tried to show everyone, even the fog, his sedateness
and discretion.

"God knows what to make of you," Ptaha persisted in addressing the
tramp. "Peasant you are not, and gentleman you are not, but some sort of
a thing between.... The other day I was washing a sieve in the pond and
caught a reptile--see, as long as a finger, with gills and a tail. The
first minute I thought it was a fish, then I looked--and, blow it! if it
hadn't paws. It was not a fish, it was a viper, and the deuce only knows
what it was.... So that's like you.... What's your calling?"

"I am a peasant and of peasant family," sighed the tramp. "My mamma was
a house serf. I don't look like a peasant, that's true, for such has
been my lot, good man. My mamma was a nurse with the gentry, and had
every comfort, and as I was of her flesh and blood, I lived with her in
the master's house. She petted and spoiled me, and did her best to take
me out of my humble class and make a gentleman of me. I slept in a
bed, every day I ate a real dinner, I wore breeches and shoes like a
gentleman's child. What my mamma ate I was fed on, too; they gave her
stuffs as a present, and she dressed me up in them.... We lived well! I
ate so many sweets and cakes in my childish years that if they could
be sold now it would be enough to buy a good horse. Mamma taught me
to read and write, she instilled the fear of God in me from my earliest
years, and she so trained me that now I can't bring myself to utter an
unrefined peasant word. And I don't drink vodka, my lad, and am neat in
my dress, and know how to behave with decorum in good society. If she
is still living, God give her health; and if she is dead, then, O Lord,
give her soul peace in Thy Kingdom, wherein the just are at rest."

The tramp bared his head with the scanty hair standing up like a brush
on it, turned his eyes upward and crossed himself twice.

"Grant her, O Lord, a verdant and peaceful resting-place," he said in
a drawling voice, more like an old woman's than a man's. "Teach Thy
servant Xenia Thy justifications, O Lord! If it had not been for
my beloved mamma I should have been a peasant with no sort of
understanding! Now, young man, ask me about anything and I understand
it all: the holy Scriptures and profane writings, and every prayer and
catechism. I live according to the Scriptures.... I don't injure anyone,
I keep my flesh in purity and continence, I observe the fasts, I eat at
fitting times. Another ma