made so that it knows what time it is! A man can guess the time by the sun, and an animal is a living thing. But these are wheels, copper!”

Vanyushka’s head was aching. He walked beside his chum, listened to his cryptic words, and tried to figure out with difficulty what Salakin would do after he had sold his boots. Would he pay back at least half the money that had been spent on drink, or wouldn’t he? And looking up into Salakin’s eyes, he asked him:

“When are you going to sell your boots?”

“As soon as we’ve drunk our tea, we’ll go. I’ve been thinking about clocks for a long time, brother. I’ve asked many people, intelligent people, too. One says this, another says that—impossible to make it out.”

“And why do you want to know?” asked Vanyushka, curiously.

“It’s interesting. How can it be? Now take a human being, he moves, but then he’s alive, that’s simple.”

Salakin spoke of the mystery of clocks so long and so vehemently that Vanyushka involuntarily was infected by his enthusiasm, and himself began to wonder how it was that a clock knew the time. And while the friends drank tea, they kept up persistently the discussion of clocks.

Then they went to sell the boots, and sold them for two rubles and forty kopecks. Salakin was chagrined by the low price the boots had fetched. Right there on the market square he invited Vanyushka into an eating-place and in despair spent a whole ruble at one stroke. And late at night, when both of them, unsteady on their feet and talking loudly, were on their way to the doss-house, only four five-kopeck pieces were jingling in Salakin’s pocket. Vanyushka held him by the arm, pushed him with his shoulder, and spoke elatedly:

“Brother, I love you like one of my own people.…Honest! You’re a brick! You can have the whole of me, there it is! Honest! Get on my back if you like, I’ll carry you.”

“L-little fool!” muttered Salakin. “Don’t worry, we’ll get along! Tomorrow we’ll go and sell the clock’s guts, the whole business. To the devil with it, eh!”

“Damn it all!” shouted Vanyushka, waving his arm, and in a thin voice he began singing:

Salakin halted, and joined in:

And tightly pressed against each other, they howled together savagely:

“And Matveyka, the red-headed devil! I’ll show him!” Salakin concluded suddenly, and raising his arm high, he shook his fist in the air ferociously.

IV

A week passed.

One night the friends, hungry and full of rancor, were lying side by side on their plank beds in the doss- house, and Vanyushka was quietly reproaching Salakin:

“It’s all your fault! If it weren’t for you, I would be working somewhere by this time.…”