SENTENCED

Like the majority of Englishmen, Cartoner had that fever of the horizon
which makes a man desire to get out of a place as soon as he is in it.
The average Englishman is not content to see a city; he must walk out of
it, through its suburbs and beyond them, just to see how the city lies.

Before he had been long in Warsaw, Cartoner hired a horse and took
leisurely rides out of the town in all directions. He found suburbs more
or less depressing, and dusty roads innocent of all art, half-paved,
growing wider with the lapse of years, as in self-defence the
foot-passengers encroached on the fields on either side in search of a
cleaner thoroughfare. To the north he found that the great fort which a
Russian emperor built for Warsaw's good, and which in case of emergency
could batter the city down in a few hours, but could not defend it from
any foe whatever. Across the river he rode through Praga, of grimmest
memory, into closely cultivated plains. But mostly he rode by the
riverbanks, where there are more trees and where the country is less
uniform. He rode more often than elsewhere southward by the Vistula, and
knew the various roads and paths that led to Wilanow.

One evening, when clouds had been gathering all day and the twilight was
shorter than usual, he was benighted in the low lands that lie parallel
with the Saska Island. He knew his whereabouts, however, and soon struck
that long and lonely river-side road, the Czerniakowska, which leads
into the manufacturing districts where the sugar-refineries and the
iron-foundries are. It was inches deep in dust, and he rode in
silence on the silent way. Before him loomed the chimney of the large
iron-works, which clang and rattle all day in the ears of the idlers in
the Lazienki Park.