tle of stature, thin and bent; but his Tartar eyes
still sparkled.

"Eh! eh!" said the Commandant, who recognized by these terrible marks
one of the rebels punished in 1741, "you are an old wolf, by what I see.
You have already been caught in our traps. 'Tis not the first time you
have rebelled, since you have been so well cropped. Come near and tell
me who sent you."

The old Bashkir remained silent, and looked at the Commandant with a
look of complete idiocy.

"Well, why don't you speak?" continued Ivan Kouzmitch. "Don't you
understand Russ? Joulai, ask him in your language who sent him to our
fort."

Joulai repeated Ivan Kouzmitch's question in the Tartar language. But
the Bashkir looked at him with the same expression, and spoke never a
word.

"Jachki!" the Commandant rapped out a Tartar oath, "I'll make you speak.
Here, Joulai, strip him of his striped dressing-gown, his idiot's dress,
and stripe his shoulders. Now then, Joulai, touch him up properly."

Two pensioners began undressing the Bashkir. Great uneasiness then
overspread the countenance of the unhappy man. He began looking all
round like a poor little animal in the hands of children. But when one
of the pensioners seized his hands in order to twine them round his
neck, and, stooping, upraised the old man on his shoulders, when Joulai
took the rods and lifted his hands to strike, then the Bashkir gave a
long, deep moan, and, throwing back his head, opened his mouth, wherein,
instead of a tongue, was moving a short stump.

We were all horrified.

"Well," said the Commandant, "I see we can get nothing out of him.
Joulai, take the Bashkir back to the barn; and as for us, gentlemen, we
have still to deliberate."

We were continuing to discuss our situation, when Vassilissa Igorofna
burst into the room, breathless, and looking affrighted.

"What has happened to you?" asked the Commandant, surprised.

"Misery! misery!" replied Vassilissa Igorofna. "Fort Nijneosern was
taken this morning. Father Garasim's boy has just come back. He saw how
it was taken. The Commandant and all the officers have been hanged, all
the soldiers are prisoners. The rascals are coming here."

This unexpected news made a great impression upon me. The Commandant of
Fort Nijneosern, a gentle and quiet young man, was known to me. Two
months previously he had passed on his way from Orenburg with his young
wife, and he had stayed with Ivan Kouzmitch.

The Nijneosernaia was only