he
came to sleep in the dosshouse and had remained ever since among these
men, much to their astonishment. At first they did not take much
notice of him. In the daytime, like all the others, he went away to
find something to eat, but at nights he always loitered around this
friendly company till at last the Captain took notice of him.

"Boy! What business have you here on this earth?"

The boy answered boldly and stoutly:

"I am a barefooted tramp ...."

The Captain looked critically at him. This youngster had long hair and
a weak face, with prominent cheek-bones and a turned-up nose. He was
dressed in a blue blouse without a waistband, and on his head he wore
the remains of a straw hat, while his feet were bare.

"You are a fool!" decided Aristid Kuvalda. "What are you knocking
about here for? You are of absolutely no use to us ... Do you drink
vodki? ... No? ... Well, then, can you steal?" Again, "No." "Go
away, learn, and come back again when you know something, and are a man
..."

The youngster smiled.

"No. I shall live with you."

"Why?"

"Just because ..."

"Oh you ... Meteor!" said the Captain.

"I will break his teeth for him," said Martyanoff.

"And why?" asked the youngster.

"Just because...."

"And I will take a stone and hit you on the head," the young man
answered respectfully.

Martyanoff would have broken his bones, had not Kuvalda interrupted
with:

"Leave him alone.... Is this a home to you or even to us? You have no
sufficient reason to break his teeth for him. You have no better
reason than he for living with us."

"Well, then, Devil take him! ... We all live in the world without
sufficient reason.... We live, and why? Because! He also because ...
let him alone...."

"But it is better for you, young man, to go away from us," the teacher
advised him, looking him up and down with his sad eyes. He made no
answer, but remained. And they soon became accustomed to his presence,
and ceased to take any notice of him. But he lived among them, and
observed everything.

The above were the chief members of the Captain's company, and he
called them with kind-hearted sarcasm "Creatures that once were men."
For though there were men who had experienced as much of the bitter
irony of fate as these men, yet they were not fallen so low. Not
infrequently, respectable men belonging to the cultured classes are
inferior to those belonging to the peasantry, and it is alwa