I.

One of them was called Jig-Leg, and the other Hopeful, and they were thieves by profession.

They lived on the outskirts of the town, in the suburb that straggled strangely along the gully, in One of those crazy shanties compounded of clay and half-rotten wood—probably the rubbish sweepings chucked down the gully. The chums went a-thieving in the villages adjoining the town, for in the town itself it was difficult to thieve, and their neighbours in the suburb were not worth robbing.

Both of them were cautious, modest chaps—they were not above appropriating a piece of cloth, a peasant\'s coarse coat, or an axe, a bit of harness, a shirt, or a hen, and they always gave a very wide berth for a very long time to any village where they happened to "cop" anything. But despite such a sensible mode of procedure, the suburban muzhiks knew them very well, and occasionally threatened to beat them to death. But the muzhiks, so far, had never got their opportunity, and the bones of the two friends were still whole, though they had followed their profession and heard the threats of the muzhiks for quite six years.

Jig-Leg was a man of about forty years of age, tall, scraggy, haggard and muscular. He walked with his head bent earthwards, his long arms folded behind his back, with a leisurely but spacious stride, and, as he walked, he always glanced on every side of him with his restlessly keen and anxiously puckered-up eyes. The hair of his head he clipped short, his beard he shaved; his thick, dark-grey, military moustaches hid his mouth, giving to his face a sort of grim and savage expression. His left leg must have been twisted or broken, and had grown in such a way as to become longer than the right leg. When he raised it as he strode along, it used to leap into the air and make a sweep sideways, and to this peculiarity of his gait he owed his nickname.

Hopeful was five years younger than his comrade, not so tall, but broader in the shoulders. He frequently had a hollow cough, and his bony face, overgrown by a large black beard, streaked with grey, was a screen to his morbidly yellow complexion. His eyes were large and black, but they regarded everything amicably and deprecatingly. As he walked, he would press his thick lips together into the shape of a heart, and would softly whistle some song or other—a monotonous melancholy song, always one and the same. A short garment of parti-coloured rags, with some resemblance to a wadding pea-jacket, bobbed up and down on his shoulders; but Jig-Leg always went about in a long grey kaftan, girded with a belt.

Hopeful was a peasant\'s son, his companion the son of a sexton; he had been a lackey and a billiard-marker. They were always seen together, and the peasants used to say of them, "Here are the chums again ... look at them both. Ah, the devils! I wonder when they are going to croak."

The chums used to tramp along some village road, looking carefully about them, and avoiding any chance encounters. Hopeful would cough, and whistle his song; and the leg of his comrade would fling into the air, as if attempting to wrench itself loose, and bolt away from the dangerous path of its master. Or they would lie about somewhere on the outskirts of a wood, amongst the rye, or in a gully, and quietly discuss how to set about stealing in order that they might have something to eat.
II.

In winter even the wolves, who are far better adapted for the struggle for life than our two friends, even the wolves have a bad time of it. Empty, ravenous, and fierce, they even run about the high-ways, and though we kill them we fear them. They have claws and teeth for self-defence, and—the main thing—their hearts are softened by nothing. This last point is very important, for, in order to triumph in the struggle for existence, one ought to have much wisdom, or the heart of a beast.

In the winter the chums also fared ill. Often in the evening they both went out into the streets of the town and begged for alms, trying at the same time to escape the notice of the police. Very rarely did they succeed in stealing anything; it was inexpedient to go into the country because it was cold, and they left their traces in the snow; besides, it was fruitless to visit the villages when everything in them was closed and covered with snow. The comrades lost much strength in the winter in their struggle with hunger, and possibly there was nobody who awaited the spring as eagerly as they did.

And behold!—at last spring arrived. The comrades, sick and extenuated, emerged from their gully and looked joyously at the fields where the snow thawed more and more rapidly every day; dark-brown patches began to appear everywhere, the meadows sparkled like mirrors, and the streams fell a babbling. The sun poured down his unselfish favours upon the earth, and the two friends warmed themselves in his rays, calculating at the same time how soon the earth would get dry, and then they might go and take pot-shots at luck among the villages. Frequently Hopeful, who suffered from sleeplessness, would awake his friend in the early morning with a piece of joyous intelligence:

"Hie! get up! the rooks are flying by!"

"Flying by, eh?"

"Yes, listen to their cawing!"

Emerging from their wretched shanty, they watched the black heralds of the spring carefully building new nests or repairing old ones, and filling the air with their hoarse and anxious cawing.

"Now it will be the turn of the larks," said Hopeful, setting about mending his old and much worn bird-net.

And now the larks also appeared. Then the chums went into the fields, spread their nets on one of the brown thawed patches, and running about in the moist and muddy fields, drove into the nets the hungry birds, who, wearied by their long flight, were seeking their food on the grey earth which had only just freed itself from the snow. On catching the birds they sold them at a pyatachek[1] or a grivenik[2] per head. Then the nettles appeared, which they gathered and carried to the bazaar for the market-garden huckster women. Nearly every day of the spring gave them something fresh to do, some fresh if but trifling bit of work. They could turn everything to some use: osiers, sorrel, mushrooms, strawberries, fungi—nothing passed through their hands in vain. Sometimes the soldiers would come out for firing-practice. After the practice was over the chums would ferret about the earthworks and fish up the bullets, which they would sell subsequently at twenty kopecks the pound. All these occupations certainly prevented the chums from dying of hunger, but very rarely gave them the opportunity of eating their fill, rarely gave them the pleasant feeling of a full stomach working warmly away upon hastily swallowed food.

[1] A silver five kopeck piece.

[2] A ten kopeck piece.
III

Once in April when the country-side had only just began to put forth its buds and shoots, when the woods were still wrapped in a dark blue gloom, and the grass had only just begun to appear on the fat fields basking in the sun—the chums were going along the high-road smoking makharka[1] cigars of their own manufacture, and conversing.

[1] Coarse tobacco smoked by the peasants.

"You are coughing worse than ever," said Jig-Leg to his comrade in a tone of mild reproach.

"A fig for that! Look ye, the dear little sun will soon warm me up—and I shall feel alive again."

"H\'m! You may have to go into the hospital you know."

"What do I want with hospitals? If die I must, let me die!"

"Well, that\'s true enough."

They were passing a tract of land planted with birches, and the birches cast upon them the patterned shadows of their fine slender leaves. The sparrows were hopping along the road chirping merrily.

"You don\'t walk very well," remarked Jig-Leg after a moment\'s silence.

"That\'s because I have a choky feeling," exclaimed Hopeful. "The air is now thick and damp, it is a fat sort of air and I find it hard to swallow."

And stopping short, he fell a-coughing.

Jig-Leg stood beside him, smoked away, and never took his eyes off him. Hopeful, shaken by his attack of coughing, held his bosom with his hands and his face grew blue.

"It gives my lungs a good tearing any way!" said he, when he had ceased coughing.

And on they went again after scaring away the sparrows.

"Now we are coming to Mukhina," observed Jig-Leg, throwing away his cigarette, and spitting. "We must make a circuit round it at the back by the way of the outhouses, perhaps we may be able to pick up something. Then further on past the Sivtsova spinny to Kuznechikha.... From Kuznechikha we\'ll turn off towards Markvoka, and so home."

"That will be a walk of thirty versts," said Hopeful. "May it not be in vain!"

To the left of the road stood a wood uniformly dark and inhospitable, there was not a single patch of green amidst its naked branches to cheer the eye. On the outskirts of the wood a small, rough, shaggy little horse, with woefully fallen-in flanks was roaming, and its prominent ribs were as sharply denned as the hoops of a barrel. The chums stopped again and looked at it for a long time, watching how it slowly picked its way along, lowering its snout towards the ground, and cropping the herbage with its lips, carefully munching them with its worn-out yellow teeth.

"She\'s starved too!" observed Hopeful.

"Gee-gee!" cried Jig-Leg enticingly.

The horse looked at him, and shaking his head, negatively bent it earthwards again.

Hopeful explained the horse\'s wearisome movement: "He doesn\'t like you!" said he.

"Come! If we hand him over to the gipsies, they no doubt will give us seven roubles for her," observed Jig-Leg meditatively.

"No they won\'t! What could they do with her?"

"There\'s the hide!"

"The hide? Do you suppose they\'ll give as much as that for the hide? Look at it! What sort of a hide do you call that? Why it isn\'t equal to old shoe leather."

"Well, they\'d give something any way."

"Yes, I suppose that\'s true enough."

Jig-Leg looked at his comrade, and after a pause, said:

"Well?"

"Awkward...." replied Hopeful doubtfully.

"How?"

"We should leave tracks. The ground is damp ... they could trace where we took it."

"We could put clouts on her feet."

"As you like."

"Come along! Let\'s drive her into the wood and pass the night in the gully. In the night we\'ll bring her out and drive her to the gipsies. It\'s not far—only three versts."

"Let\'s go then," said Hopeful, shaking his head. "A bird in the bush you know.... But suppose something comes of it?"

"Nothing will come of it," said Jig-Leg with conviction.

They quitted the road, and after glancing carefully around them, entered the wood. The horse looked at them, snorted, waved her tail, and again fell to munching the withered grass.
IV.

At the bottom of the deep sylvan hollow it was dark, damp, and still. The murmuring of the stream was borne through the silence, monotonous and melancholy, like a lament. From the steep sides of the gully above waved the naked branches of the hazels, dwarf-cherries, and maples; here and there the roots of the trees, saturated with the spring water, projected helplessly out of the ground. The forest was still dead; the gloom of evening magnified the lifeless monotony of its hues and the sad silence lurking within it which had something of the gloomy and triumphant repose of an old churchyard.

The chums had already been sitting a long time there in the damp and silent gloom, beneath a group of aspens clustered together in a huge clump of earth at the bottom of the ravine. A tiny fire burnt brightly in front of them, and as they warmed their hands over it, they cast into it, from time to time, dry twigs and branches, taking care that the flame should burn evenly all the time, and that the fire should not give forth smoke. Not very far off stood the horse. They had wrapped her mouth round with a sleeve torn from the rags of Hopeful, and had fastened her by her bridle to the trunk of a tree.

Hopeful, crouching down on his heels by the fire, was dreamily gazing at the flame and whistling his song; his comrade, cutting away at a bunch of osier-twigs, was making a basket out of them, and his occupation kept him silent.

The sad melody of the stream and the soft whistling of the unlucky man blended into one accord, and floated plaintively in the silence of the evening and the forest. Now and then some twigs on the fire would crackle, crackle and hiss, doubtless their way of sighing, as if they felt that life was more lingering than their death in the fire, and therefore more of a torment.

"What do you say? Shall we be going soon?" inquired Hopeful.

"It\'s early yet. Let it get quite dark and then we\'ll go," replied Jig-Leg, without raising his head from his work.

Hopeful sighed and began to cough.

"Frozen, eh?" inquired his companion after a long pause.

"N—n—no ... Something makes me miserable."

"Let\'s hear it!" and Jig-Leg shook his head.

"My heart is throbbing."

"Sick, eh?"

"I suppose so ... but it may be something else."

Jig-Leg was silent for a while and then he said:

"I say!... don\'t think!"

"Of what?"

"Of everything."

"Look here now"—Hopeful suddenly seemed to grow alive—"how can I help thinking? I look at her"—he waved his hand towards the horse—"I look at her and I understand—I had such a one also. She was a sorrel, and at all sorts of work—first-class. Once upon a time I even had a pair of them—I worked right well in those days."

"What are you driving at?" asked Jig-Leg curtly and coldly. "I don\'t like this sort of thing in you, you set up the bagpipes and begin to groan!—what\'s the good?"

Hopeful silently threw into the fire a handful of twigs broken up small, and watched the sparks fly upwards and disappear in the damp air. His eyes blinked frequently, and shadows ran swiftly across his face. Presently he turned his head in the direction of the horse and gazed at her for a long time.

The horse was standing motionless, as if rooted in the ground; her head, distorted out of recognition by the wrapping, was hanging down.

"We must take a single-minded view of things," said Jig-Leg, severely and emphatically, "our life—is a day and a night—twenty-four hours and that\'s all! If there\'s food—well and good; if there isn\'t—well squeak and squeak as much as you like, you\'d better leave off, for it does no good. And the way you went on just now isn\'t nice to listen to. It\'s because you\'re sick, that\'s what it is."

"It must be because I\'m sick, I suppose," agreed. Hopeful meekly, but, after a brief silence, he added, "But it may be owing to a weak heart."

"And that\'s because your heart is sick," declared Jig-Leg categorically.

He bit through the osier-twigs, waved them over his head, cut the air with a shrill whistle, and said severely:

"I\'m right enough you see—there\'s nothing of that sort the matter with me."

The horse shifted from leg to leg; a branch cracked somewhere; some earth plumped into the stream, introducing some fresh notes into its quiet melody; then from somewhither two little birds started up and flew along the gully, screeching uneasily. Hopeful followed them with his eyes and remarked quietly:

"What birds are those? If they are starlings they have no business in this forest. They are mostly around dwelling-places. I suppose they are silk-tails[2] ... lots of \'em about."

"They may be cross-bills."[3]

[2] Bombycilla garrula.

[3] Loxia curvirostra.

"It\'s too early for cross-bills, and besides, what does a cross-bill want in a fir-wood? It has no business there. They can only be silk-tails."

"All right—drop \'em."

"Oh certainly!" agreed Hopeful, and he sighed heavily for some reason or other.

The work in the hands of Jig-Leg progressed rapidly, he had already woven the bottom of the basket, and was skilfully making the sides. He cut the osiers with his knife, bit them through with his teeth, bent and twined them, and snorted from time to time whenever he gave a tug at his bristling moustaches.

Hopeful looked sometimes at him, sometimes at the horse, which seemed to have petrified into its dejected pose, and sometimes at the sky, already almost nocturnal, but without stars.

"The muzhiks grab all the horses," he suddenly remarked in a strange voice—"and there are none left except here and there perhaps—so there are no more horses!"

And Hopeful waved his arms about. His face was dull, and his eyes blinked as frequently as if he was looking at something bright blazing up before them.

"What\'s that to do with you?" asked Jig-Leg severely.

"I was calling to mind a story...." said Hopeful guiltily.

"What story?"

"Yes!... Just as it might be here ... the same thing happened to my knowledge once ... they took away a horse ... from a neighbour of mine ... Michael his name was ... such a big muzhik he was ... and pock-marked...."

"Well?"

"Well, they took her away.... She was browsing on the winter pastures—and all at once she was gone. When Michael understood that he was nagless, down he plumped on the ground, and ............