"There it is yonder, to be sure," rejoined the driver, pointing out to
me the village which we had just reached.

I noticed near the gateway an old iron cannon. The streets were narrow
and crooked, nearly all the _izbas_[29] were thatched. I ordered him to
take me to the Commandant, and almost directly my _kibitka_ stopped
before a wooden house, built on a knoll near the church, which was also
in wood.

No one came to meet me. From the steps I entered the ante-room. An old
pensioner, seated on a table, was busy sewing a blue patch on the elbow
of a green uniform. I begged him to announce me.

"Come in, my little father," he said to me; "we are all at home."

I went into a room, very clean, but furnished in a very homely manner.
In one corner there stood a dresser with crockery on it. Against the
wall hung, framed and glazed, an officer's commission. Around this were
arranged some bark pictures,[30] representing the "Taking of Kustrin"
and of "Otchakof,"[31] "The Choice of the Betrothed," and the "Burial of
the Cat by the Mice." Near the window sat an old woman wrapped in a
shawl, her head tied up in a handkerchief. She was busy winding thread,
which a little, old, one-eyed man in an officer's uniform was holding on
his outstretched hands.

"What do you want, my little father?" she said to me, continuing her
employment.

I answered that I had been ordered to join the service here, and that,
therefore, I had hastened to report myself to the Commandant. With these
words I turned towards the little, old, one-eyed man, whom I had taken
for the Commandant. But the good lady interrupted the speech with which
I had prepared myself.

"Ivan Kouzmitch[32] is not at home," said she. "He is gone to see Father
Garassim. But it's all the same, I am his wife. Be so good as to love us
and take us into favour.[33] Sit down, my little father."

She called a servant, and bid her tell the "_ouriadnik_"[34] to come.
The little, old man was looking curiously at me with his one eye.

"Might I presume to ask you," said he to me, "in what regiment you have
deigned to serve?"

I satisfied his curiosity.

"And might I ask you," continued he, "why you have condescended to
exchange from the Guard into our garrison?"

I replied that it was by order of the authorities.

"Probably for conduct unbecoming an officer of the Guard?" rejoined my
indefatigable questioner.

"Will you be good enough to stop talking nonsense?" the wife of the