d Germans, especially Russian Germans. He
quarrelled with his father on account of his resignation, and never
saw him again until just before his death, after which he inherited the
little property and settled on it. In St. Petersburg he often came in
contact with various brilliant people of advanced views, whom he simply
worshipped, and who finally brought him around to their way of thinking.
Markelov had read little, mostly books relating to the thing that
chiefly interested him, and was especially attached to Herzen. He
retained his military habits, and lived like a Spartan and a monk. A few
years ago he fell passionately in love with a girl who threw him over in
a most unceremonious manner and married an adjutant, also a German. He
consequently hated adjutants too. He tried to write a series of special
articles on the shortcomings of our artillery, but had not the remotest
idea of exposition and never finished a single article; he continued,
however, covering large sheets of grey paper with his large, awkward,
childish handwriting. Markelov was a man obstinate and fearless to
desperation, never forgiving or forgetting, with a constant sense
of injury done to himself and to all the oppressed, and prepared for
anything. His limited mind was for ever knocking against one point; what
was beyond his comprehension did not exist, but he loathed and
despised all deceit and falsehood. With the upper classes, with the
"reactionaries" as he called them, he was severe and even rude, but
with the people he was simple, and treated a peasant like a brother.
He managed his property fairly well, his head was full of all sorts
of socialist schemes, which he could no more put into practice than he
could finish his articles on the shortcomings of the artillery. He never
succeeded in anything, and was known in his regiment as "the failure."
Of a sincere, passionate, and morbid nature, he could at a given moment
appear merciless, blood-thirsty, deserving to be called a brute; at
another, he would be ready to sacrifice himself without a moment's
hesitation and without any idea of reward.

At about two miles away from the town the carriage plunged suddenly into
the soft darkness of an aspen wood, amidst the rustling of invisible
leaves, the fresh moist odour of the forest, with faint patches of light
from above and a mass of tangled shadows below. The moon had already
risen above the horizon, broad and red like a copper shield. Emerging
fr