocks, here and there, over snowy great mushrooms, of a sort to be
salted and eaten during fasts. The wife of the priest, who is condemned
to so much fasting, had a wonderfully keen instinct for these particular
mushrooms, and had explained to us all their merits, which seemed
obscure to our non-fasting souls. Our Russian forester regaled us with
forest lore, as we lay on our backs to look at the tops of the trees.
But, to my amazement, he had never heard of the _Leshi_ and the
_Vodyanoi_, the wood-king and water-king of the folk-tales. At all
events, he had never seen them, nor heard their weird frolics in the
boughs and waves. The Mordvinian contributed to the entertainment by
telling us of his people's costumes and habits, and gave us a lesson in
his language, which was of the Tatar-Finnish variety. Like the Tchuvashi
and other tribes here on the Volga, the Mordvinians furnish pleasurable
excitement and bewilderment to ethnographists and students of religions.

These simple amusements came to an end all too soon, despite the rain.
We were seized with a fancy to try the peasant _telyega_ for the
descent, and packed ourselves in with the rug and utensils. Our
Mordvinian, swarthy and gray-eyed, walked beside us, casting glances of
inquiry at us, as the shaggy little horse plunged along, to ascertain
our degrees of satisfaction with the experiment. He thrust the dripping
boughs from our faces with graceful, natural courtesy; and when we
alighted, breathless and shaken to a pulp, at the forester's hut, where
our carriages awaited us, he picked up the hairpins and gave them to us
gravely, one by one, as needed. We were so entirely content with our
_telyega_ experience that we were in no undue haste to repeat it. We
drove home in the persistent rain, which had affected neither our bodies
nor our spirits, bearing a trophy of unfringed gentians to add to our
collection of goldenrod, harebells, r