h the two, really, are one, and absolutely
indistinguishable, as well as equally foolish. Yes, 'palm in hand'
indeed!"

Similarly could I understand the ex-soldier's indignation, for, like
him, I felt that such dreary, monotonous singing was altogether out of
place in a spot where everything could troll a song so delightful as to
lead one to wish to hear nothing more, to hear only the whispering of
the forest and the babbling of the stream. And especially out of place
did the terms "palm" and "Mennonite" appear.

Yet I had no great love for the ex-soldier. Somehow he jarred upon me.
Middle-aged, squat, square, and bleached with the sun, he had faded
eyes, flattened-out features, and an expression of restless moroseness.
Never could I make out what he really wanted, what he was really
seeking. For instance, once, after reviewing the Caucasus from
Khassav-Urt to Novorossisk, and from Batum to Derbent, and, during the
review, crossing the mountain range by three different routes at least,
he remarked with a disparaging smile:

"I suppose the Lord God made the country."

"You do not like it, then? How should I? Good for nothing is what I
call it."

Then, with a further glance at me, and a twist of his sinewy neck, he
added:

"However, not bad altogether are its forests."

A native of Kaluga, he had served in Tashkend, and, in fighting with
the Chechintzes of that region, had been wounded in the head with a
stone. Yet as he told me the story of this incident, he smiled
shamefacedly, and, throughout, kept his glassy eyes fixed upon the
ground.

"Though I am ashamed to confess it," he said, "once a woman chipped a
piece out of me. You see, the women of that region are shrieking
devils--there is no other word for it; and when we captured a village
called Akhal-Tiapa a number of them had to be cut up, so that they lay
about in heaps, and their blood made walking slippery. Just as our
company of the reserve entered the street, something caught me on the
head. Afterwards, I learnt that a woman on a roof had thrown a stone,
and, like the rest, had had to be put out of the way."

Here, knitting his brows, the ex-soldier went on in more serious vein:

"Yet all that folk used to say about those women, about their having
beards to shave, turned out to be so much gossip, as I ascertained for
myself. I did so by lifting the woman's skirt on the point of my
bayonet, when I perceived that, though she was lean, and smelt like a