t that the
latter's way of thinking was not what it should be. The student sat
beside him checking accounts and saying nothing. He, like me, had
no inclination to speak or to listen. That I might not interfere
with their work, I sat away from the table on the engineer's
crooked-legged travelling bedstead, feeling bored and expecting
every moment that they would suggest I should go to bed. It was
going on for one o'clock.

Having nothing to do, I watched my new acquaintances. I had never
seen Ananyev or the student before. I had only made their acquaintance
on the night I have described. Late in the evening I was returning
on horseback from a fair to the house of a landowner with whom I
was staying, had got on the wrong road in the dark and lost my way.
Going round and round by the railway line and seeing how dark the
night was becoming, I thought of the "barefoot railway roughs," who
lie in wait for travellers on foot and on horseback, was frightened,
and knocked at the first hut I came to. There I was cordially
received by Ananyev and the student. As is usually the case with
strangers casually brought together, we quickly became acquainted,
grew friendly and at first over the tea and afterward over the wine,
began to feel as though we had known each other for years. At the
end of an hour or so, I knew who they were and how fate had brought
them from town to the far-away steppe; and they knew who I was,
what my occupation and my way of thinking.

Nikolay Anastasyevitch Ananyev, the engineer, was a broad-shouldered,
thick-set man, and, judging from his appearance, he had, like
Othello, begun the "descent into the vale of years," and was growing
rather too stout. He was just at that stage which old match-making
women mean when they speak of "a man in the prime of his age," that
is, he was neither young nor old, was fond of good fare, good liquor,
and praising the past, panted a little as he walked, snored loudly
when he was asleep, and in his manner with those surrounding him
displayed that calm imperturbable good humour which is always
acquired by decent people by the time they have reached the grade
of a staff officer and begun to grow stout. His hair and beard were
far from being grey, but already, with a condescension of which he
was unconscious, he addressed young men as "my dear boy" and felt
himself entitled to lecture them good-humouredly about their way
of thinking. His movements and his voice were calm, smoot