Our ways lie through the crossways as they ever have done, and ever
will. All Russia is in the crossways--amid the fields, thickets
marshes, and forests.
But there were also those Others who wanted to march over the bog-
ways, who planned to throw Russia on to her haunches, to press on
through the marshlands, make main-roads straight as rules, and
barricade themselves behind granite and steel, forgetful of Russia's
peasant cottages. And on they marched!
Sometimes the main-road is joined by the crossways, and from them to
the main-road and over it passes the long vaunted Rising, the
people's tumult, to sweep away the Unnecessary, then vanish back
again into the crossways.
Near the main-road lies the railway. By turning aside from it,
walking through a field, fording a river, penetrating first through a
dark aspen grove, then through a red pine belt, skirting some
ravines, threading a way across a village, trudging wearily through
dried-up river-beds and on through a marsh, the village of Pochinki
is reached, surrounded by forest.
In the village were three cottages, their backs to the forest; their
rugged noses seemed to scowl from beneath the pine-trees, and their
dim, tear-dribbling window-eyes looked wolfish. Their grey timbers
lay on them like wrinkles, their reddish-yellow thatch, like bobbed
hair, hung to the ground.
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