man accumulate a little
money than he sticks his nose in the air, and falls to thinking himself
a real barin."

"Why is it that you always say 'With us,' and 'Among us,' and so on?"

"Among us Russians, then, if you like it better."

"I do like it better. For you are not a German, are you, nor a Tartar?"

"No. It is merely that I can see the faults in our Russian folk."

Upon that (not for the first time) the pair plunged into a discussion
which had come so to weary them that now they spoke only indifferently,
without effort.

"The word 'faults' is, I consider, an insult," began the ex-soldier as
he puffed at his pipe. "Besides, you don't speak consistently. Only
this moment I observed a change in your terms."

"To what?"

"To the term 'Russians.'"

"What should you prefer?"

A new sound floated into the defile as from some point on the steppe
the sound of a bell summoning folk to the usual Saturday vigil service.
Removing his pipe from his mouth, the ex-soldier listened for a moment
or two. Then, at the third and last stroke of the bell, he doffed his
cap, crossed himself with punctilious piety, and said:

"There are not very many churches in these parts."

Whereafter he threw a glance across the river, and added venomously:

"Those devils THERE don't cross themselves, the accursed Serbs!"

Vasili looked at him, twisted a left-hand moustache, smoothed it again,
regarded for a moment the sky and the defile, and sank his head.

"The trouble with me," he remarked in an undertone, "is that I can
never remain very long in one place--always I keep fancying that I
shall meet with better things elsewhere, always I keep hearing a bird
singing in my heart, 'Do you go further, do you go further.'"

"That bird sings in the heart of EVERY man," the ex-soldier growled
sulkily.

With a glance at us both, Vasili laughed a subdued laugh.

"'In the heart of every man'?" he repeated. "Why, such a statement is
absurd. For it means, does it not, that every one of us is an idler,
every one of us is constantly waiting for something to turn up--that,
in fact, no one of us is any better than, or able to do any better
than, the folk whose sole utterance is 'Give unto us, pray give unto
us'? Yes, if that be the case, it is an unfortunate case indeed!"

And again he laughed. Yet his eyes were sorrowful, and as the fingers
of his right hand lay upon his knee they twitched as though they were
longing to grasp something unsee