the defile with dove-coloured
mist, the same flashing of the silver crags in the roseate twilight,
the same rocking of the dense, warm forest's soft, leafy tree-tops, the
same softening of the rocks' outlines in the gloom, the same gradual
uplift of shadows, the same chanting of the "matchmaking" river, the
same routine on the part of the big, sleek carpenters around the
barraque--a routine as slow and ponderous in its course as the
movements of a drove of wild boars.

More than once during the off hours of the day had we sought to make
the carpenters' acquaintance, to start a conversation with them, but
always their answers had been given reluctantly, in monosyllables, and
never had a discussion seemed likely to get under way without the
whiteheaded foreman shouting to the particular member of the gang
concerned: "Hi, you, Pavlushka! Get back to work, there!" Indeed, he,
the foreman, had outdone all in his manifestations of dislike for our
friendship, and as monotonously as though he had been minded to rival
the rivulet as a songster, he had hummed his pious ditties, or else
raised his snuffling voice to sing them with an ever-importunate
measure of insistence, so that all day long those ditties had been
coursing their way in a murky, melancholy-compelling flood. Indeed, as
the foreman had stepped cautiously on thin legs from stone to stone
during his ceaseless inspection of the work of his men, he had come to
seem to have for his object the describing of an invisible, circular
path, as a means of segregating us more securely than ever from the
society of the carpenters.

Personally, however, I had no desire to converse with him, for his
frozen eyes chilled and repelled me and from the moment when I had
approached him, and seen him fold his hands behind him, and recoil a
step as he inquired with suppressed sternness, "What do you want?"
there had fallen away from me all further ambition to learn the nature
of the songs which he sang.

The ex-soldier gazed at him resentfully, then said with an oath:

"The old wizard and pilferer! Take my word for it that a lump of piety
like that has got a pretty store put away somewhere."

Whereafter, as he lit his pipe and squinted in the direction of the
carpenters, he added with stifled wrath:

"The airs that the 'elect' give themselves--the sons of bitches!"

"It is always so," commented Vasili with a resentment equal to the last
speaker's. "Yes, no sooner, with us, does a