A _sbiten_{24b}-seller, an old soldier, stood near by. I called
him up. He poured out his _sbiten_. The peasant took a boiling-hot
glassful in his hands, and as he tried before drinking not to let any of
the heat escape in vain, and warmed his hands over it, he related his
adventures to me. These adventures, or the histories of them, are almost
always identical: the man has been a laborer, then he has changed his
residence, then his purse containing his money and ticket has been stolen
from him in the night lodging-house; now it is impossible to get away
from Moscow. He told me that he kept himself warm by day in the dram-
shops; that he nourished himself on the bits of bread in these drinking
places, when they were given to him; and when he was driven out of them,
he came hither to the Lyapinsky house for a free lodging. He was only
waiting for the police to make their rounds, when, as he had no passport,
he would be taken to jail, and then despatched by stages to his place of
settlement. "They say that the inspection will be made on Friday," said
he, "then they will arrest me. If I can only get along until Friday."
(The jail, and the journey by stages, represent the Promised Land to
him.)

As he told his story, three men from among the throng corroborated his
statements, and said that they were in the same predicament. A gaunt,
pale, long-nosed youth, with merely a shirt on the upper portion of his
body, and that torn on the shoulders, and a cap without a visor, forced
his way sidelong through the crowd. He shivered violently and
incessantly, but tried to smile disdainfully at the peasants' remarks,
thinking by this means to adopt the proper tone with me, and he stared at
me. I offered him some _sbiten_; he also, on taking the glass, warmed
his hands over it; but no sooner had he begun to speak, than he was
thrust aside by a big, black, hook-nosed individual, in a chintz shirt
and waistcoat, without a hat. The hook-nosed man asked for some _sbiten_
also. Then came a tall old man, with a mass of beard, clad in a great-
coat girded with a rope, and in bast shoes, who was drunk. Then a small
man with a swollen face and tearful eyes, in a brown nankeen
round-jacket, with his bare knees protruding from the holes in his summer
trousers, and knocking together with cold. He shivered so that he could
not hold his glass, and spilled it over himself. The men began to
reproach him. He only smiled in a woe-begone