part of Lithuania known as Brelovic

part of Lithuania known as Brelovicz, the Imperial Forest. This is a great tract of a hundred thousand acres, which from time immemorial has been a hunting preserve of the nobility. There are a very few peasants settled in it, holding title from ancient times; and one of these was Antanas Rudkus, who had been reared himself, and had reared his children in turn, upon
half a dozen acres of cleared land in the midst of a wilderness. There had been one son besides Jurgis, and one sister. The former had been drafted into the army; that had been over ten years ago, but since that day nothing had ever been heard of him. The sister was married, and her husband had bought the place when old Antanas had decided to go with his son.
It was nearly a year and a half ago that Jurgis had met Ona, at a horse fair a hundred miles from home. Jurgis had never expected to get married-- he had laughed at it as a foolish trap for a man to walk into; but here, without ever having spoken a word to her, with no more than the exchange of half a dozen smiles, he found himself, purple in the face with embarrassment and terror, asking her parents to sell her to him for his wife--and offering his father's two horses he had been sent to the fair to sell. But Ona's father proved as a rock--the girl was yet a child, and he was a rich man, and his daughter was not to be had in that way. So Jurgis perplexed, or laughed, or went on without paying any attention. They were pitiable in their helplessness;
above all things they stood in deadly terror of any sort of person in official uniform, and so whenever they saw a policeman they would cross the street and hurry by. For the whole of the first day they wandered about in the midst of deafening confusion, utterly lost; and it was only at night that, cowering in the doorway of a house, they were finally discovered and taken by a policeman to the station. In the morning an interpreter was found, and they were taken and put upon a car, and taught a new word--"stockyards." Their delight at discovering that they were to get out of this adventure without losing another share of their possessions it would not be possible to describe. They sat and stared out of the window. They were on a street which seemed to run on forever, mile after
mile--thirty-four of them, if they had known it--and each side of it one uninterrupted row of wretched little two-story frame buildings. Down every side street they could see, it was the same-- never a hill and never a hollow, but always the same endless vista of ugly and dirty