corners, seemed stiffened into a smile of good-natured
subtle raillery. The fingers of the small hands covered with red hairs
were bent inward, and the nails were dyed red.

Lukashka had not yet dressed. He was wet. His neck was redder and his
eyes brighter than usual, his broad jaws twitched, and from his healthy
body a hardly perceptible steam rose in the fresh morning air.

'He too was a man!' he muttered, evidently admiring the corpse.

'Yes, if you had fallen into his hands you would have had short
shrift,' said one of the Cossacks.

The Angel of Silence had taken wing. The Cossacks began bustling about
and talking. Two of them went to cut brushwood for a shelter, others
strolled towards the cordon. Luke and Nazarka ran to get ready to go to
the village.

Half an hour later they were both on their way homewards, talking
incessantly and almost running through the dense woods which separated
the Terek from the village.

'Mind, don't tell her I sent you, but just go and find out if her
husband is at home,' Luke was saying in his shrill voice.

'And I'll go round to Yamka too,' said the devoted Nazarka. 'We'll have
a spree, shall we?'

'When should we have one if not to-day?' replied Luke.

When they reached the village the two Cossacks drank, and lay down to
sleep till evening.

Chapter X

On the third day after the events above described, two companies of a
Caucasian infantry regiment arrived at the Cossack village of
Novomlinsk. The horses had been unharnessed and the companies' wagons
were standing in the square. The cooks had dug a pit, and with logs
gathered from various yards (where they had not been sufficiently
securely stored) were now cooking the food; the pay-sergeants were
settling accounts with the soldiers. The Service Corps men were driving
piles in the ground to which to tie the horses, and the quartermasters
were going about the streets just as if they were at home, showing
officers and men to their quarters. Here were green ammunition boxes in
a line, the company's carts, horses, and cauldrons in which buckwheat
porridge was being cooked. Here were the captain and the lieutenant and
the sergeant-major, Onisim Mikhaylovich, and all this was in the
Cossack village where it was reported that the companies were ordered
to take up their quarters: therefore they were at home here. But why
they were stationed there, who the Cossacks were, and whether they
wanted the troops to be there