“Nothing will happen,” said Jig-Leg confidently.

They left the road, and glancing about them, walked toward the wood. The horse looked at them, snorted, waved its tail, and again began to crop the faded grass.

At the bottom of the deep ravine in the wood it was dark, damp, and quiet. The murmur of a stream was wafted through the stillness, sad and monotonous, like a lament. Naked branches of hazel, snowball trees, and honeysuckle were hanging down the steep sides of the ravine; here and there roots, washed out by spring freshets, were helplessly sticking out of the ground. The forest was still dead; the evening twilight added to the lifeless monotony of its hues and the mournful stillness that lurked in it filled it with the gloomy, solemn peace of a cemetery.

For a long time the chums had been sitting in the damp and silent dusk, under a clump of aspens which had slid down to the bottom of the ravine together with a huge mass of earth. A small fire burned brightly before them, and, warming their hands over it, they fed it twigs, from time to time, taking care that the flame should burn evenly and not smoke. The horse stood not far off. They had wrapped its muzzle with a sleeve torn from Hopeful’s rags, and had tied it by the bridle to the trunk of a tree.

Hopeful, crouching by the fire, looked pensively into it and whistled his tune; his comrade, having cut a bunch of osier-twigs, was weaving a basket out of them, and, busy with his task, he was silent.

The melancholy sound of the stream and the low whistle of the luckless man blended together and floated piteously on the stillness of the evening and the forest; sometimes the twigs crackled in the fire, crackled and hissed, as if they were sighing out of pity for the two men whose life was more painful than their own death in the flames.

“Are we starting out soon?” asked Hopeful.

“It’s too early. Wait till it gets quite dark, and then we’ll start,” said Jig-Leg, without lifting his head from his work.

Hopeful sighed and began to cough.

“Chilly, eh?” asked his comrade, after a long pause.

“No.…I’m not quite right.”

“So?” and Jig-Leg shook his head.

“My heart bothers me.”

“Sick, eh?”

“I suppose so…and maybe it’s something else.”

Jig-Leg said:

“See here!…Don’t think!”

“What about?”

“Oh, about everything.”

“You see—” Hopeful suddenly grew animated—“I can’t help thinking. I look at her—” he pointed to the horse—“I look at her and it comes home to me. I too used to have one like that.…She’s not much to look at, but on a farm, she’s worth everything. At one time I had a pair of them.…I worked hard in those days.”