kites, but it seems to me that they are like the thoughts
of man. . . . You know the thoughts of each individual man are
scattered like that in disorder, stretch in a straight line towards
some goal in the midst of the darkness and, without shedding light
on anything, without lighting up the night, they vanish somewhere
far beyond old age. But enough philosophising! It's time to go
bye-bye."

When we were back in the hut the engineer began begging me to take
his bed.

"Oh please!" he said imploringly, pressing both hands on his heart.
"I entreat you, and don't worry about me! I can sleep anywhere,
and, besides, I am not going to bed just yet. Please do--it's a
favour!"

I agreed, undressed, and went to bed, while he sat down to the table
and set to work on the plans.

"We fellows have no time for sleep," he said in a low voice when I
had got into bed and shut my eyes. "When a man has a wife and two
children he can't think of sleep. One must think now of food and
clothes and saving for the future. And I have two of them, a little
son and a daughter. . . . The boy, little rascal, has a jolly little
face. He's not six yet, and already he shows remarkable abilities,
I assure you. . . . I have their photographs here, somewhere. . . .
Ah, my children, my children!"

He rummaged among his papers, found their photographs, and began
looking at them. I fell asleep.

I was awakened by the barking of Azorka and loud voices. Von
Schtenberg with bare feet and ruffled hair was standing in the
doorway dressed in his underclothes, talking loudly with some one
. . . . It was getting light. A gloomy dark blue dawn was peeping
in at the door, at the windows, and through the crevices in the hut
walls, and casting a faint light on my bed, on the table with the
papers, and on Ananyev. Stretched on the floor on a cloak, with a
leather pillow under his head, the engineer lay asleep with his
fleshy, hairy chest uppermost; he was snoring so loudly that I
pitied the student from the bottom of my heart for having to sleep
in the same room with him every night.

"Why on earth are we to take them?" shouted Von Schtenberg. "It has
nothing to do with us! Go to Tchalisov! From whom do the cauldrons
come?"

"From Nikitin . . ." a bass voice answered gruffly.

"Well, then, take them to Tchalisov. . . . That's not in our
department. What the devil are you standing there for? Drive on!"

"Your honour, we have been to Tchalisov already," said