ture--the ass, Magar, brought by a battery commander
from Turkey--paced pensively with his long-eared head drooping.

Ryabovitch looked indifferently before and behind, at the backs of
heads and at faces; at any other time he would have been half asleep,
but now he was entirely absorbed in his new agreeable thoughts. At
first when the brigade was setting off on the march he tried to
persuade himself that the incident of the kiss could only be
interesting as a mysterious little adventure, that it was in reality
trivial, and to think of it seriously, to say the least of it, was
stupid; but now he bade farewell to logic and gave himself up to
dreams. . . . At one moment he imagined himself in Von Rabbek's
drawing-room beside a girl who was like the young lady in lilac and
the fair girl in black; then he would close his eyes and see himself
with another, entirely unknown girl, whose features were very vague.
In his imagination he talked, caressed her, leaned on her shoulder,
pictured war, separation, then meeting again, supper with his wife,
children. . . .

"Brakes on!" the word of command rang out every time they went
downhill.

He, too, shouted "Brakes on!" and was afraid this shout would disturb
his reverie and bring him back to reality. . . .

As they passed by some landowner's estate Ryabovitch looked over
the fence into the garden. A long avenue, straight as a ruler,
strewn with yellow sand and bordered with young birch-trees, met
his eyes. . . . With the eagerness of a man given up to dreaming,
he pictured to himself little feminine feet tripping along yellow
sand, and quite unexpectedly had a clear vision in his imagination
of the girl who had kissed him and whom he had succeeded in picturing
to himself the evening before at supper. This image remained in his
brain and did not desert him again.

At midday there was a shout in the rear near the string of wagons:

"Easy! Eyes to the left! Officers!"

The general of the brigade drove by in a carriage with a pair of
white horses. He stopped near the second battery, and shouted
something which no one understood. Several officers, among them
Ryabovitch, galloped up to them.

"Well?" asked the general, blinking his red eyes. "Are there any
sick?"

Receiving an answer, the general, a little skinny man, chewed,
thought for a moment and said, addressing one of the officers:

"One of your drivers of the third cannon has taken off his leg-guard
and hung it on the