a husky muffled voice.

"Why, Vassya here is angry," said Panteley. "So I have been saying
things to him to stop his being angry. . . . Oh, how my swollen
feet hurt! Oh, oh! They are more inflamed than ever for Sunday,
God's holy day!"

"It's from walking," observed Vassya.

"No, lad, no. It's not from walking. When I walk it seems easier;
when I lie down and get warm, . . . it's deadly. Walking is easier
for me."

Emelyan, in his reddish-brown coat, walked between Panteley and
Vassya and waved his arms, as though they were going to sing. After
waving them a little while he dropped them, and croaked out hopelessly:

"I have no voice. It's a real misfortune. All last night and this
morning I have been haunted by the trio 'Lord, have Mercy' that we
sang at the wedding at Marionovsky's. It's in my head and in my
throat. It seems as though I could sing it, but I can't; I have no
voice."

He paused for a minute, thinking, then went on:

"For fifteen years I was in the choir. In all the Lugansky works
there was, maybe, no one with a voice like mine. But, confound it,
I bathed two years ago in the Donets, and I can't get a single note
true ever since. I took cold in my throat. And without a voice I
am like a workman without hands."

"That's true," Panteley agreed.

"I think of myself as a ruined man and nothing more."

At that moment Vassya chanced to catch sight of Yegorushka. His
eyes grew moist and smaller than ever.

"There's a little gentleman driving with us," and he covered his
nose with his sleeve as though he were bashful. "What a grand driver!
Stay with us and you shall drive the waggons and sell wool."

The incongruity of one person being at once a little gentleman and
a waggon driver seemed to strike him as very queer and funny, for
he burst into a loud guffaw, and went on enlarging upon the idea.
Emelyan glanced upwards at Yegorushka, too, but coldly and cursorily.
He was absorbed in his own thoughts, and had it not been for Vassya,
would not have noticed Yegorushka's presence. Before five minutes
had passed he was waving his arms again, then describing to his
companions the beauties of the wedding anthem, "Lord, have Mercy,"
which he had remembered in the night. He put the whip under his arm
and waved both hands.

A mile from the village the waggons stopped by a well with a crane.
Letting his pail down into the well, black-bearded Kiruha lay on
his stomach on the framework and thrust his shaggy