"Now I see that I am a criminal; yes, I am a criminal."

THE KISS

AT eight o'clock on the evening of the twentieth of May all the six
batteries of the N---- Reserve Artillery Brigade halted for the
night in the village of Myestetchki on their way to camp. When the
general commotion was at its height, while some officers were busily
occupied around the guns, while others, gathered together in the
square near the church enclosure, were listening to the quartermasters,
a man in civilian dress, riding a strange horse, came into sight
round the church. The little dun-coloured horse with a good neck
and a short tail came, moving not straight forward, but as it were
sideways, with a sort of dance step, as though it were being lashed
about the legs. When he reached the officers the man on the horse
took off his hat and said:

"His Excellency Lieutenant-General von Rabbek invites the gentlemen
to drink tea with him this minute. . . ."

The horse turned, danced, and retired sideways; the messenger raised
his hat once more, and in an instant disappeared with his strange
horse behind the church.

"What the devil does it mean?" grumbled some of the officers,
dispersing to their quarters. "One is sleepy, and here this Von
Rabbek with his tea! We know what tea means."

The officers of all the six batteries remembered vividly an incident
of the previous year, when during manoeuvres they, together with
the officers of a Cossack regiment, were in the same way invited
to tea by a count who had an estate in the neighbourhood and was a
retired army officer: the hospitable and genial count made much of
them, fed them, and gave them drink, refused to let them go to their
quarters in the village and made them stay the night. All that, of
course, was very nice--nothing better could be desired, but the
worst of it was, the old army officer was so carried away by the
pleasure of the young men's company that till sunrise he was telling
the officers anecdotes of his glorious past, taking them over the
house, showing them expensive pictures, old engravings, rare guns,
reading them autograph letters from great people, while the weary
and exhausted officers looked and listened, longing for their beds
and yawning in their sleeves; when at last their host let them go,
it was too late for sleep.

Might not this Von Rabbek be just such another? Whether he were or
not, there was no help for it. The officers changed their uniforms,
brushed them