ge at night now, that would be annoying: there one can
have some fun, but here what is there? It's all one whether we're in
the cordon or in ambush. What a fellow you are!'

'And are you going to the village?'

'I'll go for the holidays.'

'Gurka says your Dunayka is carrying on with Fomushkin,' said Nazarka
suddenly.

'Well, let her go to the devil,' said Lukashka, showing his regular
white teeth, though he did not laugh. 'As if I couldn't find another!'

'Gurka says he went to her house. Her husband was out and there was
Fomushkin sitting and eating pie. Gurka stopped awhile and then went
away, and passing by the window he heard her say, "He's gone, the
fiend.... Why don't you eat your pie, my own? You needn't go home for
the night," she says. And Gurka under the window says to himself,
"That's fine!"'

'You're making it up.'

'No, quite true, by Heaven!'

'Well, if she's found another let her go to the devil,' said Lukashka,
after a pause. 'There's no lack of girls and I was sick of her anyway.'

'Well, see what a devil you are!' said Nazarka. 'You should make up to
the cornet's girl, Maryanka. Why doesn't she walk out with any one?'

Lukashka frowned. 'What of Maryanka? They're all alike,' said he.

'Well, you just try...'

'What do you think? Are girls so scarce in the village?'

And Lukashka recommenced whistling, and went along the cordon pulling
leaves and branches from the bushes as he went. Suddenly, catching
sight of a smooth sapling, he drew the knife from the handle of his
dagger and cut it down. 'What a ramrod it will make,' he said, swinging
the sapling till it whistled through the air.

The Cossacks were sitting round a low Tartar table on the earthen floor
of the clay-plastered outer room of the hut, when the question of whose
turn it was to lie in ambush was raised. 'Who is to go tonight?'
shouted one of the Cossacks through the open door to the corporal in
the next room.

'Who is to go?' the corporal shouted back. 'Uncle Burlak has been and
Fomushkin too,' said he, not quite confidently. 'You two had better go,
you and Nazarka,' he went on, addressing Lukashka. 'And Ergushov must
go too; surely he has slept it off?'

'You don't sleep it off yourself so why should he?' said Nazarka in a
subdued voice.

The Cossacks laughed.

Ergushov was the Cossack who had been lying drunk and asleep near the
hut. He had only that moment staggered into the room rubbing his eyes.

Lukashka had