"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.