The starosta shook his head forebodingly.  It was cholera weather.  Cholera had come to Osterno.  Had come, the starosta thought, to stay.  It had settled down in Osterno, and nothing but the winter frosts would kill it, when hunger-typhus would undoubtedly succeed it.

Therefore the starosta shook his head at the sunset, and forgot to regret the badness of the times from a commercial point of view.  He had done all he could.  He had notified to the Zemstvo the condition of his village.  He had made the usual appeal for help, which had been forwarded in the usual way to Tver, where it had apparently been received with the usual philosophic silence.

But Michael Roon had also telegraphed to Karl Steinmetz, and since the despatch of this message had the starosta dropped into the habit of standing at his doorway in the evening, with his hands clasped behind his back and his beady black eyes bent westward along the prince’s high-road.

On the particular evening with which we have to do the beady eyes looked not in vain; for presently, far along the road, appeared a black speck like an insect crawling over the face of a map.

“Ah!” said the starosta.  “Ah! he never fails.”

Presently a neighbor dropped in to buy some of the dried leaf which the starosta, honest tradesman, called tea.  He found the purveyor of Cathay’s produce at the door.

“Ah!” he said, in a voice thick with vodka.  “You see something on the road?”

“Yes.”

“A cart?”

“No, a carriage.  It moves too quickly.”

A strange expression came over the peasant’s face, at no time a pleasing physiognomy.  The bloodshot eyes flared up suddenly like a smouldering flame in brown paper.  The unsteady, drink-sodden lips twitched.  The man threw up his shaggy head, upon which hair and beard mingled in unkempt confusion.  He glared along the road with eyes and face aglow with a sullen, beast-like hatred.

“A carriage!  Then it is for the castle.”

“Possibly,” answered the starosta.

“The prince—­curse him, curse his mother’s soul, curse his wife’s offspring!”

“Yes,” said the starosta quietly.  “Yes, curse him and all his works.  What is it you want, little father—­tea?”

He turned into the shop and served his customer, duly inscribing the debt among others in a rough, cheap book.

The word soon spread that a carriage was coming along the road from Tver.  All the villagers came to the doors of their dilapidated wooden huts.  Even the kabaks were emptied for a time.  As the vehicle approached it became apparent that the horses were going at a great pace; not only was the loose horse galloping, but also the pair in the shafts.  The carriage was an open one, an ordinary North Russian travelling carriage, not unlike the vehicle we call the victoria, set on high wheels.

Beside the driver on the box sat another servant.  In the open carriage sat one man only, Karl Steinmetz.