"I wonder if we could find anything here for a fire—dry twigs for instance?" inquired Promtov.
Crawling on the floor we searched and searched, but could find nothing. Then we decided to drag out one of the boards not very firmly fixed in its place. We pulled it out and converted it into firewood. After that Promtov proposed that we should, if possible, bore a hole in the floor of the magazine in order to get some rye grain—for if rye grain is boiled it makes a very good dish. I protested, observing that it was not proper—for thereby we should waste some hundred-weights of grain for the sake of a pound or two.
"And what business is that of yours?" asked Promtov.
"I have heard that one must respect the property of others."
"That, my dear boy, is only necessary when the property is your own ... and it is only necessary then because your property is not other people's property...."
I was silent, but I reflected that this man must have extremely liberal views with regard to property, and that the pleasure of his acquaintance might, conceivably, have its drawbacks.
Soon the sun appeared, bright and cheerful. Blue patches of sky looked out from the broken clouds which were sailing slowly and wearily towards the north. Drops of rain were sparkling everywhere. Promtov and I crept out of the magazine and entered the fields, amidst the bristles of the mown corn, towards the green crooked ribbon of a village far away from us.
"There's a stream," said my acquaintance.
I looked at him, and thought that he must be about forty, and that life was no joke for him. His dark blue eyes, deeply sunken in their orbits, glistened calmly and confidently, and whenever he screwed them up a bit his face assumed a cunning and cruel expression. In his steady and combative gait, in the leather knapsack adroitly slung across his back, in his whole figure there could be detected the passion for a vagabond life, lupine experience and vulpine craft.
"We'll go along together, then," said he; "straight across the stream, five miles off, is the village of Mauzhelyeya, and from thence the straight road to New Prague. Around this little place live Stundists, Baptists, and other mystical muzhiks.... They'll feed us finely if we set about amusing them properly. But not a word about the Scriptures with them. They are at home, as it were, in the Scriptures...."