The Sowers | Page 4

his voice while he argued. It is possible that Karl Steinmetz suspected the late Princess Nat��sha of having transmitted to her son a small hereditary portion of that Slavonic exaltation and recklessness of consequence which he deplored.
"Then you turn back at Tver?" enquired Paul, at length breaking a long silence.
"Yes; I must not leave Osterno just now. Perhaps later, when the winter has come, I will follow. Russia is quiet during the winter, very quiet. Ha, ha!"
He shrugged his shoulders and shivered. But the shiver was interrupted. He raised himself in his saddle and peered forward into the gathering darkness.
"What is that," he asked sharply, "on the road in front?"
Paul had already seen it.
"It looks like a horse," he answered--"a strayed horse, for it has no rider."
They were going west, and what little daylight there was lived on the western horizon. The form of the horse, cut out in black relief against the sky, was weird and ghostlike. It was standing by the side of the road, apparently grazing. As they approached it, its outlines became more defined.
"It has a saddle," said Steinmetz at length. "What have we here?"
The beast was evidently famishing, for, as they came near, it never ceased its occupation of dragging the wizened tufts of grass up, root and all.
"What have we here?" repeated Steinmetz.
And the two men clapped spurs to their tired horses.
The solitary waif had a rider, but he was not in the saddle. One foot was caught in the stirrup, and as the horse moved on from tuft to tuft it dragged its dead master along the ground.


CHAPTER II
BY THE VOLGA
"This is going to be unpleasant," muttered Steinmetz, as he cumbrously left the saddle. "That man is dead--has been dead some days; he's stiff. And the horse has been dragging him face downward. God in heaven! this will be unpleasant."
Paul had leaped to the ground, and was already loosening the dead man's foot from the stirrup. He did it with a certain sort of skill, despite the stiffness of the heavy riding-boot, as if he had walked a hospital in his time. Very quickly Steinmetz came to his assistance, tenderly lifting the dead man and laying him on his back.
"Ach!" he exclaimed; "we are unfortunate to meet a thing like this."
There was no need of Paul Alexis' medical skill to tell that this man was dead; a child would have known it. Before searching the pockets Steinmetz took out his own handkerchief and laid it over a face which had become unrecognizable. The horse was standing over them. It bent its head and sniffed wonderingly at that which had once been its master. There was a singular, scared look in its eyes.
Steinmetz pushed aside the enquiring muzzle.
"If you could speak, my friend," he said, "we might want you. As it is, you had better continue your meal."
Paul was unbuttoning the dead man's clothes. He inserted his hand within the rough shirt.
"This man," he said, "was starving. He probably fainted from sheer exhaustion and rolled out of the saddle. It is hunger that killed him."
"With his pocket full of money," added Steinmetz, withdrawing his hand from the dead man's pocket and displaying a bundle of notes and some silver.
There was nothing in any of the other pockets--no paper, no clue of any sort to the man's identity.
The two finders of this silent tragedy stood up and looked around them. It was almost dark. They were ten miles from a habitation. It does not sound much; but a traveller would be hard put to place ten miles between himself and a habitation in the whole of the British Islands. This, added to a lack of road or path which is unknown to us in England, made ten miles of some importance.
Steinmetz had pushed his fur cap to the back of his head, which he was scratching pensively. He had a habit of scratching his forehead with one finger, which denoted thought.
"Now, what are we to do?" he muttered. "Can't bury the poor chap and say nothing about it. I wonder where his passport is? We have here a tragedy."
He turned to the horse, which was grazing hurriedly.
"My friend of the four legs," he said, "it is a thousand pities that you are dumb."
Paul was still examining the dead man with that callousness which denotes one who, for love or convenience, has become a doctor. He was a doctor--an amateur. He was a Caius man.
Steinmetz looked down at him with a little laugh. He noticed the tenderness of the touch, the deft fingering which had something of respect in it. Paul Alexis was visibly one of those men who take mankind seriously, and have that in their hearts which for want of a better word we call sympathy.
"Mind you do not catch some infectious disease," said