ing onto the two roules, returned the fifty-kopeck
piece to the trembling child and added a ten-kopeck piece out of his own
pocket."

"Something quite as funny happened to me two winters ago, at Moscow,"
said la belle Onoto. "I had just stepped out of the door when I was
stopped by a hooligan. 'Give me twenty kopecks,' said the hooligan. I
was so frightened that I couldn't get my purse open. 'Quicker,' said he.
Finally I gave him twenty kopecks. 'Now,' said he then, 'kiss my hand.'
And I had to kiss it, because he held his knife in the other."

"Oh, they are quick with their knives," said Thaddeus. "As I was
leaving Gastinidvor once I was stopped by a hooligan who stuck a huge
carving-knife under my nose. 'You can have it for a rouble and a half,'
he said. You can believe that I bought it without any haggling. And
it was a very good bargain. It was worth at least three roubles. Your
health, belle Onoto."

"I always take my revolver when I go out," said Athanase. "It is more
prudent. I say this before the police. But I would rather be arrested by
the police than stabbed by the hooligans."

"There's no place any more to buy revolvers," dedared Ivan Petrovitch.
"All such places are closed."

Gounsovski settled his glasses, rubbed his fat hands and said:

"There are some still at my locksmith's place. The proof is that to-day
in the little Kaniouche my locksmith, whose name is Smith, when into the
house of the grocer at the corner and wished to sell him a revolver. It
was a Browning. 'An arm of the greatest reliability,' he said to him,
'which never misses fire and which works very easily.' Having pronounced
these words, the locksmith tried his revolver and lodged a ball in the
grocer's lung. The grocer is dead, but before he died he bought the
revolver. 'You are right,' he said to the locksmith; 'it is a terrible
weapon.' And then he died."

The others laughed heartily. They thought it very funny. Decidedly this
great Gounsovski always had a funny story. Who would not like to be
his friend? Annouchka had deigned to smile. Gounsovski, in recognition,
extended his hand to her like a mendicant. The young woman touched it
with the end of her fingers, as if she were placing a twenty-kopeck
piece in the hand of a hooligan, and withdrew from it with disgust. Then
the doors opened for the Bohemians. Their swarthy troupe soon filled the
room. Every evening men and women in their native costumes came from old
Derevnia, where