stirring it with her breath and a touch of the feather.
At last she began to speak as if beholding something on the dark surface or reading some secret writing inscribed upon it. I looked attentively into the vase, but I could not see anything, and I was certain that in all these proceedings the cunning charlatan was adapting herself to the character of the house and flattering the wishes of her lady customer.
The commonest forms of soothsaying among Russian people are those which have descended from the age of heathenism. These are the auguries from blood and from water. I have seen all such forms of fortune-telling in the province of Pskov, the most backward of all the provinces of Russia. There they thrive among the marshy wastes, in the thick forests, or the sandy shores of the River Wyelika and the banks of the Pskov Sea, the embodiment of heathen superstitions.
I shall return frequently to that province, distant only a few hours' journey from the capital, as being the most typical of the whole Russian people.
It happened in the village of Zaluzhye, surrounded by a whole net of boggy lakes and rivulets. In the neighbourhood of this village cholera raged, taking a heavy toll of the inhabitants. It was necessary to find out who had carried the pest into that God-forsaken veldt. Only a wizard could do that. An old man, who looked a centenarian, was put into a room in a solitary cottage which stood close to the woods on
