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When all had stopped talking such silence ensued, that only the monotonous rippling of the stream under the logs was audible, while from the other end of the raft came along the water the same old melancholy song:—

A coffin of pinewood tree

Stands ready prepared for me;

Within its narrow wall

I’ll await the trumpet call.

“Friends, is it true,” began Kilikeya, a young woman with a delicately transparent, almost waxen face, and feet terrible to look at, being black as the roots of an old tree (she always went about barefoot even in the keenest frost), “is it true what I heard to-day in the market, that there is no Tsar in Russia; that the present Tsar is not the right one, neither a Russian nor of royal blood, but either a foreigner or foreigner’s son, or a Swedish changeling?”

“Neither Swede nor foreigner, but a damned Jew of the tribe of Dan,” declared Cornelius.

“O Lord, Lord,” again somebody sighed heavily, “see how the royal race has degenerated!”

They began to discuss who Peter was: whether a Swede, a foreigner, or Jew.