left his guests. Each
had a large room with an old wooden bed and carved ornaments; in the
corner was an ivory crucifix; and their wide, cool beds, made by pretty
Pelagueya, smelled sweetly of clean linen.

Ivan Ivanich undressed in silence and lay down.

"God forgive me, a wicked sinner," he murmured, as he drew the clothes
over his head.

A smell of burning tobacco came from his pipe which lay on the table,
and Bourkin could not sleep for a long time and was worried because he
could not make out where the unpleasant smell came from.

The rain beat against the windows all night long.

IN EXILE

Old Simeon, whose nickname was Brains, and a young Tartar, whose name
nobody knew, were sitting on the bank of the river by a wood-fire. The
other three ferrymen were in the hut. Simeon who was an old man of about
sixty, skinny and toothless, but broad-shouldered and healthy, was
drunk. He would long ago have gone to bed, but he had a bottle in his
pocket and was afraid of his comrades asking him for vodka. The Tartar
was ill and miserable, and, pulling his rags about him, he went on
talking about the good things in the province of Simbirsk, and what a
beautiful and clever wife he had left at home. He was not more than
twenty-five, and now, by the light of the wood-fire, with his pale,
sorrowful, sickly face, he looked a mere boy.

"Of course, it is not a paradise here," said Brains, "you see, water,
the bare bushes by the river, clay everywhere--nothing else.... It is
long past Easter and there is still ice on the water and this morning
there was snow...."

"Bad! Bad!" said the Tartar with a frightened look.

A few yards away flowed the dark, cold river, muttering, dashing against
the holes in the clayey banks as it tore along to the distant sea. By
the bank they were sitting on, loomed a great barge, which the ferrymen
call a _karbass_. Far away and away, flashing out, flaring up, were
fires crawling like snakes--last year's grass being burned. And behind
the water again was darkness. Little banks of ice could be heard
knocking against the barge.... It was very damp and cold....

The Tartar glanced at the sky. There were as many stars as at home, and
the darkness was the same, but something was missing. At home in the
Simbirsk province the stars and the sky were altogether different.

"Bad! Bad!" he repeated.

"You will get used to it," said Brains with a laugh. "You are young yet
and foolish; the milk i