n.

The ex-soldier frowned and snorted. For my own part, however, I felt
troubled for, and sorry for, Vasili. Presently he rose, broke into a
soft whistle, and moved away by the side of the stream.

"His head is not quite right," muttered the ex-soldier as he winked in
the direction of the retreating figure. "Yes, I tell you that straight,
for from the first it was clear to me. Otherwise, what could his words
in depredation of Russia mean, when of Russia nothing the least hard or
definite can be said? Who really knows her? What is she in reality,
seeing that each of her provinces is a soul to itself, and no one could
state which of the two Holy Mothers stands nearest to God--the Holy
Mother of Smolensk, or the Holy Mother of Kazan?"

For a while the speaker sat scraping greasy deposit from the bottom and
sides of the kettle; and all that while he grumbled as though he had a
grudge against someone. At length, however, he assumed an attitude of
attention, with his neck stretched out as though to listen to some
sound.

"Hist!" was his exclamation.

What then followed, followed as unexpectedly as when, like an evil
bird, a summer whirlwind suddenly sweeps up from the horizon, and
discharges a bluish-black cloud in torrents of rain and hail, until
everything is overwhelmed and battered to mud.

That is to say, with much din of whistling and other sounds there now
came pouring into the defile, and began to ascend the trail beside the
stream, a straggling procession of some thirty workmen with, gleaming
dully in the hands of their leading files, flagons of vodka, and,
suspended on the backs and shoulders of others, wallets and bags of
bread and other comestibles, and, in two instances, poised on the heads
of yet other processionists, large black cauldrons the effect of which
was to make their bearers look like mushrooms.

"A vedro [2 3/4 gallons] and a half to the cauldron!" whispered the
ex-soldier with a computative grunt as he gained his feet.

"Yes, a vedro and a half," he repeated. As he spoke the tip of his
tongue protruded until it rested on the under-lip of his half-opened
mouth. In his face there was a curiously thirsty, gross expression, and
his attitude, as he stood there, was that of one who had just received
a blow, and was about to cry out in consequence.

Meanwhile the defile rumbled like a barrel into which heavy weights are
being dropped, for one of the newcomers was beating an empty tin pail,
and a