The Cossacks numbered about fifteen.
The Tartars grew afraid and stopped in hesitation before they reached him. Jilin managed to get to the Cossacks. They surrounded him, asking who he was and where he came from, but Jilin was quite beside himself and could only repeat, through his tears, “Brothers, brothers!”
The soldiers came up and crowded round him, one giving him bread, another porridge, another some vodka to drink, another gave him his cloak to cover him, and another wrenched off the shackles.
The officers recognized him and took him to the fortress. His men were delighted to see him; his fellow-officers gathered about him.
Jilin told them all that had happened to him and ended by saying, “That’s how I went home and got married. I wasn’t meant to marry, evidently.”
And Jilin remained in the army in the Caucasus. It was not until a month later that Kostilin was released, after paying a ransom of five thousand roubles. He was brought back in a half-dead condition.
EMELIAN AND THE EMPTY DRUM
Emelian was a labourer and worked for a master. He was walking through a field one day on his way to work, when a frog hopped in front of him and he just missed crushing it by stepping across. Suddenly some one called to him from behind. He turned, and there stood a beautiful maiden, who said to him, “Why don’t you marry, Emelian?”
“How can I, dear maiden? I possess nothing but the clothes I stand up in, and who would have a husband like that?”
“Marry me,” the maiden said.