At this moment the host re-entered with the boiling _samovar_.[20] I
offered our guide a cup of tea. He at once jumped down.

I was struck by his appearance. He was a man about forty, middle height,
thin, but broad-shouldered. His black beard was beginning to turn grey;
his large quick eyes roved incessantly around. In his face there was an
expression rather pleasant, but slightly mischievous. His hair was cut
short. He wore a little torn _armak_,[21] and wide Tartar trousers.

I offered him a cup of tea; he tasted it, and made a wry face.

"Do me the favour, your excellency," said he to me, "to give me a glass
of brandy; we Cossacks do not generally drink tea."

I willingly acceded to his desire. The host took from one of the shelves
of the press a jug and a glass, approached him, and, having looked him
well in the face--

"Well, well," said he, "so here you are again in our part of the world.
Where, in heaven's name, do you come from now?"

My guide winked in a meaning manner, and replied by the well-known
saying--

"The sparrow was flying about in the orchard; he was eating hempseed;
the grandmother threw a stone at him, and missed him. And you, how are
you all getting on?"

"How are we all getting on?" rejoined the host, still speaking in
proverbs.

"Vespers were beginning to ring, but the wife of the _pope_[22] forbid
it; the pope went away on a visit, and the devils are abroad in the
churchyard."

"Shut up, uncle," retorted the vagabond. "When it rains there will be
mushrooms, and when you find mushrooms you will find a basket to put
them in. But now" (he winked a second time) "put your axe behind your
back,[23] the gamekeeper is abroad. To the health of your excellency."

So saying he took the glass, made the sign of the cross, and swallowed
his brandy at one gulp, then, bowing to me, returned to his lair above
the stove.

I could not then understand a single word of the thieves' slang they
employed. It was only later on that I understood that they were talking
about the army of the Yaik, which had only just been reduced to
submission after the revolt of 1772.[24]

Saveliitch listened to them talking with a very discontented manner, and
cast suspicious glances, sometimes on the host and sometimes on the
guide.

The kind of inn where we had sought shelter stood in the very middle of
the steppe, far from the road and from any dwelling, and certainly was
by no means unlikely to be a robber reso