ft me to my own devices, he
re-entered the room and took up my baggage, indicating thereby that he
agreed to my last offer.

The sum agreed upon would have been, under ordinary circumstances,
more than sufficient, but before proceeding far I discovered that the
circumstances were by no means ordinary, and I began to understand the
pantomimic gesticulation which had puzzled me during the negotiations.
Heavy rain had fallen without interruption for several days, and now the
track on which we were travelling could not, without poetical license,
be described as a road. In some parts it resembled a water-course, in
others a quagmire, and at least during the first half of the journey I
was constantly reminded of that stage in the work of creation when the
water was not yet separated from the dry land. During the few moments
when the work of keeping my balance and preventing my baggage from being
lost did not engross all my attention, I speculated on the possibility
of inventing a boat-carriage, to be drawn by some amphibious quadruped.
Fortunately our two lean, wiry little horses did not object to being
used as aquatic animals. They took the water bravely, and plunged
through the mud in gallant style. The telega in which we were seated--a
four-wheeled skeleton cart--did not submit to the ill-treatment so
silently. It creaked out its remonstrances and entreaties, and at
the more difficult spots threatened to go to pieces; but its owner
understood its character and capabilities, and paid no attention to its
ominous threats. Once, indeed, a wheel came off, but it was soon fished
out of the mud and replaced, and no further casualty occurred.

The horses did their work so well that when about midday we arrived at
a village, I could not refuse to let them have some rest and
refreshment--all the more as my own thoughts had begun to turn in that
direction.

The village, like villages in that part of the country generally,
consisted of two long parallel rows of wooden houses. The road--if a
stratum of deep mud can be called by that name--formed the intervening
space. All the houses turned their gables to the passerby, and some of
them had pretensions to architectural decoration in the form of rude
perforated woodwork. Between the houses, and in a line with them, were
great wooden gates and high wooden fences, separating the courtyards
from the road. Into one of these yards, near the farther end of the
village, our horses turned of