d up before a large audience for an examination in which he feels
sure he will distinguish himself. He was glancing at everyone with a
clear, bright expression, as if asking them to notice how calmly he sat
under fire. But despite himself, on his face too that same indication of
something new and stern showed round the mouth.

"Who's that curtseying there? Cadet Miwonov! That's not wight! Look at
me," cried Denisov who, unable to keep still on one spot, kept turning
his horse in front of the squadron.

The black, hairy, snub-nosed face of Vaska Denisov, and his whole short
sturdy figure with the sinewy hairy hand and stumpy fingers in which
he held the hilt of his naked saber, looked just as it usually did,
especially toward evening when he had emptied his second bottle; he was
only redder than usual. With his shaggy head thrown back like birds when
they drink, pressing his spurs mercilessly into the sides of his good
horse, Bedouin, and sitting as though falling backwards in the saddle,
he galloped to the other flank of the squadron and shouted in a hoarse
voice to the men to look to their pistols. He rode up to Kirsten. The
staff captain on his broad-backed, steady mare came at a walk to meet
him. His face with its long mustache was serious as always, only his
eyes were brighter than usual.

"Well, what about it?" said he to Denisov. "It won't come to a fight.
You'll see--we shall retire."

"The devil only knows what they're about!" muttered Denisov. "Ah,
Wostov," he cried noticing the cadet's bright face, "you've got it at
last."

And he smiled approvingly, evidently pleased with the cadet. Rostov felt
perfectly happy. Just then the commander appeared on the bridge. Denisov
galloped up to him.

"Your excellency! Let us attack them! I'll dwive them off."

"Attack indeed!" said the colonel in a bored voice, puckering up his
face as if driving off a troublesome fly. "And why are you stopping
here? Don't you see the skirmishers are retreating? Lead the squadron
back."

The squadron crossed the bridge and drew out of range of fire without
having lost a single man. The second squadron that had been in the front
line followed them across and the last Cossacks quitted the farther side
of the river.

The two Pavlograd squadrons, having crossed the bridge, retired up the
hill one after the other. Their colonel, Karl Bogdanich Schubert, came
up to Denisov's squadron and rode at a footpace not far from Rostov,
withou