hem over one seemed still alive and, would
you believe it, he jabbered something in their lingo."

"But they're a clean folk, lads," the first man went on; "he was
white--as white as birchbark--and some of them are such fine fellows,
you might think they were nobles."

"Well, what do you think? They make soldiers of all classes there."

"But they don't understand our talk at all," said the dancer with a
puzzled smile. "I asked him whose subject he was, and he jabbered in his
own way. A queer lot!"

"But it's strange, friends," continued the man who had wondered at their
whiteness, "the peasants at Mozhaysk were saying that when they began
burying the dead--where the battle was you know--well, those dead had
been lying there for nearly a month, and says the peasant, 'they lie
as white as paper, clean, and not as much smell as a puff of powder
smoke.'"

"Was it from the cold?" asked someone.

"You're a clever fellow! From the cold indeed! Why, it was hot. If it
had been from the cold, ours would not have rotted either. 'But,' he
says, 'go up to ours and they are all rotten and maggoty. So,' he says,
'we tie our faces up with kerchiefs and turn our heads away as we drag
them off: we can hardly do it. But theirs,' he says, 'are white as paper
and not so much smell as a whiff of gunpowder.'"

All were silent.

"It must be from their food," said the sergeant major. "They used to
gobble the same food as the gentry."

No one contradicted him.

"That peasant near Mozhaysk where the battle was said the men were all
called up from ten villages around and they carted for twenty days and
still didn't finish carting the dead away. And as for the wolves, he
says..."

"That was a real battle," said an old soldier. "It's the only one worth
remembering; but since that... it's only been tormenting folk."

"And do you know, Daddy, the day before yesterday we ran at them and,
my word, they didn't let us get near before they just threw down their
muskets and went on their knees. 'Pardon!' they say. That's only one
case. They say Platov took 'Poleon himself twice. But he didn't know the
right charm. He catches him and catches him--no good! He turns into
a bird in his hands and flies away. And there's no way of killing him
either."

"You're a first-class liar, Kiselev, when I come to look at you!"

"Liar, indeed! It's the real truth."

"If he fell into my hands, when I'd caught him I'd bury him in the
ground with an aspen s