best friend
becomes your deadly enemy, and the fact of his being one stride in
advance of you is an injury only to be atoned by blood. Such is the
precise point that we have reached now; and when we turn from exchanging
malignant looks with each other, it is only to watch with ominous
eagerness for the coming in sight of the painted verst-posts, which
somehow appear to succeed one another far more slowly than they did an
hour ago.

By the middle of the fourth hour we are marching with coats off and
sleeves rolled up, like amateur butchers; and although our "pace" is as
good as ever, the elastic swing of our first start is now replaced by
that dogged, "hard-and-heavy" tramp which marks the point where the
flesh and the spirit begin to pull in opposite directions. Were either
of us alone, the pace would probably slacken at once, and each may
safely say in his heart, as Condorcet said of the dying D'Alembert,
"Had I not been there he _must_ have flinched!"

But just as the fourth hour comes to an end (during which we have looked
at our watches as often as Wellington during the terrible mid-day hours
that preceded the distant boom of the Prussian cannon) we come round a
sharp bend in the road, and there before us lies the quaint little
log-built post-house (the "halfway house" in very truth), with its
projecting roof and painted front and striped doorposts; just at which
auspicious moment I stumble and twist my foot.

"You were right to reserve _that_ performance to the last," remarks
P---- with a grin, helping me to the door; and we order a _samovar_
(tea-urn) to be heated, while we ourselves indulge in a scrambling wash
of the rudest kind, but very refreshing nevertheless.

Reader, did you ever walk five miles an hour for four hours together
over a hilly country, with the thermometer at eighty-three degrees in
the shade? If so, then will you appreciate our satisfaction as we throw
aside our heavy boots, plunge our swollen feet into cold water, and,
with coats off and collars thrown open, sit over our tea and black bread
in that quaint little cross-beamed room, with an appetite never excited
by the best _plats_ of the Erz-Herzog Karl or the Trois Freres
Provencaux. Two things, at least, one may always be sure of finding in
perfection at a Russian post-station: tea is the one; the other I need
not particularize, as its presence does not usually become apparent till
you "retire to rest" (?).

Our meal being over and m