Page:Siberia and the Exile System Vol 1.djvu/149

Rh About four miles from the town we saw ahead a great crowd of men and women marching towards us in a dense, tumultuous throng, carrying big three-armed crosses, white and colored banners, and huge glass lanterns mounted on long black staves.

"What is that?" I inquired of the driver.

"The Mother of God is coming home," he replied, with reverent gravity.

As they came nearer I could see that the throng was densest in the middle of the muddy road, under what seemed to be a large gilt-framed picture which was borne high in air at the end of a long, stout wooden pole. The lower end of this pole rested in a socket in the middle of a square framework which had handles on all four sides, and which was carried by six bareheaded peasants. The massive frame of the portrait was made either of gold or of silver gilt, since it was manifestly very heavy, and half a dozen men steadied, by means of guy ropes, the standard which supported it, as the bearers, with their faces bathed in perspiration, staggered along under their burden. In front of the picture marched a bareheaded, long-haired priest with a book in his hands, and on each side were four or five black-robed deacons and acolytes, carrying embroidered silken banners, large three-armed gilt crosses, and peculiar church lanterns, which looked like portable street gas-posts with candles burning in them. The priest, the deacons, and all the bareheaded men around the picture were singing in unison a deep, hoarse, monotonous chant as they splashed along through the mud, and the hundreds of men and women who surged around the standard that supported the portrait were constantly crossing themselves, and joining at intervals in the chanted psalm or prayer. Scores of peasant women had taken off their shoes and stockings and slung them over their shoulders, and were wading with bare feet and legs through the black, semi-liquid mire, and neither men nor women seemed to pay the slightest attention to the rain,