he post-office.

"Stop!" said Sheshkovsky.

All three got out of the carriage and looked at one another.

"They are not here yet," said Sheshkovsky, shaking the mud off.
"Well? Till the show begins, let us go and find a suitable spot;
there's not room to turn round here."

They went further up the river and soon vanished from sight. The
Tatar driver sat in the carriage with his head resting on his
shoulder and fell asleep. After waiting ten minutes the deacon came
out of the drying-shed, and taking off his black hat that he might
not be noticed, he began threading his way among the bushes and
strips of maize along the bank, crouching and looking about him.
The grass and maize were wet, and big drops fell on his head from
the trees and bushes. "Disgraceful!" he muttered, picking up his
wet and muddy skirt. "Had I realised it, I would not have come."

Soon he heard voices and caught sight of them. Laevsky was walking
rapidly to and fro in the small glade with bowed back and hands
thrust in his sleeves; his seconds were standing at the water's
edge, rolling cigarettes.

"Strange," thought the deacon, not recognising Laevsky's walk; "he
looks like an old man. . . ."

"How rude it is of them!" said the superintendent of the post-office,
looking at his watch. "It may be learned manners to be late, but
to my thinking it's hoggish."

Sheshkovsky, a stout man with a black beard, listened and said:

"They're coming!"

XIX

"It's the first time in my life I've seen it! How glorious!" said
Von Koren, pointing to the glade and stretching out his hands to
the east. "Look: green rays!"

In the east behind the mountains rose two green streaks of light,
and it really was beautiful. The sun was rising.

"Good-morning!" the zoologist went on, nodding to Laevsky's seconds.
"I'm not late, am I?"

He was followed by his seconds, Boyko and Govorovsky, two very young
officers of the same height, wearing white tunics, and Ustimovitch,
the thin, unsociable doctor; in one hand he had a bag of some sort,
and in the other hand, as usual, a cane which he held behind him.
Laying the bag on the ground and greeting no one, he put the other
hand, too, behind his back and began pacing up and down the glade.

Laevsky felt the exhaustion and awkwardness of a man who is soon
perhaps to die, and is for that reason an object of general attention.
He wanted to be killed as soon as possible or taken home. He saw
the sunrise now for the firs