142 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 



the matter of bribes. There are uriadniks, however, 

 who, like the domovois on the 30th March, are given 

 to fits of wanton deviltry, seemingly out of spontane- 

 ous and irrepressible exultation over the opportunities 

 of their position. Stories are current of uriadniks en- 

 tering moujiks' houses, and, on the ground of defective 

 sanitary practices, upsetting jars of milk and tubs of 

 picked cucumbers on to the floor. 



In many of the villages south of Tula, one of the 

 standing precautions against fire that the moujiks are 

 required to maintain is to keep ready to hand, beside 

 the water-buckets, axes, etc., previously mentioned, a 

 swab attached to a long pole, which is to be dipped in 

 water for flogging a blazing roof. An uriadnik is said 

 to have once discovered attached to one of these fire 

 poles, instead of the regulation swab, a dead magpie, 

 which the owner of the house had fastened there as a 

 precaution against witches. The zealous officer was 

 naturally indignant, and determined to make an ex- 

 ample of the offender that would be remembered for 

 some time, carried it into the house and added it, 

 feathers, corruption, and all, to the kettle of cabbage 

 soup which the house-wife was boiling for the family 

 dinner. As the magpie is a bird which was cursed 

 centuries ago by a Moscow metropolitan, and is there- 

 fore unholy, the kettle of soup had to be thrown away. 



But to return to the narrative of our own experi- 

 ences on the road, our first uriadnik, who had turned 

 up in so curious a manner at the exact moment when 

 we could least afford to have anything to do with 

 gentlemen of his kidney, as though uriadniks had the 

 faculty of scenting from afar the vulnerable points of 



