to hit me?"

"No, you can hit yourself. Hit yourself over the head. Then, perhaps,
you'll grow wiser."

Stolidly the young fellow looks at Konev, and inquires:

"How do you know me to be a fool?"

"Because your personality tells me so."

"Eh?" cries the young fellow truculently as he raises himself to a
kneeling posture. "How know you what I am?"

"I have been told what you are by the Governor of your province."

The young fellow opens his mouth, and stares at Konev. Then he asks:

"To what province do I belong?"

"If you yourself have forgotten to what province you belong, you had
better try and loosen your wits."

"Look here. If I were to hit you, I--"

The woman who has been sewing drops her work to shrug one rounded
shoulder as though she were cold, and ask conciliatorily:

"Well, WHAT province do you belong to?"

"I?" the young fellow re-echoes as he subsides on to his heels. "I
belong to Penza. Why do you ask?"

"Oh never mind why."

Presently, with a strangely youthful laugh, the woman adds in a murmur:

"I ask because I too belong to that province."

"And to which canton?"

"To that of Penza." In the woman's tone is a touch of pride.

The young fellow squats down before her, as before a wood fire,
stretches out his hands, and says in an ingratiating voice:

"What a fine place is our cantonal town! What churches and shops and
stone houses there are in it! In fact, one shop sells a machine on
which you can play anything you like, any sort of a tune!"

"As well as, probably, the fool," comments Konev in an undertone,
though the young fellow is too enthralled with the memory of the
amenities of his cantonal capital to notice the remark. Next, smacking
his lips, and chewing his words, he continues in a murmur:

"In those stone houses."

Here the woman drops her sewing a second time to inquire: "Is there a
convent there?"

"A convent?"

And the young fellow pauses uncouthly to scratch his neck. Only after a
while does he answer:

"A convent? Well, I do not know, for only once, to tell the truth, have
I been in the town, and that was when some of us famine folk were set
to a job of roadmaking."

"Well, well!" gasps Konev, as he rises and takes his departure.

The vagabonds, huddled against the churchyard wall, look like litter
driven thither by the steppe wind, and as liable to be whirled away
again whenever the wind shall choose. Three of the party are sleeping,
and the remainder e