d at them,' he says, 'and you'll take
them all,'" Tikhon concluded, looking cheerfully and resolutely into
Denisov's eyes.

"I'll give you a hundwed sharp lashes--that'll teach you to play the
fool!" said Denisov severely.

"But why are you angry?" remonstrated Tikhon, "just as if I'd never seen
your Frenchmen! Only wait till it gets dark and I'll fetch you any of
them you want--three if you like."

"Well, let's go," said Denisov, and rode all the way to the watchhouse
in silence and frowning angrily.

Tikhon followed behind and Petya heard the Cossacks laughing with him
and at him, about some pair of boots he had thrown into the bushes.

When the fit of laughter that had seized him at Tikhon's words and smile
had passed and Petya realized for a moment that this Tikhon had killed a
man, he felt uneasy. He looked round at the captive drummer boy and felt
a pang in his heart. But this uneasiness lasted only a moment. He felt
it necessary to hold his head higher, to brace himself, and to question
the esaul with an air of importance about tomorrow's undertaking, that
he might not be unworthy of the company in which he found himself.

The officer who had been sent to inquire met Denisov on the way with the
news that Dolokhov was soon coming and that all was well with him.

Denisov at once cheered up and, calling Petya to him, said: "Well, tell
me about yourself."

CHAPTER VII

Petya, having left his people after their departure from Moscow, joined
his regiment and was soon taken as orderly by a general commanding a
large guerrilla detachment. From the time he received his commission,
and especially since he had joined the active army and taken part in
the battle of Vyazma, Petya had been in a constant state of blissful
excitement at being grown-up and in a perpetual ecstatic hurry not to
miss any chance to do something really heroic. He was highly delighted
with what he saw and experienced in the army, but at the same time
it always seemed to him that the really heroic exploits were being
performed just where he did not happen to be. And he was always in a
hurry to get where he was not.

When on the twenty-first of October his general expressed a wish to send
somebody to Denisov's detachment, Petya begged so piteously to be sent
that the general could not refuse. But when dispatching him he recalled
Petya's mad action at the battle of Vyazma, where instead of riding by
the road to the place to which he