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154
SIBERIA
inexpressible contempt. A moment passed—two minutes—but there was no reply. The discomfited night-watchman had slunk away into the darkness.
AN OASIS IN THE KÍRGHIS STEPPE.
After we had passed the little Cossack town of Pavlodár on Friday, the weather, which had been warm ever since our departure from Omsk, became intensely hot, the thermometer indicating ninety-one degrees Fahrenheit at 1 p. m. As we sat, without coats or waistcoats, under the sizzling leather roof of our tárantás, fanning ourselves with our hats, panting for breath, fighting huge green-eyed horseflies, and looking out over an illimitable waste of dead grass
