r a priest nor a magistrate. Yet YOU say that I had better
consider why this is my lot. Do you think that YOU are the only man
able to consider things, possessed of a brain?"

And in an access of fury the speaker replaced his pipe, and sat
frowning in silence. Vasili eyed his interlocutor's features as the
firelight played red upon them, and, finally, said in an undertone:

"Yes, it is always so. We fail to get on with our neighbours, yet lack
a charter of our own, so, having no roots to hold us, just fall to
wandering, troubling other folk, and earning dislike!"

"The dislike of whom?" gruffly queried the ex-soldier.

"The dislike of everyone, as you yourself have said!"

In answer the ex-soldier merely emitted a cloud of smoke which
completely concealed his form. Yet Vasili's voice had in it an
agreeable note, and was flexible and ingratiating, while enunciating
its words roundly and distinctly.

A mountain owl, one of those splendid brown creatures which have the
crafty physiognomy of a cat, and the sharp grey ears of a mouse, made
the forest echo with its obtrusive cry. A bird of this species I once
encountered among the defile's crags, and as the creature sailed over
my head it startled me with the glassy eyes which, as round as buttons,
seemed to be lit from within with menacing fire. Indeed, for a moment
or two I stood half-stupefied with terror, for I could not conceive
what the creature was.

"Whence did you get that splendid pipe?" next asked Vasili as he rolled
himself a cigarette. "Surely it is a pipe of old German make?"

"You need not fear that I stole it," the ex-soldier responded as he
removed it from his lips and regarded it proudly. "It was given me by a
woman."

To which, with a whimsical wink, he added a sigh.

"Tell me how it happened," said Vasili softly. Then he flung up his
arms, and stretched himself with a despondent cry of:

"Ah, these nights here! Never again may God send me such bad ones! Try
to sleep as one may, one never succeeds. Far easier, indeed, is it to
sleep during the daytime, provided that one can find a shady spot.
During such nights I go almost mad with thinking, and my heart swells
and murmurs."

The ex-soldier, who had listened with mouth agape and eyebrows raised
even higher than usual, responded to this:

"It is the same with me. If one could only--What did you say?"

This last was addressed to myself, who had been about to remark, "The
same with me also," b