in the old soldier, "even though we are Christians like
yourself, we might as well have been drowned for all that you did to
help us."

"What could we have done?"

Meanwhile Ossip had remained lying on the ground with one leg stretched
out at full length, and tremulous hands fumbling at his greatcoat as
under his breath he muttered:

"Holy Mother, how wet I am! My clothes, though I have only worn them a
year, are ruined for ever!"

Moreover, he seemed now to have shrunken again in stature--to have
become crumpled up like a man run over. Indeed, as he lay he seemed
actually to be melting, so continuously was his bulk decreasing in size.

But suddenly he raised himself to a sitting posture, groaned, and
exclaimed in high-pitched, wrathful accents:

"May the devil take you all! Be off with you to your washhouses and
churches! Yes, be off, for it seems that, as God couldn't keep His holy
festival without you, I've had to stand within an ace of death and to
spoil my clothes-yes, all that you fellows should be got out of your
fix!"

Nevertheless, the men merely continued taking off their boots, and
wringing out their clothes, and conversing with sundry gasps and grunts
with the bystanders. So presently Ossip resumed:

"What are you thinking of, you fools? The washhouse is the best place
for you, for if the police get you, they'll soon find you a lodging,
and no mistake!"

One of the townspeople put in officiously:

"Aye, aye. The police have been sent for."

And this led Boev to exclaim to Ossip:

"Why pretend like that?"

"Pretend? I?"

"Yes--you."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that it was you who egged us on to cross the river."

"You say that it was I?"

"I do."

"Indeed?"

"Aye," put in Budirin quietly, but incisively. And him the Morduine
supported by saying in a sullen undertone:

"It was you, mate. By God it was. It would seem that you have
forgotten."

"Yes, you started all this business," the old soldier corroborated, in
dour, ponderous accents.

"Forgotten, indeed? HE?" was Boev's heated exclamation.

"How can you say such a thing? Well, let him not try to shift the
responsibility on to others--that's all! WE'LL see, right enough, that
he goes through with it!"

To this Ossip made no reply, but gazed frowningly at his dripping,
half-clad men.

All at once, with a curious outburst of mingled smiles and tears (it
would be hard to say which), he shrugged his shoulders, threw up his