"Charge it up," he said to someone.
He put on his hat, and without a word to Klimkov walked to the door. Yevsey followed on tiptoe, not daring to put on his hat.
"Be at the place at nine o'clock to-morrow. You will be relieved at twelve," said Maklakov in the street. He thrust his hands in his coat pockets, and disappeared.
"He didn't say 'good-by,'" thought Yevsey aggrieved, walking along the deserted street.
When he entered within the circles of light thrown by the street lamps, he slackened his pace, and instinctively hastened over the parts enveloped in obscurity. He felt ill. Darkness surrounded him on all sides. It was cold. The gluey, bitter taste of beer penetrated from his mouth into his chest, and his heart beat unevenly. Languid thoughts stirred in his head like heavy flakes of autumn snow.
"There, I've served a day. How they all are—these different days. If only somebody liked me."
At night Yevsey dreamed that his cousin Yashka seated himself on his chest, seized him by the throat, and choked him. He awoke, and heard Piotr's angry dry thin voice in the other room:
"I spit upon the Czar's empire and all this hum-buggery!"
A woman laughed, and someone's thin voice sounded:
"Hush, hush, don't bawl."