Page:The Steel Flea.djvu/49

 Athos would have been deprived of many useful contributions from Russian bounty and piety.

Nowadays the "Athos Tulans" carry about sacred things throughout the whole of our native land, and collect contributions in the most masterly manner, even in places where there is nothing to be got. The Tula man is full of ecclesiastical piety, and very knowing in that line; therefore those three workmen who had undertaken to uphold Platoff, and with him all Russia, committed no error in directing their course not Moscow-wards but towards the South.

They were bound not for Kieff, but for Mtzensk, a county town in the Government of Oryol, in which stands the ancient "stone-carved" holy image of Saint Nikolai, which had floated thither, in the most remote times, upon a great cross, also of stone, down the river