to another
crony's, and so on. In short, by the time Kashtanka found herself
on the unfamiliar pavement, it was getting dusk, and the carpenter
was as drunk as a cobbler. He was waving his arms and, breathing
heavily, muttered:

"In sin my mother bore me! Ah, sins, sins! Here now we are walking
along the street and looking at the street lamps, but when we die,
we shall burn in a fiery Gehenna. . . ."

Or he fell into a good-natured tone, called Kashtanka to him, and
said to her: "You, Kashtanka, are an insect of a creature, and
nothing else. Beside a man, you are much the same as a joiner beside
a cabinet-maker. . . ."

While he talked to her in that way, there was suddenly a burst of
music. Kashtanka looked round and saw that a regiment of soldiers
was coming straight towards her. Unable to endure the music, which
unhinged her nerves, she turned round and round and wailed. To her
great surprise, the carpenter, instead of being frightened, whining
and barking, gave a broad grin, drew himself up to attention, and
saluted with all his five fingers. Seeing that her master did not
protest, Kashtanka whined louder than ever, and dashed across the
road to the opposite pavement.

When she recovered herself, the band was not playing and the regiment
was no longer there. She ran across the road to the spot where she
had left her master, but alas, the carpenter was no longer there.
She dashed forward, then back again and ran across the road once
more, but the carpenter seemed to have vanished into the earth.
Kashtanka began sniffing the pavement, hoping to find her master
by the scent of his tracks, but some wretch had been that way just
before in new rubber goloshes, and now all delicate scents were
mixed with an acute stench of india-rubber, so that it was impossible
to make out anything.

Kashtanka ran up and down and did not find her master, and meanwhile
it had got dark. The street lamps were lighted on both sides of the
road, and lights appeared in the windows. Big, fluffy snowflakes
were falling and painting white the pavement, the horses' backs and
the cabmen's caps, and the darker the evening grew the whiter were
all these objects. Unknown customers kept walking incessantly to
and fro, obstructing her field of vision and shoving against her
with their feet. (All mankind Kashtanka divided into two uneven
parts: masters and customers; between them there was an essential
difference: the first had the right to beat h