"Are you looking to see whether he will rise again? Don't be afraid, he won't rise up to pursue us. The scholar is evidently a chap up to a dodge or two, and dealt with the case thoroughly. Well, he has saddled us with it finely. And our comrade too! Ah, my brother! Folks are degenerating! From year to year they degenerate more and more," observed the soldier sadly.
The steppe, speechless and desolate, flooded by the bright morning sun, unfolded itself all around us, blending on the horizon with the sky, so bright and friendly and lavish of light, that any black and iniquitous deed seemed impossible in the midst of the grand spaciousness of that free expanse, covered by the blue cupola of heaven.
"Feel hungry, brother?" said the soldier, twisting himself a cigarette out of his makharka.[4]
"Where are we going to-day, and how?"
"That's the question!"
Here the narrator—my next neighbour in the hospital hammock—broke off his story and said to me:
"That's all. I became very friendly with this soldier, and accompanied him all the way to the Kars District. He was a good and very experienced little fellow, a typical barelegged vagrant. I respected him. We went together all the way to Asia Minor, and then we lost sight of each other."
[4] Peasant's tobacco.
"Did you think sometimes of the carpenter?" I asked.