Page:Ralph Paine--The praying skipper.djvu/158

134 interminable song about a girl called "Little Fat Spring Fragrance," who lived in the "Village of the Wise and Benevolent Magistrate." The ballad rose shriller as the singer saw the corporal swinging along ahead, his rifle nestling on his squared shoulder as if it had come home to its own, his back as flat as a board. You Han was even more jubilant when his master spun on his heel, and shouted with the rasp of the drill-ground in his voice:

"Shut up that racket! It's worse 'n the carrt axle."

The bracing wind swept keen out of the Siberian north, and sunshine flooded from a cloudless sky. The deserter forgot much of his weariness, and caught himself whistling "assembly," but broke off with a groan.

Toward sunset the surrounding wall of a village was outlined like a rocky island in the level plain. You Han halted a ragged wayfarer, and coaxingly addressing him as "great elder brother," dragged forth the information that the town was of considerable size, and that in it was the