third,
then a hundred paces away two red eyes glowed side by side--
probably the windows of some hut--and a long series of such lights,
growing continually closer and dimmer, stretched along the line to
the very horizon, then turned in a semicircle to the left and
disappeared in the darkness of the distance. The lights were
motionless. There seemed to be something in common between them and
the stillness of the night and the disconsolate song of the telegraph
wire. It seemed as though some weighty secret were buried under the
embankment and only the lights, the night, and the wires knew of
it.

"How glorious, O Lord!" sighed Ananyev; "such space and beauty that
one can't tear oneself away! And what an embankment! It's not an
embankment, my dear fellow, but a regular Mont Blanc. It's costing
millions. . . ."

Going into ecstasies over the lights and the embankment that was
costing millions, intoxicated by the wine and his sentimental mood,
the engineer slapped Von Schtenberg on the shoulder and went on in
a jocose tone:

"Well, Mihail Mihailitch, lost in reveries? No doubt it is pleasant
to look at the work of one's own hands, eh? Last year this very
spot was bare steppe, not a sight of human life, and now look: life
. . . civilisation. . . And how splendid it all is, upon my soul!
You and I are building a railway, and after we are gone, in another
century or two, good men will build a factory, a school, a hospital,
and things will begin to move! Eh!"

The student stood motionless with his hands thrust in his pockets,
and did not take his eyes off the lights. He was not listening to
the engineer, but was thinking, and was apparently in the mood in
which one does not want to speak or to listen. After a prolonged
silence he turned to me and said quietly:

"Do you know what those endless lights are like? They make me think
of something long dead, that lived thousands of years ago, something
like the camps of the Amalekites or the Philistines. It is as though
some people of the Old Testament had pitched their camp and were
waiting for morning to fight with Saul or David. All that is wanting
to complete the illusion is the blare of trumpets and sentries
calling to one another in some Ethiopian language."

And, as though of design, the wind fluttered over the line and
brought a sound like the clank of weapons. A silence followed. I
don't know what the engineer and the student were thinking of, but
it seemed to me al