."

* * * * *

Such the memories that came back to my recollection that night. Gladly
I would have recounted them to my companions, but, unfortunately, these
had, by now, succumbed to slumber. The ex-soldier, resting in a sitting
posture, and snoring loudly, had his back prised against his wallet,
his head sloped sideways, and his hands clasped upon his knees, while
Vasili was lying on his back with his face turned upwards, his hands
clasped behind his head, his dark, finely moulded brows raised a
little, and his moustache erect. Also, he was weeping in his
sleep--tears were coursing down his brown, sunburnt cheeks; tears
which, in the moonlight, had in them something of the greenish tint of
a chrysolite or sea water, and which, on such a manly face, looked
strange indeed!

Still the rivulet was purling as it flowed, and the fire crackling;
while bathed in the red glow of the flames there was sitting, bent
forward, the dark, stonelike figure of the Molokans' watchman, with the
axe at his feet reflecting the radiant gleam of the moon in the sky
above us.

All the earth seemed to be sleeping as ever the waning stars seemed to
draw nearer and nearer....

The slow length of the next day was dragged along amid an inertia born
of the moist heat, the song of the river, and the intoxicating scents
of forest and flowers. In short, one felt inclined to do nothing, from
morn till night, save roam the defile without the exchanging of a word,
the conceiving of a desire, or the formulating of a thought.

At sunset, when we were engaged in drinking tea by the fire, the
ex-soldier remarked:

"I hope that life in the next world will exactly resemble life in this
spot, and be just as quiet and peaceful and immune from work. Here one
needs but to sit and melt like butter and suffer neither from wrong nor
anxiety."

Then, as carefully he withdrew his pipe from his lips, and sighed, he
added:

"Aye! If I could but feel sure that life in the next world will be like
life here, I would pray to God: 'For Christ's sake take my soul at the
earliest conceivable moment.'"

"What might suit YOU would not suit ME," Vasili thoughtfully observed.
"I would not always live such a life as this. I might do so for a time,
but not in perpetuity."

"Ah, but never have you worked hard," grunted the ex-soldier.

In every way the evening resembled the previous one; there were to be
observed the same luscious flooding of