sitting on the hotel sofa waiting to carry me off there.

"You might tell me something of your life while you are
dressing," he suggested, kindly.

I do not think I told him much of my life story either then or
later. The talk of the select little party with which he made me

dine was extremelyanimated and embraced most subjects under
heaven, from big-game shooting in Africa to the last poem

published in a very modernist review, edited by the very young
and patronized by the highest society. But it never touched upon

"Almayer's Folly," and next morning, in uninterrupted obscurity,
this inseparablecompanion went on rolling with me in the

southeast direction toward the government of Kiev.
At that time there was an eight hours' drive, if not more, from

the railway station to the country-house which was my
destination.

"Dear boy" (these words were always written in English), so ran
the last letter from that house received in London--"Get yourself

driven to the only inn in the place, dine as well as you can, and
some time in the evening my own confidential servant, factotum

and majordomo, a Mr. V. S. (I warn you he is of noble
extraction), will present himself before you, reporting the

arrival of the small sledge which will take you here on the next
day. I send with him my heaviest fur, which I suppose with such

overcoats as you may have with you will keep you from freezing on
the road."

Sure enough, as I was dining, served by a Hebrew waiter, in an
enormous barn-like bedroom with a freshly painted floor, the door

opened and, in a travelling costume of long boots, big sheepskin
cap, and a short coat girt with a leather belt, the Mr. V. S. (of

noble extraction), a man of about thirty-five, appeared with an
air of perplexity on his open and mustached countenance. I got

up from the table and greeted him in Polish, with, I hope, the
right shade of consideration demanded by his noble blood and his

confidential position. His face cleared up in a wonderful way.
It appeared that, standing" target="_blank" title="prep.&conj.虽然；还是">notwithstanding my uncle's earnest assurances,

the good fellow had remained in doubt of our understanding each
other. He imagined I would talk to him in some foreign language.

I was told that his last words on getting into the sledge to come
to meet me shaped an anxious exclamation:

"Well! Well! Here I am going, but God only knows how I am to
make myself understood to our master's nephew."

We understood each other very well from the first. He took
charge of me as if I were not quite of age. I had a delightful

boyish feeling of coming home from school when he muffled me up
next morning in an enormous bearskin travelling-coat and took his

seat protectively by my side. The sledge was a very small one,
and it looked utterly insignificant, almost like a toy behind the

four big bays harnessed two and two. We three, counting the
coachman, filled it completely. He was a young fellow with clear

blue eyes; the high collar of his livery fur coat framed his
cheery countenance and stood all round level with the top of his

head.
"Now, Joseph," my companion addressed him, "do you think we shall

manage to get home before six?" His answer was that we would
surely, with God's help, and providing there were no heavy drifts

in the long stretch between certain villages whose names came
with an extremely familiar sound to my ears. He turned out an

excellent coachman, with an instinct for keeping the road among
the snow-covered fields and a natural gift of getting the best

out of his horses.
"He is the son of that Joseph that I suppose the Captain

remembers. He who used to drive the Captain's late grandmother
of holy memory," remarked V. S., busy tucking fur rugs about my

feet.
I remembered perfectly the trusty Joseph who used to drive my

grandmother. Why! he it was who let me hold the reins for the
first time in my life and allowed me to play with the great

four-in-hand whip outside the doors of the coach-house.
"What became of him?" I asked. "He is no longer serving, I

suppose."
"He served our master," was the reply. "But he died of cholera

ten years ago now--that great epidemic that we had. And his wife
died at the same time--the whole houseful of them, and this is

the only boy that was left."
The MS. of "Almayer's Folly" was reposing in the bag under our

feet.
I saw again the sun setting on the plains as I saw it in the

travels of my childhood. It set, clear and red, dipping into the
snow in full view as if it were setting on the sea. It was

twenty-three years since I had seen the sun set over that land;
and we drove on in the darkness which fell swiftly upon the livid

expanse of snows till, out of the waste of a white earth joining
a bestarred sky, surged up black shapes, the clumps of trees

about a village of the Ukrainian plain. A cottage or two glided
by, a low interminable wall, and then, glimmering and winking

through a screen of fir-trees, the lights of the master's house.
That very evening the wandering MS. of "Almayer's Folly" was

unpacked and unostentatiously laid on the writing-table in my
room, the guest-room which had been, I was informed in an

affectionately careless tone, awaiting me for some fifteen years
or so. It attracted no attention from the affectionate presence

hovering round the son of the favourite sister.
"You won't have many hours to yourself while you are staying with

me, brother," he said--this form of address borrowed from the
speech of our peasants being the usual expression of the highest

good humour in a moment of affectionate elation. "I shall be
always coming in for a chat."

As a matter of fact, we had the whole house to chat in, and were
everlastingly intruding upon each other. I invaded the

retirement of his study where the principal feature was a
colossal silver inkstand presented to him on his fiftieth year by

a subscription of all his wards then living. He had been
guardian of many orphans of land-owning families from the three

southern provinces--ever since the year 1860. Some of them had
been my school fellows and playmates, but not one of them, girls

or boys, that I know of has ever written a novel. One or two
were older than myself--considerably older, too. One of them, a

visitor I remember in my early years, was the man who first put
me on horseback, and his four-horse bachelor turnout, his perfect

horsemanship and general skill in manly exercises, was one of my
earliest admirations. I seem to remember my mother looking on

from a colonnade in front of the dining-room windows as I was
lifted upon the pony, held, for all I know, by the very Joseph--

the groom attached specially to my grandmother's service--who
died of cholera. It was certainly a young man in a dark-blue,

tailless coat and huge Cossack trousers, that being the livery of
the men about the stables. It must have been in 1864, but

reckoning by another mode of calculating time, it was certainly
in the year in which my mother obtained permission to travel

south and visit her family, from the exile into which she had
followed my father. For that, too, she had had to ask

permission, and I know that one of the conditions of that favour
was that she should be treated exactly as a condemned exile

herself. Yet a couple of years later, in memory of her eldest
brother, who had served in the Guards and dying early left hosts

of friends and a loved memory in the great world of St.
Petersburg, some influential personages procured for her this

permission--it was officially called the "Highest Grace"--of a
four months' leave from exile.

This is also the year in which I first begin to remember my
mother with more distinctness than a mere loving, wide-browed,