accustomed during a
general fight to stand silently and sadly back to back with Kuvalda,
when he became an all-destroying and impregnable engine of war. Once
when Simtsoff was drunk, he rushed at the teacher for no reason
whatever, and getting hold of his head tore out a bunch of hair.
Kuvalda, with one stroke of his fist in the other's chest sent him
spinning, and he fell to the ground. He was unconscious for almost
half-an-hour, and when he came to himself, Kuvalda compelled him to eat
the hair he had torn from the teacher's head. He ate it, preferring
this to being beaten to death.

Besides reading newspapers, fighting and indulging in general
conversation, they amused themselves by playing cards. They played
without Martyanoff because he could not play honestly. After cheating
several times, he openly confessed:

"I cannot play without cheating ... it is a habit of mine."

"Habits do get the better of you," assented Deacon Taras. "I always
used to beat my wife every Sunday after Mass, and when she died I
cannot describe how extremely dull I felt every Sunday. I lived
through one Sunday--it was dreadful, the second I still controlled
myself, the third Sunday I struck my Asok.... She was angry and
threatened to summon me. Just imagine if she had done so! On the
fourth Sunday, I beat her just as if she were my own wife! After that
I gave her ten roubles, and beat her according to my own rules till I
married again!" ...

"You are lying, Deacon! How could you marry a second time?"
interrupted Abyedok.

"Ay, just so... She looked after my house...."

"Did you have any children?" asked the teacher.

"Five of them.... One was drowned ... the oldest ... he was an amusing
boy! Two died of diphtheria ... One of the daughters married a
student and went with him to Siberia. The other went to the University
of St. Petersburg and died there ... of consumption they say. Ye--es,
there were five of them.... Ecclesiastics are prolific, you know." He
began explaining why this was so, and they laughed till they nearly
burst at his tales. When the laughter stopped, Aleksei Maksimovitch
Simtsoff remembered that he too had once had a daughter.

"Her name was Lidka ... she was very stout ..." More than this he did
not seem to remember, for he looked at them all, was silent and smiled
... in a guilty way. Those men spoke very little to each other about
their past, and they recalled it very seldom and then only its