. Instead of images such as the Roman Catholics
use, the Russians have paintings dealing with the life of Christ, almost
obscuring the ceiling and the walls. There are no pews such as we find
in our own churches, for the Russian remains standing during his
ceremony and kneels upon the stone floor in time of prayer. So one
finds only a few chairs scattered about for old persons and ill ones.

Mildred secured a stool and sat down in the shadow, gazing up toward the
high altar.

She was an Episcopalian, therefore the Russian church and its services
did not seem so unusual to her as they did to Barbara Meade. Really she
had been deeply impressed by the few services she had seen. There was no
organ and no music save the intoning of the voices of the priests, and
the words of the service she could not understand. Nevertheless the
Russians were a deeply religious people and perhaps their reverence
had influenced the American girl.

This afternoon, although alone, Mildred felt strangely at peace. Indeed,
her eyes were cast down and her hands clasped in prayer, when the noise
of some one else entering the church disturbed her reverie.

To the girl's surprise the figure was that of a man whom the next
instant she recognized as General Alexis. He had come into the church
without a member of his staff, so that evidently he too desired to be
alone for prayer.

What should she do? Mildred was too confused to decide immediately.
Feeling herself an intruder, yet she did not wish to create a stir and
draw attention to herself by hastily leaving.

General Alexis had evidently not seen her, too intent upon his own
devotions. For he had at once approached the altar and knelt reverently
before it.

Mildred kept silent, hardly conscious of her own absorption and
forgetting her meditations in her interest in the kneeling soldier.

In these days of little faith, small wonder that it struck Mildred as
inspiring to see this man of many burdens and responsibilities at the
foot of the altar.

From a western window the afternoon sun shone down upon him, revealing
the weary lines in the great soldier's face. He did not look stern or
forbidding to Mildred this afternoon, only deeply careworn and
depressed. However much his soldiers and the Russian people might
trust in his power to bring them safely through an attack at Grovno,
evidently there were hours when the distinguished general suffered like
lesser people. Mildred Thornton understoo