I.

The burning sun of July shone blindingly down on Smolkena, Hooding its old huts with liberal streams of bright sunshine. There was a particularly large quantity of sunlight on the roof of the Starosta\'s[1] hut, not so long ago re-roofed with smoothly-planed, yellow, fragrant, boards. It was Sunday, and almost the whole population of the village had come out into the street thickly grown over with grass and spotted here and there with lumps of dry mud. In front of the Starosta\'s house, a large group of men and women were assembled; some were sitting on the mound of earth round the hut, others were sitting on the bare ground, others were standing. The little children were chasing each other in and out of the groups, to an accompaniment of angry rebukes and slaps from the grown-ups.

[1] Chief of a village community.

The centre of this crowd was a tall man, with large drooping moustaches. To judge from his cinnamon-brown face, covered with thick, grey bristles, and a whole network of deep wrinkles—judging from the grey tufts of hair forcing their way from under his dirty straw hat, this man might have been fifty years of age. He was looking on the ground, and the nostrils of his large and gristly nose were trembling, and when he raised his head to cast a glance at the window of the Starosta\'s house, his large, melancholy, almost sinister eyes became visible: they were deep sunk in their orbits, and his thick brows cast a shadow over their dark pupils. He was dressed in the brown shabby under-coat of a lay-brother, scarcely covering his knees, and was girt about with a cord. There was a satchel across his shoulder, in his right hand he held a long stick with an iron ferrule, his left was thrust into his bosom. Those around him regarded him suspiciously, jeeringly, with contempt, and finally with an obvious joy that they had succeeded in catching the wolf before he had done mischief to the fold. He had come walking through the village, and, going to the window of the Starosta, had asked for something to drink. The Starosta had given him some kvas,[2] and entered into conversation with him. But contrary to the habit of pilgrims, the wayfarer had answered very unwillingly. Then the Starosta had asked him for his documents, and there were no documents forthcoming. And they had detained the wayfarer and had determined to send him to the local magistrate. The Starosta had selected as his escort the village Sotsky[3] and was now giving him directions in the hut, leaving the prisoner in the midst of the mob.

[2] A sour popular Russian drink.

[3] The Starosta\'s deputy.

As if fixed to the trunk of a willow tree, there the prisoner stood, leaning his bowed back against it. But now on the staircase of the hut appeared a purblind old man with a foxy face and a grey, wedge-shaped beard. Gradually his booted feet descended the staircase, step by step, and his round stomach waggled solidly beneath his long shirt. From behind his shoulder protruded the bearded, four-cornered face of the Sotsky.

"You understand then, my dear Efimushka?" inquired the Starosta of the Sotsky.

"Certainly, why not? I understand thoroughly. That is to say, I, the Sotsky of Smolkena, am bound to conduct this man to the district magistrate—and that\'s all." The Sotsky pronounced his speech staccato, and with comical dignity for the benefit of the public.

"And the papers?"

"The papers?—they are stored away safely in my breast-pocket."

"Well, that\'s all right," said the Starosta approvingly, at the same time scratching his sides energetically.

"God be with you, then," he added.

"Well, my father, shall we stroll on, then?" said the Sotsky to the prisoner.

"You might give us a conveyance," replied the prisoner to the proposition of the Sotsky.

The Starosta smiled.

"A con-vey-ance, eh? Go along! Our brother the wayfarer here is used to lounging about the fields and villages—and we\'ve no horses to spare. You must go on your own legs, that\'s all."

"It doesn\'t matter, let us go, my father!" said the Sotsky cheerfully. "Surely you don\'t think it is too far for us? Twenty versts at most, thank God! Come, let us go, \'twill be nothing. We shall do it capitally, you and I. And when we get there you shall have a rest."

"In a cold cellar," explained the Starosta.

"Oh, that\'s nothing," the Sotsky hastened to say, "a man when he is tired is not sorry to rest even in a dungeon. And then, too, a cold cellar—it is cooling after a hot day—you\'ll be quite comfortable in it."

The prisoner looked sourly at his escort—the latter smiled merrily and frankly.

"Well, come along, honoured father! Good-bye, Vasil Gavriluich! Let\'s be off!"

"God be with you, Efimushka. Be on your guard!"

"Be wide-awake!" suggested some young rustic out of the crowd to the Sotsky.

"Do you think I\'m a child, or what?" replied the Sotsky.

And off they went, sticking close to the huts in order to keep in the strip of shadow. The man in the cassock went on in front, with the slouching but rapid gait of an animal accustomed to roaming. The Sotsky, with his good stout stick in his hand, walked behind him.

Efimushka was a little, undersized, muzhik, but strongly built, with a broad, good-natured face framed in a rough, red straggling beard beginning a little below his bright grey eyes. He always seemed to be smiling at something, showing, as he did so, his healthy yellow teeth, and wrinkling his nose as if he wanted to sneeze. He was clothed in a long cloak, trussed up in the waist so as not to hamper his feet, and-on his head was stuck a dark-green, brimless cap, drawn down over his brows in front, and very much like the forage cap of his prisoner.

His fellow-traveller walked along without paying him the slightest attention, just as if he were unconscious of his presence behind him. They went along by the narrow country path, zigzagged through a billowy sea of rye, and the shadows of the travellers glided along the golden ears of corn.

The mane of a wood stood out blue against the horizon; to the left of the travellers fields and fields extended to an endless distance, in the midst of which lay villages like dark patches, and behind these again lay fields and fields, dwindling away into a bluish mist.

To the right, from the midst of a group of willows, the spire of a church, covered with lead, but not yet gilded over, pierced the blue sky—it glistened so in the sun that it was painful to look upon. The larks were singing in the sky, the cornflowers were smiling in the rye, and it was hot—almost stifling. The dust flew up from beneath the feet of the travellers.

Efimushka began to feel bored. Naturally a great talker, he could not keep silent for long, and, clearing his throat, he suddenly burst forth with two bars of a song in a falsetto voice.

"My voice can\'t quite manage the tune, burst it!" he said, "and I could sing once upon a time. The Vishensky teacher used to say: \'Come along, Efimushka,\' and then we would sing together—a capital fellow he was too!"

"Who was he?" growled the man in the cassock.

"The Vishensky teacher...."

"Did he belong to the Vishensky family?"

"Vishensky is the name of a village, my brother And the teacher\'s name was Pavel Mikhaluich. A first-rate sort the man was. He died three years ago.

"Young?"

"Not thirty."

"What did he die of?"

"Grief, I should say."

Efimushka\'s companion cast a furtive glance at him and smiled.

"It was like this, dear man. He taught and taught for seven years at a stretch, and then he began to cough. He coughed and coughed and he grew anxious. Now anxiety you know is often the beginning of vodka-drinking. Now Father Aleyksyei did not love him, and when he began to drink, Father Aleyksyei sent reports to town, and said this and that, the teacher had taken to drink, it was becoming a scandal. And in reply other papers came from the town, and they sent another teacher-fellow too. He was lanky and bony, with a very big nose. Well, Pavel Mikhaluich saw that things were going wrong. He grew worried and ill.... They sent him straight from the schoolroom to the hospital, and in five days he rendered up his soul to God.... That\'s all...."

For a time they went on in silence. The forest drew nearer and nearer to the travellers at every step, growing up before their very eyes and turning from blue to green.

"We are going to the forest, eh?" inquired the traveller of Efimushka.

"We shall hit the fringe of it, it is about a verst and a half distant now. But, eh? what? You\'re a nice one, too, my worthy father, I have my eye upon you!"

And Efimushka smiled and shook his head.

"What ails you?" inquired the prisoner.

"Nothing, nothing! Ah, ha! We are going to the forest, eh?" says he. "You are a simpleton, my dear man. Another in your place would not have asked that question, that is, if he had had more sense. Another would have made straight for the forest, and then...."

"Well!"

"Oh, nothing, nothing. I can see through you, my brother. Your idea is a thin reed in my eyes. No, you had better cast away that idea, I tell you, so far as that forest is concerned. We must come to an understanding, I see, you and I. Why, I would tackle three such as you, and polish you off singly with my left hand.... Do you take me?"

"Take you? I take you for a fool!" said the prisoner curtly and expressively.

"Ah, ha! I\'ve guessed what you were up to, eh?" said Efimushka, triumphantly.

"You scarecrow! What do you think you\'ve guessed?" asked the prisoner with a wry smile.

"Why, about the wood ... I understand ... I mean that when we came to the wood you meant to knock me down—knock me down, I say—and bolt across the fields or through the wood. Isn\'t that so?"

"You\'re a fool!"—and the enigmatic man shrugged his shoulders.... "Come now, where could I go?"

"Where? why where you liked, that was your affair."

"But where?" Efimushka\'s comrade was either angry or really wished to hear from his escort where he might have been expected to go.

"I tell you, wherever you chose," Efimushka explained quietly.

"I have nowhere to run to, my brother, nowhere!" said his companion calmly.

"Well, well!" exclaimed his escort, incredulously, and even waved his hand. "There\'s always somewhere to run to. The earth is large. There is always room for a man on it."

"But what do you mean? Do you really want me to run away, then?" inquired the prisoner curiously, with a smile.

"Go along! You are really too good! Is that right now? You run away, and instead of you someone else is put into gaol! I also should be locked up. No, thank you. I\'ve a word, to say to that."

"You are a blessed fool, you are ... but you seem a good sort of muzhik too," said Efimushka\'s comrade with a sigh. Efimushka did not hesitate to agree with him.

"Exactly, they do call me blessed sometimes, and it is also true that I am a good muzhik. I am simple-minded, that\'s the chief cause of it. Other folks get on by artfulness and cunning, but what is that to me? I am a man all by myself in the world. Deal falsely—and you will die; deal justly—and you will die all the same. So I always keep straight, it is greater."

"You\'re a good fellow!" observed his companion indifferently.

"How! Why should I make my soul crooked when I stand here all alone. I\'m a free man, little brother. I live as I wish to live, I go through life and am a law to myself.... Well, well!—But, say! what do they call you?"

"What? Well—say Ivan Ivanov."

"So! Are you of a priestly stock or what?"

"No."

"Really? I thought you were of a priestly family."

"Because I am dressed like this, eh?"

"It\'s like this. You\'ve all the appearance of a runaway monk or of an unfrocked priest But then, your face does not correspond. By your face I should take you for a soldier. God only knows what manner of man you are"—and Efimushka cast an inquisitive look upon the pilgrim. The latter sighed, readjusted his hat, wiped his sweating forehead, and asked the Sotsky:

"Do you smoke?"

"Alas! crying your clemency! I do, indeed, smoke."

He drew from his bosom a greasy tobacco-pouch, and bowing his head, but without stopping, began stuffing the tobacco into the clay pipe.

"There you are, then, smoke away!" The prisoner stopped, and bending down to the match lighted by his escort, drew in his cheeks. A little blue cloud rose into the air.

"Well, what may your people have been? City people, eh?"

"Gentry!" said the prisoner curtly, spitting aside at an ear of corn already enveloped by the golden sunshine.

"Eh, eh! Very pretty! Then how do you come to be strolling about like this without a passport?"

"It is my way!"

"Ah, ha! A likely tale! Your gentry do not usually live this wolf\'s life, eh? You\'re a poor wretch, you are!"

"Very well—chatter away!" said the poor wretch drily.

Yet Efimushka continued to gaze at the passportless man with ever-increasing curiosity and sympathy, and shaking his head meditatively, continued:

"Ah, yes! How fate plays with a man if you come to think of it? Well, it may be true for all that I know that you are a gentleman, for you have such a majestic bearing. Have you lived long in this guise?"

The man with the majestic bearing looked grimly at Efimushka, and waving him away as if he had been an importunate tuft of hair: "Shut up!" said he, "you keep on like an old woman!"

"Oh, don\'t be angry!" cried Efimushka soothingly, "I speak from a pure heart—my heart is very good."

"Then you\'re lucky. But your tongue gallops along without stopping, and that is unlucky for me."

"All right! I will shut up, maybe—indeed, it would be easy to shut up if only a man did not want to hear your conversation. And then, too, you get angry without due cause. Is it my fault that you have taken up the life of a vagabond?"

The prisoner stood still and clenched his teeth so hard that the sharp corners of his cheek-bones projected, and his grey bristles stood up like a hedgehog\'s. He measured Efimushka from head to foot with screwed-up eyes, which blazed with wrath.

But before Efimushka had had time to observe this play of feature, he had once more begun to measure the ground with broad strides.

A shade of distraught pensiveness lay across the face of the garrulous Sotsky. He looked upwards, whence flowed the trills of the larks, and whistled in concert between his teeth, beating time to his footsteps with his stick as he marched along.

They drew nearer to the confines of the wood. There it stood, a dark, immovable wall—not a sound came from it to greet the travellers. The sun was already sinking, and its oblique rays coloured the tops of the trees purple and gold. A breath of fragrant freshness came from the trees, the gloom and the concentrated silence which filled the forest gave birth to strange sensations.

When a forest stands before our eyes, dark and motionless, when it is all plunged in mysterious silence, and every single tree seems to be listening intently to something—then it seems to us as if the whole forest were filled with some living thing which is only hiding away for a time. And you wait expectantly for something immense and incomprehensible to the human understanding to emerge the next moment, and speak in a mighty voice concerning the great mysteries of nature and creation.
II.

On arriving at the skirts of the wood Efimushka and his comrade resolved to rest, and sat down on the grass round the trunk of a huge oak. The prisoner slowly unloosed his knapsack from his shoulder, and said to the Sotsky indifferently: "Would you like some bread?"

"Give me some, and I\'ll show you," said Efimushka, smiling.

And they began to munch their bread in silence. Efimushka ate slowly, sighing to himself from time to time, and gazing about the fields to the left of him; but his comrade, altogether absorbed in the process of assimilation, ate quickly, and chewed noisily, with his eyes fixed steadily on his morsel of bread. The fields were growing dark, the ears of corn had already lost their golden colouring, and were turning a rosy-yellow; ragged clouds were creeping up the sky from the south-west, and their shadows fell upon the plain—fell and crept along the corn towards the wood, where sat the two dusky human figures. And from the trees also shadows descended upon the earth, and the breath of these shadows wafted sorrow into the soul.

"Glory be to Thee, O Lord!" exclaimed Efimushka, gathering up the crumbs of his piece of bread from the ground, and licking them off the palm of his hand.... "The Lord hath fed us, no eye beheld us. And if any eye hath seen, unoffended it hath been. Well, friend, shall we sit here a little while? How about that cold dungeon of ours?"

The other shook his head.

"Well, this is a very nice place, and has many memories for me. Over there used to be the mansion of Squire Tuchkov...."

"Where?" asked the prisoner quickly, turning in the direction indicated by a wave of Efimushka\'s hand.

"Over there, behind that rising land. Everything around here belongs to them They were the richest people hereabouts, but after the emancipation they dwindled ... I also belonged to them once. All of us hereabouts belonged to them It was a great family. The squire himself, Aleksander Nikietich Tuchkov, was a colonel. There were children, too, four sons; I wonder what has become of them all now? Really folks are carried away like autumn leaves by the wind. Only one of them, Ivan Aleksandrovich, is safe and sound—I am taking you to him now—he is our district magistrate.... He is old already."

The prisoner laughed. It was a hollow, internal sort of laugh—his bosom and his stomach were convulsed, but his face remained immovable, and through his gnashing teeth came hollow sounds like sharp barks.

Efimushka shuddered painfully, and, moving his stick closer to his hand, asked: "What ails you? Is anything the matter?"

"Nothing—or at any rate, it is all over now," said the prisoner, spasmodically, but amicably—"but go on with your story."

"Well, that\'s how it is, you see—the Tuchkov Squires used to be something here, and now there are none left.... Some of them died, and some of them came to grief, and now never a word do you hear of them—never a word. There was one in particular who used to be here ... the youngest of the lot ... they called him Victor ... Vick.... He and I were comrades. In the days when the emancipation was promulgated, he and I were lads fourteen years old.... Ah, what a fine young chap he was—the Lord be good to his dear little soul! A pure stream, if ever there was one!—flashing along and gurgling merrily all day long. I wonder where he is now? Alive or already no more?"

"Was he such a frightfully good fellow as all that?" inquired Efimushka\'s fellow-traveller quietly.

"That he was!" exclaimed Efimushka, "handsome, with a head of his own, and such a good heart! Ah, thou pilgrim man, good heart alive, he was a ripe berry if you like! If only you—could have seen the pair of us in those days! Aye, aye, aye! What games we did play! What a merry life was ours!—raspberries la la[1]!—\'Efimka!\' he would cry, \'let us go a hunting!\' He had a gun of his own—his father gave it to him on his name-day—and he let me carry it for him. And off we went to the woods for a whole day, nay, for two, for three days! When we came home—he had an imposition, and I had a whacking. Yet look you! the next day he would say: \'Efimka! shall we go after mushrooms?\' Thousands of birds we killed together. And as for mushrooms—we gathered poods[2] of them! And the butterflies and cockchafers he caught, and stuck them on pins in little boxes! And he taught me my lessons too! \'Efimka,\' said he, \'I\'ll teach you.\' And he went at it hammer and tongs. \'Come, begin,\' says he; \'say A,\' and I roared \'A-a-a!\' How we laughed. At first I looked upon it as a joke. What does a boor want with reading and writing? But he persuaded me. \'Come, you little fool,\' says he, \'the emancipation was given to you that you might learn. You must learn your letters in order to know how to live and where to seek for justice.\' Of course, children heard their parents speak like that in those days, and began to talk the same way themselves.—It was all nonsense, of course—true learning is in the heart, and it is the heart that teaches the right way. So he taught me, you see! How he made me stick to it! He gave me no rest, I can tell you. What torments! \'Vick,\' I said, \'I can\'t learn my letters. It\'s not in me. I really can\'t do it.\' Oh, how he pitched into me. Sometimes he lambed it into me with a whip—but teach me he would! \'Oh, be merciful,\' I\'d cry! \'Learn, then,\' he would say! Once I ran away from him, regularly bolted, and there was a to do. He searched for me all day with a gun—he would have shot me. He said to me afterwards: \'If I had met you that day,\' said he, \'I should have shot you;\' that\'s what he said! Ah, he was so fierce! Fiery, unbending, a genuine master. He loved me, and he had a soul of flame. Once my papa scored my back with the birch-rod, and when Vick saw it he rushed off to our hut, and there was a scene, my brother! He was all pale and trembling, clenched his fists, and went after my father into his bedroom \'How dare you do it?\' he asked. Papa said: \'But I\'m his father!\' \'Father, eh? Very well, father! I cannot cope with you single-handed, but your back shall be the same as Efimka\'s.\' He burst into tears after these words, and ran away. And what do you say to this, my father—he was as good as his word. Evidently he said something to the manor-house servants about it. For one day my father came home groaning, and began to take off his shirt, but it was sticking to his back! My father was very angry with me that time. \'I\'ve suffered all through you,\' he said, \'you\'re a sneak, the squire\'s sneak.\' And he gave me a sound hiding. But he was wrong about my being the squire\'s sneak I was never that, he might have let it alone."

[1] Equivalent to "beer and skittles."

[2] A pood = 40 lb.

"No, you were never that, Efim!" said the prisoner with conviction, and he trembled all over, "that\'s plain, you could not become a lickspittle," he added hastily.

"Ah, he was a one!" exclaimed Efimushka, "and I loved him. Ah, Vick, Vick! Such a talented lad, too. Everyone loved him, it was not only I. He spoke several languages ... I don\'t remember what they were. It\'s thirty years ago. Ah! Lord, Lord! Where is he now? Well, if he be alive, he is either in high places ... or else he\'s in hot water. Life is a strange distracting thing! It seethes and seethes, and makes a pretty brew of the best of us! And folks, vanish away; it is pitiful, to the last gasp it is pitiful!" Efimushka sighed heavily, and his head sank upon his breast. For a moment there was silence.

"And are you sorry for me?" asked the prisoner merrily. There was no doubt about his merry way of asking, his whole face was lit up by a good and kindly smile.

"You\'re a rum \'un!" exclaimed Efimushka; "one cannot but pity you of course! What are you, if you come to think of it? Wandering about as you do, it is plain that you have nothing of your own in the earth—not a corner, not a chip that you can call your own. Maybe, too, you carry about with you some great sin—who knows what you are? In a word, you\'re a miserable creature."

"So it is," answered the prisoner.

And again they were silent. The sun had already set, and the shadows were growing thicker. In the air there was a fresh smell of earth and flowers and sylvan humidity. For a long time they sat there in silence.

"However nice it may be to stay here we must still be going. We have some eight versts before us. Come now, my father, let us be going!"

"Let us sit a little longer," begged "the father."

"Well, I don\'t care, I love to be about the woods at night myself. But when shall we get to the district magistrate? He will blow me up, it is late."

"Rubbish, he won\'t blow you up."

"I suppose you\'ll say a little word on our behalf, eh?" remarked the Sotsky with a smile.

"I may."

"Oh—ai!"

"What do you mean?"

"You\'re a joker. He\'ll pepper you finely."

"Flog me, eh?"

"He\'s cruel! And quick to box one\'s ears, and at any rate you\'ll leave him a little groggy on your pins."

"Well, well, we\'ll make it all right with him," said the prisoner confidently, at the same time giving his escort a friendly tap on the shoulder.

This familiarity did not please Efimushka. At any rate he, after all, was the person in authority, and this blockhead ought not to have forgotten that Efimushka carried his copper plaque of office on his bosom. Efimushka rose to his feet, took up his stick, drew forth his plaque, let it hang openly on the middle of his breast, and said, severely:

"Stand up! Let\'s be off!"

"I\'m not going," said the prisoner.

Efimushka was flabbergasted. Screwing up his eyes he was silent for a moment, not understanding why this prisoner should suddenly have taken to jesting.

"Come, don\'t make a pother, let\'s be going!" he said somewhat more softly.

"I am not going," repeated the prisoner emphatically.

"Why not?" shrieked Efimushka, full of rage and amazement.

"Because I want to pass the night here with you. Come! let us light a fire!"

"I let you pass the night here? I light a fire here by your side, eh? A pretty thing, indeed!" growled Efimushka Yet at the bottom of his soul he was amazed. The man had said: I won\'t go! but had shown no signs of opposition, no disposition to quarrel, but simply lay down on the ground and that was all. What was to be the end of it?

"Don\'t make a row, Efim!" advised the prisoner coolly.

Efimushka was again silent, and, shifting from leg to leg as he stood over the prisoner, regarded him with wide-open eyes. And the latter kept looking at him and looking at him and smiling. Efimushka fell a pondering as to what he ought to be doing next.

And how was it that this vagabond, who had been so surly and sullen all along, should all at once have become so gentle? Wouldn\'t it be as well to fall upon him, twist his arms, give him a couple of whacks on the neck, and so put an end to all this nonsense? And with as severely an official tone as he could command, Efimushka said:

"Come, you rascal, stir your stumps! Get up, I say! And I tell you this, I\'ll make you trot along then, never fear! Do you understand? Very well! Look! I am about to strike."

"Strike me?" asked the prisoner with a smile.

"Yes, you; what are you thinking about, eh?"

"What! would you, Efimushka Gruizlov, strike me, Vic Tuchkov?"

"Alas! you are a little wide of the mark, you are," cried Efimushka in astonishment; "but who are you, really? What sort of game is this?"

"Don\'t screech so, Efimushka! It is about time you recognised me, I think," said the prisoner, smiling quietly and regaining his feet; "how do you find yourself, eh?"

Efimushka bounded back from the hand extended to him, and gazed with all his eyes at the face of his prisoner. Then his lips began to tremble, and his whole face puckered up.

"Viktor Aleksandrovich—is it really and truly you?" he asked in a whisper.

"If you like I\'ll show you my documents, or better still, I\'ll call to mind old times. Let\'s see—don\'t you recollect how you fell into the wolf\'s lair in the Ramensky fir-woods? Or how I climbed up that tree after the nest, and hung head downwards for the fun of the thing? Or how we stole the plums of that old Quaker woman Petrovna? And the tales she used to tell us?"

Efimushka sat down on the ground heavily and laughed awkwardly.

"You believe me now, eh?" asked the prisoner, and he sat down alongside of him, looked him in the face, and laid a hand upon his shoulder. Efimushka was silent. It had grown absolutely dark around them. In the forest a confused murmuring and whispering had arisen. Far away in the thickest part of the wood the wail of a night-bird could be heard. A cloud was passing over the wood with an almost perceptible motion.

"Well, Efim, art thou not glad to meet me? Or art thou so very glad after all? Ah—holy soul! Thou hast remained the child thou wert wont to be. Efim? Say something, my dear old paragon!"

Efimushka cleared his throat violently.

"Well, my brother! Aye, aye, aye!" and the prisoner shook his head reproachfully. "What\'s up, eh? Aren\'t you ashamed of yourself? Here are you, in your fiftieth year, and yet you waste your time in this wretched sort of business. Chuck it!"—and putting his arm round the Sotsky\'s shoulder he lightly shook him. The Sotsky laughed, a tremulous sort of laugh, and at last he spoke, without looking at his neighbour.

"What am I?... I\'m glad, of course... And you to be like this? How can I believe it? You and ... such a business as this! Vic—and in such a plight! In a dungeon ... without passports ... living on crusts of bread ... without tobacco ... Oh, Lord!... Is this a right state of things? If I were like that for instance ... and you were even a Sotsky ... even that would be easier to bear! And now how will it end? How can I look you in the face? I had always a joyful recollection of you ... Vic ... as you may think ... Even then my heart ached. But now! Oh, Lord! Why, if I were to tell people—they wouldn\'t believe it."

He murmured these broken phrases, gazing fixedly at his feet, and clutching now his bosom and now his throat with one hand.

"There\'s no need to tell folks anything about it. And pray cease ... it is not your fault, is it? Don\'t be disquieted about me ... I\'ve got my papers. I didn\'t show them to the Starosta because I didn\'t want to be known about here. Brother Ivan won\'t put me in quod; on the contrary, he will help to put me on my legs again ... I\'ll stay with him a bit, and you and I shall go out hunting again, eh ... You see how well things are turning out."

Vic said these words soothingly, in the tone used by grown-up people when they would soothe spoilt children. The moon emerged from the forest to meet the advancing cloud, and the edge of the cloud, silvered by her rays, assumed a soft opal tint In the corn the quails were calling; somewhere or other a land-rail rattled. The darkness of the night was growing denser and denser.

"And this is all really true," began Efimushka softly; "Ivan Aleksandrovich will be glad to see his own brother, and you, of course, will begin your life again. And this is really so ... And we will go hunting again ... Only \'tis not altogether as it was. I daresay you have done some deeds in the course of your life. And it is—ah, what is it?"

Vic Tuchkov laughed.

"Brother Efimushka, I have certainly done deeds in my life and to spare ... I have run through my share of the property ... I have not succeeded in the service, I have been an actor, I have been a timber-trade clerk, after that I\'ve had a troupe of actors of my own ... and after that I\'ve gone quite to the dogs, have owed debts right and left, got mixed up in a shady affair. Ah! I\'ve been everything—and lost everything."

The prisoner waved his hand and smiled good-humouredly.

"Brother Efimushka, I am no longer a gentleman. I am quite cured of that. Now you and I will live together. Eh! what do you say?"

"Nothing at all," said Efimushka with a stifled voice; "I\'m ashamed, that\'s all. Here have I been saying to you all sorts of things ... senseless words, and all sorts of rubbish. If it were a muzhik I could understand it.... Well, shall we make a night of it here? I\'ll make a fire."

"All right! make it!"

The prisoner stretched himself at full length on the ground, face upwards, while the Sotsky disappeared into the skirt of the wood, from whence speedily resounded the cracking of twigs and branches. Soon Efimushka reappeared with an armful of firewood, and in a few moments a fiery serpent was merrily creeping along a little hillock of dry branches.

The old comrades gazed at it meditatively, sitting opposite each other, and smoking their one pipe alternately.

"Just like it used to be," said Efimushka sadly.

"Only times are changed," said Tuchkov.

"Well, life is stronger than character. Lord, how she has broken you down."

"It is still undecided which of the two will prevail—she or I," laughed Tuchkov.

For a time they were silent.

"Oh, Lord God! Vic! how lightly you take it all!" exclaimed Efimushka bitterly.

"Certainly! Why not? What has been—is gone for ever!" observed Tuchkov philosophically.

Behind them arose the dark wall of the softly whispering forest, the bonfire crackled merrily; all around them the shadows danced their noiseless dance, and over the plain lay impenetrable darkness.