You may make a survey of Polotzk ever so accurate, and show me where I was wrong; still I am the better guide.

You may show that my adventureful road led nowhere, but I can prove, by the quickening of my pulse and the throbbing of my rapid recollections, that _things happened to me_ there or here; and I shall be believed, not you.

And so over the vague canvas of scenes half remembered, half imagined, I draw the brush of recollection, and pick out here a landmark, there a figure, and set my own feet back in the old ways, and live over the old events.

It is real enough, as by my beating heart you might know.
Sometimes my father took us out by the Long Road.

There is no road in the neighborhood of Polotzk by that name, but I know very well that the way was long to my little feet; and long are the backward thoughts that creep along it, like a sunbeam travelling with the day.
The first landmark on the sunny, dusty road is the house of a peasant acquaintance where we stopped for rest and a drink.