year."

"Tcherkask! Oh, what a funny name!"

"And you would think it a funny town if you were there. It is built
on a great bog by the side of the river Volga; all the houses stand
on piles of timber, and in the spring the streets are full of water,
and one has to sail about in boats."

"Oh! that must be delicious."

"I don't like it as much as coming home and riding. See!" and as he
whistled, one of the horses came whinnying up, and put his nose over
the boy's shoulder.

"Good fellow! But your horses are thin; they look little."

"Little?" cried the young Cossack. "Why, do you know what our little
horses can do? There are not many armies in Europe that they have not
ridden down, at one time or another. Why, the church at Tcherkask is
hung all round with Colors we have taken from our enemies. There's the
Swede--didn't Charles XII. get the worst of it when he came in his big
boots after the Cossack?--ay, and the Turk, and the Austrian, and the
French? Ah! doesn't my Grandfather tell how he rode his good little
horse all the way from the Volga to the Seine, and the good Czar
Alexander himself gave him the medal with "Not unto us, but unto Thy
Name be the praise'? Our father the Czar does not think so little of
us and our horses as you do, young lady."

"I beg your pardon," said Lucy; "I did not know what your horses