'Oh Jesus! where do you come from, sir?' he cried.
We soon made friends. He lived somewhere in an uluse,[1] and had gone into the town to hire himself out for work in the gold mines; he had secured work and was to start at once, driving a herd of cattle to his new abode. He was grazing them when I met him, and as some of them had gone astray, and he was unable to drive them all across the bridge singlehanded, he was waiting for someone to come along and help him. I gladly lent him a hand, and when the herd had been got across the bridge and was quietly going along, we began to talk. I asked him with whom he was lodging.
[Footnote 1: A settlement consisting of several yurtas.]
'With Kowalski,' he said.
I knew all the Poles in Yakutsk, but I had never heard of Kowalski.
'Well, I mean Kowalski the carpenter.'
Still I did not know whom he meant.
'Who are his friends? whom does he go to see?' I inquired.
'He is peculiar. They all know him, but he does not go to see them.'
'How do you mean: he does not go to see them?'