his
hard and oft-scourged body on the grass beside the teacher, and,
turning his eyes round and scratching his head, would ask in a hoarse,
bass voice, "May I?"

*Note by translator.--Well-known games of chance, played by the lower
classes. The police specially endeavour to stop them, but
unsuccessfully.

Then appeared Pavel Solntseff, a man of thirty years of age, suffering
from consumption. The ribs of his left side had been broken in a
quarrel, and the sharp, yellow face, like that of a fox, always wore a
malicious smile. The thin lips, when opened, exposed two rows of
decayed black teeth, and the rags on his shoulders swayed backwards and
forwards as if they were hung on a clothes pole. They called him
"Abyedok." He hawked brushes and bath brooms of his own manufacture,
good strong brushes made from a peculiar kind of grass.

Then followed a lean and bony man of whom no one knew anything, with a
frightened expression in his eyes, the left one of which had a squint.
He was silent and timid, and had been imprisoned three times for theft
by the High Court of Justice and the Magisterial Courts. His family
name was Kiselnikoff, but they called him Paltara Taras, because he was
a head and shoulders taller than his friend, Deacon Taras, who had been
degraded from his office for drunkenness and immorality. The Deacon
was a short, thick-set person, with the chest of an athlete and a
round, strong head. He danced skilfully, and was still more skilful at
swearing. He and Paltara Taras worked in the wood on the banks of the
river, and in free hours he told his friend or any one who would
listen, "Tales of my own composition," as he used to say. On hearing
these stories, the heroes of which always seemed to be saints, kings,
priests, or generals, even the inmates of the dosshouse spat and rubbed
their eyes in astonishment at the imagination of the Deacon, who told
them shameless tales of lewd, fantastic adventures, with blinking eyes
and a passionless expression of countenance. The imagination of this
man was powerful and inexhaustible; he could go on relating and
composing all day, from morning to night, without once repeating what
he had said before. In his expression you sometimes saw the poet gone
astray, sometimes the romancer, and he always succeeded in making his
tales realistic by the effective and powerful words in which he told
them.

There was also a foolish young man called Kuvalda Meteor. One night