of different animals--from men to horses--in various stages
of decomposition; and as the wolves were kept off by the passing men the
dog could eat all it wanted.

It had been raining since morning and had seemed as if at any moment it
might cease and the sky clear, but after a short break it began raining
harder than before. The saturated road no longer absorbed the water,
which ran along the ruts in streams.

Pierre walked along, looking from side to side, counting his steps in
threes, and reckoning them off on his fingers. Mentally addressing the
rain, he repeated: "Now then, now then, go on! Pelt harder!"

It seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing, but far down and
deep within him his soul was occupied with something important and
comforting. This something was a most subtle spiritual deduction from a
conversation with Karataev the day before.

At their yesterday's halting place, feeling chilly by a dying campfire,
Pierre had got up and gone to the next one, which was burning better.
There Platon Karataev was sitting covered up--head and all--with
his greatcoat as if it were a vestment, telling the soldiers in his
effective and pleasant though now feeble voice a story Pierre knew. It
was already past midnight, the hour when Karataev was usually free of
his fever and particularly lively. When Pierre reached the fire and
heard Platon's voice enfeebled by illness, and saw his pathetic face
brightly lit up by the blaze, he felt a painful prick at his heart. His
feeling of pity for this man frightened him and he wished to go away,
but there was no other fire, and Pierre sat down, trying not to look at
Platon.

"Well, how are you?" he asked.

"How am I? If we grumble at sickness, God won't grant us death," replied
Platon, and at once resumed the story he had begun.

"And so, brother," he continued, with a smile on his pale emaciated face
and a particularly happy light in his eyes, "you see, brother..."

Pierre had long been familiar with that story. Karataev had told it
to him alone some half-dozen times and always with a specially joyful
emotion. But well as he knew it, Pierre now listened to that tale as to
something new, and the quiet rapture Karataev evidently felt as he told
it communicated itself also to Pierre. The story was of an old merchant
who lived a good and God-fearing life with his family, and who went once
to the Nizhni fair with a companion--a rich merchant.

Having put up at an inn they