red to gain it, the sweeter it is.
Carefully the boys climb over the fence of the garden, and, bending
down, crawl toward the apple trees and, full of fright, look around
vigilantly. Their hearts tremble and their throbbing slackens at the
faintest rustle. They are alike afraid of being caught, and, if noticed,
of being recognised, but in case they should only see them and yell
at them, they would be satisfied. They would separate, each going in a
different direction, and then, meeting again, their eyes aglow with joy
and boldness, would laughingly tell one another how they felt when they
heard some one giving chase to them, and what happened to them when they
ran so quickly through the garden, as though the ground were burning
under their feet.

Such invasions were more to Foma's liking than all other adventures
and games, and his behaviour during these invasions was marked with
a boldness that at once astounded and angered his companions. He was
intentionally careless in other people's gardens: he spoke loud, noisily
broke the branches of apple trees, and, tearing off a worm-eaten apple,
threw it in the direction of the proprietor's house. The danger of being
caught in the act did not frighten him; it rather encouraged him--his
eyes would turn darker, his teeth would clench, and his face would
assume an expression of anger and pride.

Smolin, distorting his big mouth contemptibly, would say to him:

"You are making entirely too much fuss about yourself."

"I am not a coward anyway!" replied Foma.

"I know that you are not a coward, but why do you boast of it? One may
do a thing as well without boasting."

Yozhov blamed him from a different point of view:

"If you thrust yourself into their hands willingly you can go to the
devil! I am not your friend. They'll catch you and bring you to your
father--he wouldn't do anything to you, while I would get such a
spanking that all my bones would be skinned."

"Coward!" Foma persisted, stubbornly.

And it came to pass one day that Foma was caught by the second captain,
Chumakov, a thin little old man. Noiselessly approaching the boy, who
was hiding away in his bosom the stolen apples, the old man seized him
by the shoulders and cried in a threatening voice:

"Now I have you, little rogue! Aha!"

Foma was then about fifteen years old, and he cleverly slipped out of
the old man's hands. Yet he did not run from him, but, knitting his brow
and clenching his fist, he sa