CHAPTER I.

One fine summer's afternoon a few years ago, a pretty, neat-looking, but small spring-britchka, drove into the court-yard of an inn, in the governmental town of Smolensk. The vehicle was one of that peculiar description to which bachelors, retired colonels, staats-capitains, and landowners, rejoicing in the possession of about a hundred-and-fifty souls, give the preference for travelling purposes; in short, all those who in Russia are called "gentlemen of the middle rank."

The traveller who occupied the high seat in this convenient conveyance, was a man, who at first sight could not have been taken for handsome, yet we should do him injustice were we to affirm the contrary of him, for he was neither too stout nor too thin; it would also have been impossible to add that he was too old, as little as it would have been right to call him youthful. His arrival in the above-named town created no particular sensation, and, indeed, it took place without the occurrence of anything unusual or even extraordinary; two Russian mouzhiks, however, who were standing before the door of a dram-shop on the opposite side of the inn, were apparently making their strictures and observations, but which, were confined to conjectures concerning the britchka, not upon the gentleman occupying the carriage.

"Dost thou see it?" said the one to the other, "there is a wheel for you! what do you think of it, would it break or not, supposing it had to roll as far as Moscow?"

"It might stand the journey," replied the other, musingly, as he scratched himself sedulously behind the ear.

"But supposing it was on its way to Kazan, I think it could not stand the wear and tear of such a distance?" said the first speaker again.

"It will never roll into the ancient Tatar fastness," responded his friend somewhat affirmatively.

Thus ended their learned conversation, the scientific depth of which we will not venture to explore. But previous to the britchka being stopped by its driver before the entrance door of the inn, a young man had happened to pass; he was dressed in a pair of white, very tightly-fitting, and extremely short, twill inexpressibles, buttoned up under a dress-coat of the most fashionable cut, and from under which a snow-white linen shirt-front visibly displayed an elegant bronze pin of common Tula manufacture, representing a weapon in the shape of a pistol. This young gentleman turned round, and also honoured the travelling-carriage of 

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