The old man was an officer who had served in two campaigns. He knew what makes a soldier, and, judging by the appearance and the talk of those persons, by the swagger with which they had recourse to the bottle on the journey, he considered them poor soldiers. Moreover, he lived in a district town, and he was longing to tell how one soldier had volunteered from his town, a drunkard and a thief whom no one would employ as a laborer. But knowing by experience that in the present condition of the public temper it was dangerous to express an opinion opposed to the general one, and especially to criticize the volunteers unfavorably, he too watched Katavassov without committing himself.

`Well, men are wanted there,' he said, laughing with his eyes. And they fell to talking of the last war news, and each concealed from the other his perplexity as to the engagement expected next day, since the Turks had been beaten, according to the latest news, all along the line. And so they parted, neither giving expression to his opinion.

Katavassov went back to his own carriage, and with reluctant hypocrisy reported to Sergei Ivanovich his observations of the volunteers, from which it would appear that they were capital fellows.

At a big station at a town the volunteers were again greeted with shouts and singing, again men and women with collection boxes appeared, and provincial ladies brought bouquets to the volunteers and followed them into the refreshment room; but all this was on a much smaller and feebler scale than in Moscow.