"I am a good Christian," declares Gabriel Gabrilovitch with bitter humor. "And now I must have an intermediary; for, naturally, I must inform the enemy so that they will not shoot down so many patriots."
The young Cossack rocked his body as if already in the saddle.
"Won't you permit me to go?"
"Muttonhead! Shall I send one on whose face are the imprints of all the Devil's ten fingers? Pick out the youngest, the handsomest and the stupidist of the sotnia and send him over. The kind that believes anything anybody tells him. Then they over there will believe him. And what we are going to do nobody but you and I will know. Well, have you any such 'steed of God?'"
The sotnik strikes his body with both hands, smiles and nods. "There is a Raskolnik here."
"Is that so, Little Brother?"
Both burst into violent peals of laughter as if overcome by the humor of the situation.
III—THE PLOT THAT FAILED
They would send the Raskolnik—the sectarian who was prepared to die at any moment rather than sin in any particular against the teachings of Jesus, who even in war abhorred attacking the enemy and wanted only to defend himself—one of these religious enthusiasts who had to be driven into military service with a whip. What a joke for these two orthodox Slavs to load upon this "steed of God" the bloodguilt of their stratagem!
They laugh—laugh till their eyes fill with water.