No one answered him.
"He was the best among you all—the cleverest, the most honest. I am sorry for him."
"May—the—sa-i-nts—receive—him! ... Sing, you one-eyed devil!" muttered the deacon, nudging his friend, who lay by his side half asleep.
"Will you be quiet!" exclaimed "Scraps" in an angry whisper, jumping to his feet.
"I'll go and give him a knock over the head," proposed Martianoff.
"What! are you not asleep?" exclaimed Aristide Fomitch in an extraordinarily gentle voice. "Have you heard? Our schoolmaster is"—
Martianoff turned over heavily on his side, stood up, and glanced at the streams of light which issued from the door and windows of the doss-house, shrugged his shoulders, and without a word came and sat down by the side of the captain.
"Let's have another drop," suggested Kouvalda.
They groped for the glasses, and drank.
"I shall go and see," said Tiapa. "He may want something."