d drunkards."

"They have had their day, but it is over," said Merik, after a
pause. "But now they have only Filya left, and he is blind."

"Yes, there is no one but Filya," said Kalashnikov, with a sigh.
"Reckon it up, he must be seventy; the German settlers knocked out
one of his eyes, and he does not see well with the other. It is
cataract. In old days the police officer would shout as soon as he
saw him: 'Hey, you Shamil!' and all the peasants called him that
--he was Shamil all over the place; and now his only name is
One-eyed Filya. But he was a fine fellow! Lyuba's father, Andrey
Grigoritch, and he stole one night into Rozhnovo--there were
cavalry regiments stationed there--and carried off nine of the
soldiers' horses, the very best of them. They weren't frightened
of the sentry, and in the morning they sold all the horses for
twenty roubles to the gypsy Afonka. Yes! But nowadays a man contrives
to carry off a horse whose rider is drunk or asleep, and has no
fear of God, but will take the very boots from a drunkard, and then
slinks off and goes away a hundred and fifty miles with a horse,
and haggles at the market, haggles like a Jew, till the policeman
catches him, the fool. There is no fun in it; it is simply a disgrace!
A paltry set of people, I must say."

"What about Merik?" asked Lyubka.

"Merik is not one of us," said Kalashnikov. "He is a Harkov man
from Mizhiritch. But that he is a bold fellow, that's the truth;
there's no gainsaying that he is a fine fellow."

Lyubka looked slily and gleefully at Merik, and said:

"It wasn't for nothing they dipped him in a hole in the ice."

"How was that?" asked Yergunov.

"It was like this . . ." said Merik, and he laughed. "Filya carried
off three horses from the Samoylenka tenants, and they pitched upon
me. There were ten of the tenants at Samoylenka, and with their
labourers there were thirty altogether, and all of them Molokans
. . . . So one of them says to me at the market: 'Come and have a
look, Merik; we have brought some new horses from the fair.' I was
interested, of course. I went up to them, and the whole lot of them,
thirty men, tied my hands behind me and led me to the river. 'We'll
show you fine horses,' they said. One hole in the ice was there
already; they cut another beside it seven feet away. Then, to be
sure, they took a cord and put a noose under my armpits, and tied
a crooked stick to the other end, long enough to reach both holes.
Th