e to pass before they met: the
mystic, Israel Kensky, Cherry Bim the modern knight-errant, and Malcolm
Hay.

CHAPTER VII

KENSKY OF KIEFF

Malcolm Hay drew rein half a verst from the Church of St. Andrea. Though
his shaggy little horse showed no signs of distress, Malcolm kicked his
feet free from the stirrups and descended, for his journey had been a
long one, the day was poisonously hot and the steppe across which he had
ridden, for all its golden beauty, its wealth of blue cornflour and
yellow genista, had been wearisome. Overhead the sky was an unbroken
bowl of blue and at its zenith rode a brazen merciless sun.

He took a leather cigar-case from his pocket, extracted a long black
cheroot and lit it; then, leaving his horse to its own devices, he
mounted the bank by the side of the road, from whence he could look
across the valley of the Dneiper. That majestic river lay beneath him
and to the right.

Before him, at the foot of the long, steep and winding road, lay the
quarter which is called Podol.

For the rest his horizon was filled with a jumble of buildings,
magnificent or squalid; the half-revealed roofs on the wooded slopes of
the four hills, and the ragged fringe of belfry and glittering cupola
which made up the picture of Kieff.

The month was June and the year of grace 1914, and Malcolm Hay, chief
engineer of the Ukraine-American Oil Corporation, had no other thought
in his mind, as he looked upon the undoubted beauty of Kieff, than that
it would be a very pleasant place to leave. He climbed the broken stone
wall and stood, his hands thrust deeply into his breeches pockets,
watching the scene. It was one of those innumerable holy days which the
Russian peasant celebrated with such zest. Rather it was the second of
three consecutive feast days and, as Malcolm knew, there was small
chance of any work being done on the field until his labourers had taken
their fill of holiness, and had slept off the colossal drunk which
inevitably followed this pious exercise.

A young peasant, wearing a sheepskin coat despite the stifling heat of
the day, walked quickly up the hill leading a laden donkey. The man
stopped when he was abreast of Malcolm, took a cigarette from the inside
of his coat and lit it.

"God save you, _dudushka_," he said cheerfully.

Malcolm was so used to being addressed as "little grandfather," and
that for all his obvious youth, that he saw nothing funny in the
address.

"God