you
were going, you egged me on, and now the time comes, you funk it!"

"I . . . I . . . I'm not funking it, but I . . . I . . . I'm sorry
for mamma."

"Say once and for all, are you going or are you not?"

"I am going, only . . . wait a little . . . I want to be at home a
little."

"In that case I will go by myself," Lentilov declared. "I can get
on without you. And you wanted to hunt tigers and fight! Since
that's how it is, give me back my cartridges!"

At this Volodya cried so bitterly that his sisters could not help
crying too. Silence followed.

"So you are not coming?" Lentilov began again.

"I . . . I . . . I am coming!"

"Well, put on your things, then."

And Lentilov tried to cheer Volodya up by singing the praises of
America, growling like a tiger, pretending to be a steamer, scolding
him, and promising to give him all the ivory and lions' and tigers'
skins.

And this thin, dark boy, with his freckles and his bristling shock
of hair, impressed the little girls as an extraordinary remarkable
person. He was a hero, a determined character, who knew no fear,
and he growled so ferociously, that, standing at the door, they
really might imagine there was a tiger or lion inside. When the
little girls went back to their room and dressed, Katya's eyes were
full of tears, and she said:

"Oh, I feel so frightened!"

Everything was as usual till two o'clock, when they sat down to
dinner. Then it appeared that the boys were not in the house. They
sent to the servants' quarters, to the stables, to the bailiff's
cottage. They were not to be found. They sent into the village--
they were not there.

At tea, too, the boys were still absent, and by supper-time Volodya's
mother was dreadfully uneasy, and even shed tears.

Late in the evening they sent again to the village, they searched
everywhere, and walked along the river bank with lanterns. Heavens!
what a fuss there was!

Next day the police officer came, and a paper of some sort was
written out in the dining-room. Their mother cried. . . .

All of a sudden a sledge stopped at the door, with three white
horses in a cloud of steam.

"Volodya's come," someone shouted in the yard.

"Master Volodya's here!" bawled Natalya, running into the dining-room.
And Milord barked his deep bass, "bow-wow."

It seemed that the boys had been stopped in the Arcade, where they
had gone from shop to shop asking where they could get gunpowder.

Volodya burst into so