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Updated: May 23, 2025
Not another word did he speak, beyond a surly "good night;" but, though I followed his example and got into bed, with my revolver laid handily on the bolster as he had placed his, hours passed before sleep came to me. I lay listening to Mishka's snores, he was a noisy sleeper, and thinking of Anne; thinking of that one blissful month in London when I saw her nearly every day.
I had rather wondered on what footing I should be received here, especially since Mishka's remark, a while back, about the "prisoner." But some one Loris himself or Mishka, or both of them had planned things perfectly, and I am sure that no one beyond ourselves and the elder Pavloff, who was also in the secret, had the slightest suspicion that I was other than I appeared to be.
I discerned the same ominous state of things the calm before the storm at Dunaburg and Wilna, but it was not until we had left the railroad and were well on our two days' cross-country ride to Zostrov that I became acquainted with two important ingredients in that "seething pot" of Russian affairs, to use Mishka's apt simile. Those two ingredients were the peasantry and the Jews.
I did it right the first time, much to Mishka's satisfaction; and when we reached the café he let me be spokesman. Within three minutes a cadaverous looking workman in a red blouse lounged up to our table, ordered his glass of tea, nodded to me as if I was an old acquaintance, and muttered the formula.
Mishka's business rendered my re-entry into the forbidden land an easily arranged matter. Several of the machines he bought were American patents, and my rôle was that of an American mechanic in charge of them. As a matter of fact I do know a good deal about such things; and I had never forgotten the apprenticeship to farming I had served under my father in the old home. Poor old dad!
I must have been utterly exhausted, for I slept heavily, dreamlessly, for many hours, and only woke under Mishka's hand, as he shook me. Through the doorway of the barn, the level rays of the westering sun showed that the short November day was drawing to a close. "You have slept long; that is well. But now we must be up and away if we are to reach Kutno to-night." "You go with me?" "So far, yes.
I suppose I played my part all right as the American mechanic whose one idea was safeguarding the machinery he was in charge of. Anyhow we got through the necessary interviews with truculent officials without much difficulty. Most of them were unable to understand the sort of German I chose to fire off at them, and had to rely on Mishka's services as interpreter.
Barn doors creaked in response to Mishka's call, and soft-eyed cattle went willingly out to meet him, and stood in groups in the empty square, licking and nosing each other; till Mishka's little drove was all assembled, and he tramped out of town behind them, in a cloud of dust.
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