itself in a whole forest of birch trees, willows, and mountain-ashes. “Ah, it would be grand!” he sighed mournfully.

“To be sure! I expect you’d bolt home by the railway! And wouldn’t the girls make love to you at home, aye, aye! You could choose which you liked! You’d build yourself a house. No, the money, maybe, would hardly be enough for a house.”

“That’s true—it wouldn’t do for a house. Wood’s dear down our way.”

“Well, never mind. You’d mend the old one. How about a horse? Have you got one?”

“A horse? Yes, I have, but a wretched old thing it is.”

“Well, then, you’d have a horse. A first-rate horse! A cow—sheep—fowls of all sorts. Eh?”

“Don’t talk of it! If I only could! Oh, Lord! What a life I should have!”

“Aye, mate, your life would be first-rate. I know something about such things. I had a home of my own once. My father was one of the richest in the village.”

Chelkash rowed slowly. The boat danced on the waves that sportively splashed over its edge; it scarcely moved forward on the dark sea, which frolicked more and more gaily. The two men were dreaming, rocked on the water, and pensively looking around them. Chelkash had turned Gavrila’s thoughts to his village with the aim of encouraging and reassuring him. At first he had talked grinning skeptically to himself under his mustaches, but afterward, as he replied to his companion and reminded him of the joys of a peasant’s life, which he had so long ago wearied of, had forgotten, and only now recalled, he was gradually carried away, and, instead of questioning the peasant youth about his village and its doings, unconsciously he dropped into describing it himself:

“The great thing in the peasant’s life, mate, is its freedom! You’re your own master. You’ve your own home—worth a farthing, maybe—but it’s yours! You’ve your own land—only a handful the hole of it—but it’s yours! You’re king on your own land! You’re a person in your own right. You can demand respect from everyone. Isn’t that so?”

Gavrila looked at him with curiosity, and he, too, warmed to the subject. During this conversation he had succeeded in forgetting with whom he had to deal, and he saw in his companion a peasant like himself—cemented to the soil for ever by the sweat of generations, and bound to it by the recollections of childhood—who had willfully broken loose from it and from its cares, and was bearing the inevitable punishment for this separation.

“That’s true, brother! Ah, how true it is! Look at you, now, what you’ve become away from the land! Aha! The land, brother, is like a mother, you can’t forget it for long.”

Chelkash awaked from his reverie. He felt that scalding irritation in his chest, which always came as soon as his pride, the pride of the dare-devil, was touched by anyone, and especially by one who was of no value in his eyes.

“His tongue’s set wagging!” he said savagely. “You thought, maybe, I said all that in earnest. Never fear!”

“But, you strange fellow!” Gavrila began, overawed again, “was I speaking of you? Why, there’s lots like you! Ah, what a lot of unlucky people there are in the world! Tramps—”

“Take the oars, you sea-calf!” Chelkash commanded briefly, for some reason holding back a whole torrent of furious abuse which surged up into his throat.