haled the smoke of my
cigarette he spat into the embers, while the other man, a young fellow
as plump as a female baker, sank his towsled head upon his breast as
soon as he sat down, and fell asleep.

Next, the clamour across the rivulet subsided for awhile. But suddenly
I heard the ex-soldier exclaim in drunken, singsong accents which came
from the very centre of the tumult:

"Hi, do you answer me! How comes it that you have no respect for
Russia? Is not Riazan a part of Russia? What is Russia, then, I should
like to know?"

"A tavern," the foreman commented quietly; whereafter, turning to me,
he added more loudly:

"I say this of such fellows--that a tavern... But what a noise those
roisterers are making, to be sure!"

The young fellow in the red shirt had just shouted:

"Hi, there, soldier! Seize him by the throat! Seize him, seize him!"

While from Silantiev had come the gruff retort:

"What? Do you suppose that you are hunting a pack of hounds?"

"Here, answer me!" was the next shouted utterance--it came from the
ex-soldier--whereupon the old man remarked to me in an undertone:

"It would seem that a fight is brewing."

Rising, I moved in the direction of the uproar. As I did so, I heard
the old man say softly to his companions:

"He too is gone, thank God!"

Suddenly there surged towards me from the opposite bank a crowd of men.
Belching, hiccuping, and grunting, they seemed to be carrying or
dragging in their midst some heavy weight. Presently a woman's voice
screamed, "Ya-av-sha!" and other voices raised mingled shouts of "Throw
him in! Give him a thrashing!" and "Drag him along!"

The next moment we saw Silantiev break out of the crowd, straighten
himself, swing his right fist in the air, and hurl himself at the crowd
again. As he did so the young fellow in the red shirt raised a gigantic
arm, and there followed the sound of a muffled, grisly blow. Staggering
backwards, Silantiev slid silently into the water, and lay there at my
feet.

"That's right!" was the comment of someone.

For a moment or two the clamour subsided a little, and during that
moment or two one's ears once more became laved with the sweet singsong
of the river. Shortly afterwards someone threw into the water a huge
stone, and someone else laughed in a dull way.

As I was bending to look at Silantiev some of the men jostled me.
Nevertheless, I continued to struggle to raise him from the spot where,
half in and half out of