"Certainly," he said, "that was our White Nun. The Cossacks took her
with them. They must have ridden fast, the horsemen of Kaledines."

"Like a swift storm. Like the souls of the damned," replied a
peasant.

The soldier shrugged: "If there's still a Romanoff loose in the
world, God save the world!... And that big heifer of a Swedish
wench!--she was a bad one, I tell you!--Took six of us to catch her
and ten to hold her by her ten fingers and toes! Hey! God bless me,
but she stands six feet and is made of steel cased in silk--all white,
smooth and iron-hard--the blond young snow-tiger that she is!--the
yellow-haired, six-foot, slippery beastess! God bless me--God bless
me!" he muttered, staring down the wood-road to its vanishing point
against the grey horizon.

Then he hitched his slung rifle to a more comfortable position,
turned, gazed at the convent across the fields, which his distant
comrades were now approaching.

"A German nest," he said aloud to himself, "full of their damned
Deaconesses! Hey! I'll be going along to see what's to be done with
them, also!"

He nodded to the wood-cutters:

"Vermin-killing time," he remarked cheerily. "After the dirty work is
done, peace, land enough for everybody, ease and plenty and a full
glass always at one's elbows--eh, comrades?"

He strode away across the fields.

It had begun to snow.

ARGUMENT

The Cossacks sang as they rode:

I

"Life is against us
We are born crying:
Life that commenced us
Leaves us all dying.
We were born crying;
We shall die sighing.

"Shall we sit idle?
Follow Death's dance!
Pick up your bridle,
Saddle and lance!
Cossacks, advance!"

They were from the Urals: they sat their shaggy little grey horses,
lance in hand, stirrup deep in saddle paraphernalia--kit-bags, tents,
blankets, trusses of straw, a dead fowl or two or a quarter of beef.
And from every saddle dangled a balalaika and the terrible Cossack
whip.

The steel of their lances flashed red in the setting sun; snow whirled
before the wind in blinding pinkish clouds, powdering horse and rider
from head to heel.

Again one rider unslung his balalaika, struck it, looking skyward as
he