ch half opened one eye, looked at Gusev with it, and asked
softly:

"Gusev, did your commanding officer steal?"

"Who can tell, Pavel Ivanitch! We can't say, it didn't reach us."

And after that a long time passed in silence. Gusev brooded, muttered
something in delirium, and kept drinking water; it was hard for him to
talk and hard to listen, and he was afraid of being talked to. An hour
passed, a second, a third; evening came on, then night, but he did not
notice it. He still sat dreaming of the frost.

There was a sound as though someone came into the hospital, and voices
were audible, but a few minutes passed and all was still again.

"The Kingdom of Heaven and eternal peace," said the soldier with his arm
in a sling. "He was an uncomfortable man."

"What?" asked Gusev. "Who?"

"He is dead, they have just carried him up."

"Oh, well," muttered Gusev, yawning, "the Kingdom of Heaven be his."

"What do you think?" the soldier with his arm in a sling asked Gusev.
"Will he be in the Kingdom of Heaven or not?"

"Who is it you are talking about?"

"Pavel Ivanitch."

"He will be... he suffered so long. And there is another thing, he
belonged to the clergy, and the priests always have a lot of relations.
Their prayers will save him."

The soldier with the sling sat down on a hammock near Gusev and said in
an undertone:

"And you, Gusev, are not long for this world. You will never get to
Russia."

"Did the doctor or his assistant say so?" asked Gusev.

"It isn't that they said so, but one can see it.... One can see directly
when a man's going to die. You don't eat, you don't drink; it's dreadful
to see how thin you've got. It's consumption, in fact. I say it, not to
upset you, but because maybe you would like to have the sacrament and
extreme unction. And if you have any money you had better give it to the
senior officer."

"I haven't written home..." Gusev sighed. "I shall die and they won't
know."

"They'll hear of it," the sick sailor brought out in a bass voice. "When
you die they will put it down in the _Gazette,_ at Odessa they will send
in a report to the commanding officer there and he will send it to the
parish or somewhere...."

Gusev began to be uneasy after such a conversation and to feel a vague
yearning. He drank water--it was not that; he dragged himself to the
window and breathed the hot, moist air--it was not that; he tried to
think of home, of the frost--it was not that.... At last