"If you like I'll show you my documents, or better still, I'll call to mind old times. Let's see—don't you recollect how you fell into the wolf's lair in the Ramensky fir-woods? Or how I climbed up that tree after the nest, and hung head downwards for the fun of the thing? Or how we stole the plums of that old Quaker woman Petrovna? And the tales she used to tell us?"
Efimushka sat down on the ground heavily and laughed awkwardly.
"You believe me now, eh?" asked the prisoner, and he sat down alongside of him, looked him in the face, and laid a hand upon his shoulder. Efimushka was silent. It had grown absolutely dark around them. In the forest a confused murmuring and whispering had arisen. Far away in the thickest part of the wood the wail of a night-bird could be heard. A cloud was passing over the wood with an almost perceptible motion.
"Well, Efim, art thou not glad to meet me? Or art thou so very glad after all? Ah—holy soul! Thou hast remained the child thou wert wont to be. Efim? Say something, my dear old paragon!"
Efimushka cleared his throat violently.
"Well, my brother! Aye, aye, aye!" and the prisoner shook his head reproachfully. "What's up, eh? Aren't you ashamed of yourself? Here are you, in your fiftieth year, and yet you waste your time in this wretched sort of business. Chuck it!"—and putting his arm round the Sotsky's shoulder he lightly shook him. The Sotsky laughed, a tremulous sort of laugh, and at last he spoke, without looking at his neighbour.
"What am I?... I'm glad, of course... And you to be like this? How can I believe it? You and ... such a business as this! Vic—and in such a plight! In a dungeon ... without passports ... living on crusts of bread ... without tobacco ... Oh, Lord!... Is this a right state of things? If I were like that for instance ... and you were even a Sotsky ... even that would be easier to bear! And now how will it end? How can I look you in the face? I had always a joyful recollection of you ... Vic ... as you may think ... Even then my heart ached. But now! Oh, Lord! Why, if I were to tell people—they wouldn't believe it."
He murmured these broken phrases, gazing fixedly at his feet, and clutching now his bosom and now his throat with one hand.
"There's no need to tell folks anything about it. And pray cease ... it is not your fault, is it? Don't be disquieted about me ... I've got my papers. I didn't show them to the Starosta because I didn't want to be known about here. Brother Ivan won't put me in quod; on the contrary, he will help to put me on my legs again ... I'll stay with him a bit, and you and I shall go out hunting again, eh ... You see how well things are turning out."
Vic said these words soothingly, in the tone used by grown-up people when they would soothe spoilt children. The moon emerged from the forest to meet the advancing cloud, and the edge of the cloud, silvered by her rays, assumed a soft opal tint In the corn the quails were calling; somewhere or other a land-rail rattled. The darkness of the night was growing denser and denser.