our stranger with a hasty glance, at the same time adjusting his hat upon his head, to guard it against the attack of a sudden gust of wind, and then—turning upon his heel, he too went his way.

When the carriage had entered the court-yard, and stopped before the principal entrance of the inn, the traveller was welcomed by the head-waiter, or saloon-walker, as this class are commonly called in Russian hotels,—so lively, and spin-about a fellow, that it was actually impossible to look him in the face, or, in consequence of his mercurial evolutions, to recognise even the outlines of his features. He now came running out breathlessly with a napkin over his arm. He was all one length, without symmetry or the slightest appearance of proportion, and wore a long demi-cotton jacket, which nearly fitted his back instead of his waist; he shook his head, and made his long hair, which was cut à la mouzhik, fly in all directions, and led the stranger quickly up-stairs through the long range of wooden galleries of the inn, and showed the fatigued traveller into the apartment, which, by the decrees of the hotel authorities, he was to occupy.

The room was much the same as such rooms usually are, because the inn was of a similar character, i.e., such an inn as is to be found in all provincial towns of the vast Russian Empire; where, for the sum of two or three roubles, during the course of twenty-four hours, the weary traveller is accommodated with a comfortable room full of beetles, which, like blackberries, peep out from every corner; another door led into an adjoining bed-room, always barricaded with a chest of drawers, or a washing-stand, and occupied by a peaceable and silent neighbour, whose predominant propensity is a lively and irrepressible curiosity to ascertain all he possibly can about the private and public affairs of the new comer. The exterior of the building was in strict harmony with its interior: it was extremely long, and two stories high; the lower portion was not whitewashed, but was permitted to display its brownish red bricks, that had grown dark with years, and looked gloomy and dirty, not only from the sudden changes of wind and weather, but because they had no doubt been originally of a peculiar dirty tint. The upper story was painted all over with the eternal yellow, a colour so fancied and admired in Russia; on the ground-floor there were several small shops, in which harness, leather, cords, crockery, and cake of all description were displayed to the best possible advantage.

In one of these above-named shops, in the corner one, or rather at the window belonging to it, a dealer in heated 

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