Fields, sown with thin buckwheat and rye, stretched away to a background of half-cultivated hills, offering no remarkable prospect.

The pencil of an artist in quest of the picturesque would have found nothing to reproduce in this monotonous landscape.
The Caucasus had been steaming on for almost two hours, when the young Livonian, addressing herself to Michael, said, "Are you going to Irkutsk, brother ?" "Yes, sister," answered the young man.

"We are going the same way.
Consequently, where I go, you shall go." "To-morrow, brother, you shall know why I left the shores of the Baltic to go beyond the Ural Mountains." "I ask you nothing, sister." "You shall know all," replied the girl, with a faint smile.

"A sister should hide nothing from her brother.

But I cannot to-day.