The Sowers

"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 h...

"Colossal!" exclaimed Steinmetz, beneath his breath. With a little trick of the tongue he transferred his cigar from the right-hand to the left-hand corner of his mouth. "Coloss...

"Now, I wonder," he said aloud, "how many bushels there are in a ton. Ach! how am I to find out? These English weights and measures, this English money, when there is a metrical...

The season wore on to its perihelion--a period, the scientific books advise us, of the highest clang and crash of speed and whirl, of the greatest brilliancy and deepest glow of...

The table d'hôte of the Hôtel de Moscou at Tver had just begun. The soup had been removed; the diners were engaged in igniting their first cigarette at the candles placed betwee...

A Russian forest in winter is one of nature's places of worship. There are some such places in the world, where nature seems to stand in the presence of the Deity; a sunrise at...

Paul had been five months in England when he met Mrs. Sydney Bamborough. Since his hurried departure from Tver a winter had come and gone, leaving its mark as winters do. It lef...

When the Osterno party reached home that same evening the starosta was waiting to see Steinmetz. His news was such that Steinmetz sent for Paul, and the three men went together...

"All that there is of the most brilliant and least truthful in Europe," M. Claude de Chauxville had said to a lady earlier in the evening, apropos of the great gathering at the...

The speaker finished his remark with a short laugh. He was a big, stout man; his name was Karl Steinmetz, and it is a name well known in the Government of Tver to this day. He s...

Maggie followed him out of the room, and together they went through the passages, calling Etta and looking for her. There was an air of gloom and chilliness in the rooms of the...

The village of Osterno, lying, or rather scrambling, along the banks of the river Oster, is at no time an exhilarating spot. It is a large village, numbering over nine hundred s...

They were driving home through the forest that surrounded Osterno as the sea surrounds an island. They were alone in the sleigh. That which they had been doing had required no s...

A Russian village kabak, with a smoking lamp, of which the chimney is broken. The greasy curtains drawn across the small windows exclude the faintest possibility of a draught. T...

The large drawing-room was brilliantly lighted. Another weary day had dragged to its close. It was the Tuesday evening--the last Tuesday in March five years ago. The starosta ha...

A tearing, howling wind from the north--from the boundless snow-clad plains of Russia that lie between the Neva and the Yellow Sea; a gray sky washed over as with a huge brush d...

They were standing together in the saloon of a suite of rooms assigned for the time to Paul and his party in the Hôtel Bristol in Paris. Steinmetz, who held an open letter in hi...

Karl Steinmetz walked slowly upstairs to his own room. The evening sun, shining through the small, deeply embrasured windows, fell on a face at no time joyous, now tired and wor...

The man who carries a deceit, however innocent, with him through life is apt to be somewhat handicapped in that unfair competition. He is like a ship at sea with a "sprung" main...

Among the visitors whom Paul left behind him in the little drawing-room in Brook Street was the Baron Claude de Chauxville, Baron of Chauxville and Chauxville le Duc, in the Pro...

During the days following Paul's visit to the village the ladies did not see much male society. Paul and Steinmetz usually left the castle immediately after breakfast and did no...

Below the windows of a long, low, stone house, in its architecture remarkably like a fortified farm--below these deep-embrasured windows the river Oster mumbled softly. One of t...

Karl Steinmetz had apparently been transacting business on the Vassili Ostrov, which the travelled reader doubtless knows as the northern bank of the Neva, a part of Petersburg-...

Of all the rooms in the great castle Etta liked the morning-room best. Persons of a troubled mind usually love to look upon a wide prospect. The mind, no doubt, fears the unseen...

The countess had taken very good care to refrain from making this proposal to Catrina alone. She was one of those mothers who rule their daughters by springing surprises upon th...

The Countess Lanovitch and Catrina were sitting together in the too-luxurious drawing-room that overlooked the English Quay and the Neva. The double windows were rigorously clos...

The Countess Lanovitch never quitted her own apartments before mid-day. She had acquired a Parisian habit of being invisible until luncheon-time. The two girls left the castle o...

In these democratic days a very democratic theory has exploded. Not so very long ago we believed, or made semblance of belief, that it is useless to put a high price upon a tick...

For a moment there was silence in the hovel, broken only by the wail of the dying man in the corner. Paul and Catrina faced each other--she white and suddenly breathless, he hal...

"But I confess I cannot understand why I should not be called the Princess Alexis--there is nothing to be ashamed of in the title. I presume you have a right to it?"

Karl Steinmetz had shown the depth of his knowledge of men and women when he commented on that power of facing danger with an unruffled countenance which he was pleased to attri...

It is to be feared that there is a lamentable lack of local color in the present narrative. Having safely arrived at Petersburg, we have nothing to tell of that romantic city--n...

Etta did not move when Steinmetz approached, except, indeed, to push one foot farther out toward the warmth of the wood fire. She certainly was very neatly shod. Steinmetz was o...

At bedtime Catrina went to Maggie's room with her to see that she had all that she could desire. A wood fire was burning brightly in the open French stove; the room was lighted...

Steinmetz laid Etta on a sofa. She was already recovering consciousness. He rang the bell twice, and all the while he kept his eye on De Chauxville. A quick touch on Etta's wris...

A week later Catrina, watching from the window of her own small room, saw Paul lift Etta from the sleigh, and the sight made her clench her hands until the knuckles shone like p...

"Why not, indeed?" he answered. "And you will be glad to hear that Ivanovitch is as ready as yourself this morning to treat the matter as a joke. He is none the worse for his fr...

At daybreak the next morning Karl Steinmetz was awakened by the familiar cry of the wolf beneath his window. He rose and dressed hastily. The eastern sky was faintly pink; a ros...

Between Petersburg and the sea there are several favorite islands more or less assigned to the foreigners residing in the Russian capital. Here the English live, and in summer t...

The Palace of Industry--where, with a fine sense of the fitness of the name, the Parisians amuse themselves--was in a blaze of electric light and fashion. The occasion was the C...

It has been said of the Talleyrand Club that the only qualifications required for admittance to its membership are a frock-coat and a glib tongue. To explain the whereabouts of...

It was not now a very cold night. There were fleecy clouds thrown like puffs of smoke against the western sky. The moon, on the wane,--a small crescent lying on its back,--was l...

St. Petersburg under snow is the most picturesque city in the world. The town is at its best when a high wind has come from the north to blow all the snow from the cupola of St....

Between Brandon in Suffolk and Thetford in Norfolk runs a quiet river, the Little Ouse, where few boats break the stillness of the water. On either bank stand whispering beech-t...