Perhaps the woman was frightened at my face, for she tore herself away and left me standing on the road alone.

Now I saw the meaning of all that had passed since Ivan's burial; now I understood why Fedio had grown so pale, and in that hour I knew that I loved him not as a brother, not as a son, but only as my one beloved, whose image for so many years I had carried in my heart.

And to me, unhappy woman, there came another thought. In the same minute, when I knew that I loved Fedio, I knew also that I could never be his wife. Only in this way, it seemed to me, could I take from him the weight of that heavy accusation.

At home, on the bench beside the door, I sat myself down to think. This terrible thing was said of Fedio, and with Fedio's money I had buried Ivan! I could not wait now for the harvest to repay him. It came into my head that there was a cattle-market in the town next day, and I said to myself, "I will sell the cow and pay him."

Every day since the day of Ivan's burial Fedio used to come in the morning to ask if I wanted for nothing, for Ivan had made him the guardian of the children. He came also next day, and finding me in the yard, just as I had tied a piece of rope round the horns of the cow, he asked in surprise,—

66

Marysia, what is this you are doing? Would you sell the cow?" "Fedio," I said, "I am selling the cow because I must pay you back your money."

"God be merciful to you! For what is this hurry? Have we not settled that you should pay me after the harvest? I will not take the money now."

“You must take it, and still today. Have you forgotten how I said that with your money I could not bury him? Oh, unhappy woman that I am, why did I take it from you?”

He looked at me keenly. "Then you have heard what the people say of me?"

"I have heard," and I hid my face in my hands.

"Who has told it you?" His voice was rising, and his breath came short.

I would not say that it was Ivan's sister, for fear lest he should beat her; so I answered only,

Now

"The people told it me. you yourself must see that you must take the money. If you do not take it you will break my heart. Fedio, I beg you--" and I burst into tears.

"My Marysia! my only love! quiet yourself! I will take the money, but only dry your eyes; you have cried so much, so very much already!"

"Do not call me your Marysia, for yours I shall never be. The people's wicked tongues have divided us two for all eternity”

"Marysia, your grief makes you rave! But your words put a knife in my heart! Quiet yourself! Neither to-day nor yet in a month can you go to another husband; for it is not seemly for a widow to marry before the sixth month."

Though he was not learned in

books, yet Fedio was so wise that he knew all these things.

"In six months people will have forgotten their evil thoughts; and to us, who are innocent before God and before ourselves, why should not happiness come at last? Have we not yet suffered enough?"

"It

"Never, never!" I cried. can never be. What! when I walk beside you, shall people point to you and say, 'Look! he poisoned the other that he might have the widow for himself!' No, no. Even should I die for it, they shall not say that thing of you."

He saw that he could get no further with me to-day; so he only said that he would go with me to the jarmark, to see that I was not cheated in the sale, nor robbed on my way back through the

forest.

A new and strange life began for me now. Day and night I worked to maintain myself and my children. If I had but wanted it, I might have lived at ease and fed upon dainties, for Fedio had much money, and he begged, he entreated me to take it; but not one kreutzer of his would I touch, not one piece of bread bought with his money would I eat, for fear that people should have more ground for their evil talk. But I could not prevent his being good to the children; and they soon found this out, and ceased crying when there was no milk for them to soak their bread, for they knew that Fedio's pocket was a storeroom where they would always find cakes or fruit in plenty. Even when I locked them up, he would come and throw them in apples by the window.

When six months were passed, Fedio asked me to be his wife, and I gave him the same answer as before. He left my hut in sadness; but it seemed to me that I was doing right, for already the evil talk was lessening.

Many girls in the village had soft glances for Fedio, and there was not one who would not have taken him. The wojt himself offered him his daughter, a young and pretty girl; but Fedio would not think of her. Very often, in the months that followed, he came to me, and always with the same question on his lips,-always to receive the same answer. At last he stopped asking me, though he would often sit silent in my hut, brooding gloomily before him.

One evening he was sitting thus, when a boy brought him a message from the great house. He was wanted there.

He went; and scarcely was he gone when an uneasy foreboding came over me. Who was the strange gentleman ? And what could he want with Fedio? Might it not be some harm?

I sat up late that night. It seemed to me that I must wait for something; but nothing came. The next morning passed, and still nothing came.

At mid-day Fedio entered the hut. It was not the hour that I was used to see him; yet somehow at that moment I had not the courage to ask what had brought him. I waited for him to speak, but he sat quite silent: his face was pale, his look was stern, and his lips pressed tight together. Once or twice in the long silence I noticed that he turned his head from right to left, and slowly passed his eyes round the room. His gaze hung on everything in turn, on every holy picture on the wall, on every flower in the window, on a broken toy on the ground, and then his eyes rested on me.

He rose, and the silence was broken,

"Marysia, I am going,-I am going at last. A man's life is too good a thing to be wasted in useless sighs. I have loved you long, I have loved you honestly, on my knees I have offered you my lovebut you will not come to me. You think you are acting rightly; may God forgive you the wrong you have done!"

I stood before him like a figure of stone, as he went on to tell me

that the strange gentleman at the great house was no other than the captain, his old master, who was passing through the country, and who wished to take Fedio back into his service. He had never been well served, he said, since Fedio left him; every other servant had robbed or cheated him.

"And the captain leaves to-day," said Fedio. "Good-bye, Marysia;" and still gravely, without a smile, he held his hand towards me.

But at that moment my courage broke down; every scruple dropped from me, every difficulty melted away. I forgot my arguments, I forgot my resolutions. I forgot that there was a world with bad people in it; and with a spring I put myself between Fedio and the door.

"Stay!" I cried. "Oh, Fedio, stay! For if you go I shall die, and my children will be orphans!"

Three Sundays later our marriage was celebrated. We have now been married for twelve years, and God has given us a son. But Fedio loves Ivan's children as much as his own boy, and has often told me that when he dies he will divide his ground in three equal parts.

There is not one great lady in the land, there is no queen on earth, who is as happy as I am; and if Ivan can see us from heaven above, he must surely rejoice at our happiness, and his blessing must rest on my Fedio's head.

IN this over-populated kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with its still ever-increasing millions of human beings who must somewhere find shelter from the fickle elements, we see new settlements gradually springing up in formerly uninhabited places as the growing railroad system throws its iron web over the face of the land, whilst old villages near the lines rapidly assume the dimensions of towns, and towns develop themselves into cities. The widening circles of brick and mortar constantly encroach on the surrounding country, till the latter is no longer able to supply the towns with the necessaries of life in sufficient quantity; the result being that we are driven to procure from abroad that which we cannot produce for ourselves.

As in the case of the necessaries of life, so is it also with its luxuries, more especially, perhaps, with that which, once a necessity, has at length become one of the luxuries most sought after and hardest to obtain that, namely, of wild sport.

Tradition and history alike tell us that the ancient inhabitants of these islands were obliged to wage constant war against the denizens of the forests which then overspread the country, not only with the object of providing themselves with food and clothing, but also in self-defence. In this-from a sportsman's point of view-happy state of things, our forefathers were able to gratify the long-inherited instincts of man the hunter, whilst providing for their other wants. We, their descendants, inheriting all the old wants and a host of others which have sprung up with the advance of civilisation, have in no degree lost the old hunting

VOL. CXXXIV.-NO. DCCCXV.

instinct; but by increasing and multiplying at such a prodigious rate, we have lost the means of satisfying it in our native land Even where game still runs wild, its pursuit is necessarily hedged in by endless formalities of law and etiquette; and the result is, that there is an annual and ever-increasing exodus of restless spirits, bent upon gratifying their hunting instincts in other lands after their own fashion.

Those who have become accustomed to wild sport abroad find it irksome to conform to the restrictions of modern British sport, and get into what are called loose habits. A case within my own knowledge occurs to me, in which an American, taking part in a grouse -drive on a Yorkshire moor, wounded one of the beaters, and was looked upon as no sportsman in consequence. He certainly was careless, but as a sportsman he was probably the equal of any man present, for he was well accustomed to track and shoot game, with perhaps only one companion, in regions where there was no other human being within many miles; and so, forgetting that he was now surrounded by a host of guns and beaters, he made a mistake which might rather have been expected of a novice.

Those, then, who have once tasted the sweets of pursuing and killing game after their own fashion, are apt to prefer that kind of sport rather than what they can obtain in these islands, and consequently spread themselves over the world in search of it. known country on this planet annually resounds to the crack of the rifle of the British sportsman, or to the bang of his fowling-piece; and

Almost every

Ꮓ

his twin brother the explorer still finds new hunting-grounds as the better known ones become used up. Amongst the least known and least frequented of all there is Nova Zemla, which has lately been mentioned a good deal in connection with the rescue of Mr Leigh Smith and his merry men, and is likely to be mentioned a good deal more in connection with future attempts to reach the North Pole.

Being far out of the way of all our merchant routes, and only approachable during the summer over the even then ice-encumbered sea, Nova Zemla will probably long remain one of the last refuges of the reindeer; whilst its ice-choked fiords and frozen seas will still be haunted by the white whale, the seal, the walrus, and the polar bear. Frequented, until of late, only by some dozen Russian schooners, who visit its shores every year chiefly for white whale and salmon, and by a few roaming families of Samoyedes from the mainland, these arctic shores have hitherto afforded an undisturbed asylum during the winter to the game of all kinds, marine or terrestrial, which there abounds. Recently, however, the Russian Government have seen fit to plant a colony consisting of a few families of Samoyedes-it is supposed with the view of occupying the country in the Russian name and these skilful hunters, of whom I shall have occasion to speak further on, harry the game throughout the year with great vigour. Beyond visits from European sportsmen or explorers, so rare that they might almost be counted on the fingers, no other human intruders ever invade these wild regions.

Having not long ago returned from this happy hunting-ground in the Hope, with the crew of the

ill-fated Eira, I have obtained a glimpse of the country, which I hope will enable me to give an intelligible and not uninteresting account of what is to be seen and done there in the way of sport and adventure.

Till the present century the contour of the two large islands which form what is now known as Nova Zemla was very differently represented upon the various manuscript charts in existence, these having been compiled from the observations of Dutch, Norwegian, and Russian navigators. Barents led off in 1598 with a chart representing the west coast and that part of the north-east coast which he had visited; this though terribly out in longitude, was very good as to latitude; and since the days of this old explorer, his maps, with many additions and a few corrections, have been generally adhered to, some representing the north coast as taking an abrupt turn to the east, and thus continuing ad infinitum, the authors of these interesting documents veiling their perplexity by drawing a meridian line down the chart and thereby cutting it short, leaving the rest to the imagination of the beholder.

For our present knowledge of the shape and dimensions of the islands we are chiefly indebted to the Russian Government coast-survey, made during the early part of the present century, and continued by subsequent explorers, which is generally considered to be pretty accurate as far north as Admiralty Peninsula, the most prominent headland on the west coast of the north island. There is one remarkable exception, however: an error of nine miles has somehow crept into the latitude assigned to the centre of Möder Bay. To the northward of Admiralty Peninsula this survey also becomes rather