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doing, and if he frequently thinks about you? I tell you, a great deal of water will yet flow before your wedding. Till the hour appointed by God arrives, who knows what may happen? Slip on your pelisse, and let us go into the street, and ask the first person we meet what is his name?"

Glafira, not accustomed to contradict her nurse, put on her pelisse, and went down with her into the street. They had not gone above ten paces before they met a man. "What is your name?" asked Glafira.

"Alexander," was the reply.

"There, young lady!" whispered the old woman: "that is not your bridegroom's Christian name, but Kudrin's. Here, hard by, the streets cross: let us go and hear on which side the first dog will begin to bark."

They stopped at the crossing—a dog barked. "Aha! hark you, my dear! The dog does not bark from towards Kiew, to which Chabarow is gone, but from our own quarter, Wladimir, where Kudrin now is."

They listened at two or three houses to the Christmas songs which were singing within; but, owing to the double windows, they could not catch a single word, so that no omen was to be drawn from them.

Glafira hurried back to the house. Agitated by doubts, and impelled by curiosity, she told