ready that I actually saw before me something
long dead and even heard the sentry talking in an unknown tongue.
My imagination hastened to picture the tents, the strange people,
their clothes, their armour.

"Yes," muttered the student pensively, "once Philistines and
Amalekites were living in this world, making wars, playing their
part, and now no trace of them remains. So it will be with us. Now
we are making a railway, are standing here philosophising, but two
thousand years will pass--and of this embankment and of all those
men, asleep after their hard work, not one grain of dust will remain.
In reality, it's awful!"

"You must drop those thoughts . . ." said the engineer gravely and
admonishingly.

"Why?"

"Because. . . . Thoughts like that are for the end of life, not for
the beginning of it. You are too young for them."

"Why so?" repeated the student.

"All these thoughts of the transitoriness, the insignificance and
the aimlessness of life, of the inevitability of death, of the
shadows of the grave, and so on, all such lofty thoughts, I tell
you, my dear fellow, are good and natural in old age when they come
as the product of years of inner travail, and are won by suffering
and really are intellectual riches; for a youthful brain on the
threshold of real life they are simply a calamity! A calamity!"
Ananyev repeated with a wave of his hand. "To my mind it is better
at your age to have no head on your shoulders at all than to think
on these lines. I am speaking seriously, Baron. And I have been
meaning to speak to you about it for a long time, for I noticed
from the very first day of our acquaintance your partiality for
these damnable ideas!"

"Good gracious, why are they damnable?" the student asked with a
smile, and from his voice and his face I could see that he asked
the question from simple politeness, and that the discussion raised
by the engineer did not interest him in the least.

I could hardly keep my eyes open. I was dreaming that immediately
after our walk we should wish each other good-night and go to bed,
but my dream was not quickly realised. When we had returned to the
hut the engineer put away the empty bottles and took out of a large
wicker hamper two full ones, and uncorking them, sat down to his
work-table with the evident intention of going on drinking, talking,
and working. Sipping a little from his glass, he made pencil notes
on some plans and went on pointing out to the studen