clerk or the detective-and we can't get along without them.

"It is horrible to have to work with such people. I never thought of this before the revolution. But we must make a success of it and there are only two kinds of people to do the workinefficient amateurs and clever scoundrels trained under the bureaucracy legacies of the old régime."

Some of Vera Petrovna's police experiences have, although she refuses to see it, a certain element of humor. Under the old régime there were stringent laws against open immorality. They were enforced by a special squad of police des moeurs-the most infamous of a bad lot. With the disappearance of the old order and its despotic restrictions, venders of objectionable books and pictures came out in the open. At last an enterprising manager of a moving-picture palace announced "Une Soirée Parisienne-For Men Only." An indignant citizen pulled down one of the posters and brought it to the station-house. A council of war was held and the lawbooks studied. One of the worst features of the old régime had been its abuse of "precautionary" measures. All sorts of good books and laudable societies had been suppressed on the ground that they might violate the law. There was no crime in the poster itself, so it was decided not to take any premature action.

As Vera Petrovna was working on her bread-cards that evening the proprietor of the show appeared, in a great state of excitement. He had failed to satisfy his audience. The performance did not come up to their expectations. They had done what all Russia does these days when dissatisfied-they had held a meeting. And they had passed a resolution that if they did not get their money back they would burn the theater. The manager had come to demand police protection.

Vera Petrovna went to the theater and addressed the audience, which was by this time more of a riot than a meeting.

"What did you say to them?" I asked. "What could I say? I told them I was ashamed-ashamed of the manager, ashamed of them. I said he was disgusting, and so were they. I told them that

the revolution meant climbing up out of the abyss to liberty and enlightenment, and that they had no right to freedom, because they wanted to use it to sink down lower into the muck-lower even than the old tyrants had allowed.

"There is only one good thing I can think of about this manager,' I told them; 'he cheated you. You are angry because he has cheated you, but you know he would have been much worse if he had not! But the revolutionary police will not protect the profits of a scoundrel who uses liberty to debauch the people!' I made him bring the money he had taken in upon the stage. The crowd cheered at that and became friendly.

I

"But then I gave them an awful scolding, and when they began to look as if they were ashamed, I told them about the hospital where I had worked, and how badly they needed money. said that if they were good children of the revolution they would give their spare money to the wounded soldiers instead of spending it on dirty shows. I asked them to elect a committee to take the money to the hospital-and they did it."

It is only occasionally now that Vera Petrovna has to attend to the ordinary work of the police station. Since a regular commissaire has been appointed she has had charge of the bureau which attends to the distribution of food.

"I was glad to get away from downstairs. I thought this food-control work would be pleasanter-a chance for real constructive work-but it is every bit as discouraging. The best government in the world, the most experienced experts even your Mr. Hoover-could not keep some of our people from starving this winter. And we are inexperi

enced amateurs.

"Almost every day some one makes a speech about how the revolution will be a failure if the food problem is not solved. But what can we do?"

"Isn't there enough food?" I asked. "Plenty more than enough. We generally export food. On the whole, the crop is good, but in some places it is a failure. Absolute famine in some districts if we can't import food from other provinces. And, of course, it is

worse in the cities in the big cities, Petrograd and Moscow.

"The trouble is that the transportation system has collapsed. You people, abroad, do not realize what it means. This winter some of our soldiers at the front will starve. It takes an immense number of trains to supply a great army like ours. Think of the millions of tons of flour we must move across the country just to give the soldiers bread! But they must also have meat and clothes and, above all, munitions. What comfort is it to know we have enough to eat? We haven't enough trains to carry the food to the hungry soldiers.

"And it will be even worse in the cities. The peasants have stopped bringing their food to the markets. Look!" She pointed out through the restaurant window. "See that crowd. They are in line for bread-city people. Go down the street and you will see other lines, just as long, of peasants-women waiting for a chance to buy a few yards of cotton cloth; men standing in line all night in the hope of getting some nails. There is nothing left in the stores to give the peasants in exchange for their farm products.

"Every way we turn we are faced by this breakdown of transportation. If our stores had cotton goods to sell, the peasants would bring in their food. We had a large cotton industry in Russia. We raised our cotton in Turkistan. The people there got such good prices that they stopped growing food, planted their fields in cotton, and brought in their foodstuffs by train. Well, last year the railroads had begun to go to pieces and were too busy with military work to carry food to Turkistan. The Turkomans starved, and this year they have pulled up their cotton to plant vegetables. The mill-owners bought cotton in Egypt and America. It is piled high on the docks in Vladivostok, rotting, because the few freight-cars have to give precedence to shells.

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'And the shortage of cars means a shortage of fuel, too. The Moscow and Petrograd manufacturing districts will only get about a third of their normal coal-supply this year. So between lack of raw material and the scarcity of fuel the cotton-mills, instead of increasing

their output, are shutting down. More unemployed more hungry people! It is a vicious circle.

"It is the same with shoes. The peasants would bring in food on wheelbarrows if they could buy shoes with it. If we could get a hundred thousand cheap American shoes in Petrograd we would have all the food we need. But what's the use of talking? Even if you gave them to us and delivered them at Vladivostok or Archangelsk, it would do no good. We have no means of bringing them the rest of the way.

"We're blockaded-blockaded worse than Germany. There are hundreds of us here all over Russia-working day and night, but in spite of all we can do there will be famine and famine riots, I fear. But, it isn't the fault of the revolution. It was the old régime which sent all the skilled mechanics to the front-because they were able to read and write and so were "dangerous" politically. And now, when a locomotive breaks down, there is no one to mend it. They are asking us to make bricks without straw."

In the blackest night of the old régime I never saw Vera Petrovna so hopeless about her country as she was this day.

"Part of the trouble is," I said, "that you are horribly tired."

But she did not want to be comforted. "Yes," she said, "I am tired. But I am not any more tired than everybody else in Russia who is trying to save the revolution. It was wonderful the first weeks. But now every one is tired-overstrained-haunted. You spoke of 'legacies' of the old régime. I know a better word-'ghosts.' We buried the old régime, but their ghosts still walk-so many ghosts!

All

"That pitiful little pickpocket. the crooked old officials we have to use. Chaos in finance, in industry, worst of all, this disorganization in transportation -they're all ghosts of the old régime. Ignorance, inexperience in self-government, oppressed habits of mind, suspicions, hatreds we're haunted with them.

"It isn't an easy job, to be free."

All over Russia hundreds, thousands of people are learning these same painful

lessons which have tired and perplexed and disheartened Vera Petrovna. In police stations, in town councils, in railroad unions, in schools, in editorial offices, even in meetings of the Provisional Government, the partisans of the revolution are struggling with the concrete problem of paying off the debts of the old régime before work can be even begun on the building of New Russia.

If ever there were a people who needed our sympathy-our patient, unfaltering sympathy-they are the republicans of Russia. Their country is as a bone gnawed dry by the dogs of war. For three years now they have been fighting. Their loss in blood has been appalling more than in any other country. But this is the least of their problems. They have been more seri

ously crippled and maimed by the incapacity and dishonesty of their old government than by the enemy. And now, in this weakened condition, they must construct a new world.

There are dreary days before Russia― perhaps days of desperate, despairing hunger riots. The new freedom has to face enemies within as well as those without. But in the end Russia will come through her trials triumphant. No one who really knows the country can doubt that.

And this future with its glorious potentialities will be the work, not of those whose names are now to be read in the newspapers, but of those modest, anonymous patriots who, like my friend Vera Petrovna, are willing to work for Russia and the revolution-even in a police station.

HERE is an impression of abandon about a runaway horse, a sense of unrestrained momentum that none of the swift - moving inventions of this modern age can duplicate. When the horse happens to be a thoroughbred hunter, to whom a rail fence or other obstacle is as a hassock, when, moreover, he carries in his mad flight a girl with blond hair blowing wild, feet flailing out of the stirrups, and eyes staring, the impression naturally is heightened.

It most assuredly was in the mind of a certain horseman, loping around a bend in the highway, confronted thrillingly by the spectacle as set forth. He was a stalwart young man, and the love of action which one might have read in his face was exemplified in manner as he swung his mount abruptly about and spurred him into a gallop. The intention of the rider was to seize the bridle of the runaway from the side and thereupon bring the careering animal to a halt, after an accomplished manner of his own.

But the plan was foiled when the hunter turned suddenly from the road, cleared the stone wall that bounded it, and plunged through a stretch of meadowland toward a copse of wood. Sailing over the wall in the wake of the mad steed, the man watched with hard eyes as the girl deflected her mount's course from a stunted apple-tree. A few seconds later the hunter dived into the woods. The pursuer saw the girl drop on the horse's neck to avoid branches that would have swept her to the ground -then the foliage shut her from view.

Directing his pony through the underbrush and second-growth trees, the man saw lying upon the ground a ridingcrop. Riding farther, he picked a seg

ment of lace from a branch. Proceeding among the trees, following the prints which the flying hoofs had marked deeply in the soft soil, he came at length upon the girl herself. She was lying upon the ground, stunned, bewildered, not a little frightened; a bit farther on was her mount, stripping the bark from a white birch, quite content, apparently, with the results of his temperamental outburst.

The man's first emotion as he leaped from his pony was an admixture of relief and admiration. For his experienced eye told him that the girl in all probability was not seriously injured, while, on the other hand, the picture presented by this dazed beauty lying prone upon the mossy earth was beyond all possibility the most attractive he had ever looked upon. She lay upon her side, her cheek resting upon her outstretched arm, the other hand lying across her hip. The vague green of her riding skirt and coat merged tellingly with the infinite variety of greens on all sides, and yet did not fail to emphasize the slender graces of dawning adolescence, and upon her hair of pure raw silk, which spread in partial disarray about her face, the sunlight, filtering through the arched leaves, shimmered-Diana brought to earth.

Yet the man's mind, no doubt, was far from the realm of classical allusion. For the presence of a little woodland brooklet suggested obvious preliminaries in the way of treatment, and the cavalier shortly was in a position to contemplate the success of his ministrations. A growing intelligence crept into her eyes; this was attended by an astonishing phenomenon. They had impressed him as the one flaw in her beauty, having a sort of ground-glass effect which contributed a note of blankness to features otherwise beyond criticism. But now, widening and reflecting the clearing of

dazed apprehension, glancing and sparkling "like a gem of fifty facets," the girl's stone-gray eyes gradually became almost, in fact quite, the dominating

note.

"I don't think you have any bones broken."

It was one of several remarks, cumulatively banal as he felt, and unquestionably so in the mind of the girl, whose mobile lips were trembling in a slight smile.

"Oh, I shall be quite all right, I'm sure!" she said.

He raised his hands rather awkwardly, and he spoke awkwardly, with the accent of the cultured Englishman. "Oh, quite so! That is, no doubt-not the slightest doubt, I'm sure."

His eyes fell before her level gaze, which now was frankly appraising. He was nearly six feet tall, somewhat spare of frame, but with extraordinary chest, shoulders, and legs. As to his face, one noted high-cheek-bones; clear blue eyes; small, well-kept mustache; and square, if narrow, jaws. You have seen hundreds of cavalry officers of the old British army-for whom he might have stood as type-slashing, hard-riding huntsmen, polo-players, gentlemen; most of them are dead now, from all

She smiled up at him. "Oh really, I'm perfectly fit!. . . I shouldn't have ridden Hector; it was against orders. I was so sure I could manage him, the brute. If you'll give me your hand-" "You're sure you can manage it?" He leaned down and, placing his hands. gingerly under her shoulders, supported the girl to her feet. "There

She swayed slightly for a moment, placing her hand upon his arm. "It's so silly, you know." She moved away from him. "Now it's better. You've been so good, Mr.—Mr.—?”

"Tragressor," he supplied. stopped abruptly, flushing.

He

A puzzled expression crossed the girl's face. "Tragressor? Tragressor? I'm sure I have heard the name some where. It-it seems so familiar. Yet I

"Curzon," she said, with rising inflection. "Miss Curzon."

She acknowledged Tragressor's slight bow with a smile, and nodded toward an opening in the trees through which was revealed the red gabled roofs of a group of estate buildings. "Fortunately I am not far from home."

As she glanced toward her recalcitrant steed Tragressor spoke eagerly, even peremptorily: "But you're not going to ride that horse again. He's altogether too much for you. You might try my pony; he's docile, almost to a fault. I think you can use the saddle. Certainly I can use yours." Without awaiting reply he approached Hector, seizing that mercurial animal none too gently by the bridle, and then walked to his own mount. "You're quite sure you can get along?" Receiving her nod, he led the two animals to the clearing, pausing there to give the girl a leg up on his rather placid, if springy gelding.

The next instant he had vaulted to Hector's back, who, showing unequivocal signs of resentment, whirled and gyrated and kicked until the young stalwart, without undue effort, made himself master of the situation, the girl, watching the battle with glistening eyes.

It was, of course, natural, all things considered, that as the two took up their course along the road the processes making for acquaintance were abridged, and bonds that unite interests speedily established. Short, it may be stated axiomatically, is the journey to a heart as made by any engaging young man who in the rôle of modern cavalier brings rescue to damsel in sore distress. He penetrates at a leap the crassness of modernity and lifts the classic veil. He revives an incident that was old, no doubt, when Athena saddled Pegasus for Bellerophon-the age-long equine romance of the sexes which will go on thrilling ever anew until the gasolenemotor-perish the day!-has relegated