alute each Cossack. A
hardbitten muzhik as sunburnt as a stick of ergot, he has a black beard
distributed irregularly over a lean face, a fawning smile, and eyes
deep-sunken in their sockets.

Most of these persons I have met for the first time today; but Konev is
an old acquaintance of mine, for he and I have more than once
encountered one another on the road between Kursk and the province of
Ter. An "artelni," that is to say, a member of a workman's union, he
cultivates his fellows' good graces for the reason that he is also an
arrant coward, and accustomed, everywhere save in his own village
(which lies buried among the sands of Alexin), to assert that:

"Certainly, this countryside is rich, yet I cannot hit things off with
its inhabitants. In my own part of the country folk are more spiritual,
more truly Russian, by far than here--they are folk with whom the
natives of this region are not to be compared, since in the one
locality the population has a human soul, whereas in the other locality
it is a flint-stone."

And with a certain quiet reflectiveness, he loves also to recount a
marvellous example of unlooked-for enrichment. He will say to you:

"Maybe you do not believe in the virtue of horseshoes? Yet I tell YOU
that once, when a certain peasant of Efremov found a horseshoe, the
next three weeks saw it befall that that peasant's uncle, a tradesman
of Efremov, was burnt to death with all his family, and the property
devolved to the peasant. Did you ever hear of such a thing? What is
going to happen CANNOT be foretold, for at any moment fortune may pity
a man, and send him a windfall."

As Konev says this his dark, pointed eyebrows will go shooting up his
forehead, and his eyes come protruding out of their sockets, as though
he himself cannot believe what he has just related.

Again, should a Cossack pass him without returning his salute, he will
mutter as he follows the man with his eyes:

"An overfed fellow, that--a fellow who can't even look at a human
being! The souls of these folk, I tell you, are withered."

On the present occasion he has arrived on the scene in company with two
women. One of them, aged about twenty, is gentle-looking, plump, and
glassy of eye, with a mouth perpetually half-open, so that the face
looks like that of an imbecile, and though the exposed teeth of its
lower portion may seem to be set in a smile, you will perceive, should
you peer into the motionless eyes under the overha