“Like them? Maybe. They’re all right, fine bold chaps—free.”

“And what’s—freedom to you? Do you care for freedom?”

“Well, I should think so! Be your own master, go where you please, do as you like. To be sure! If you know how to behave yourself, and you’ve nothing weighing upon you—it’s first rate. Enjoy yourself all you can, only be mindful of God.”

Chelkash spat contemptuously, and turning away from the youth, dropped the conversation.

“Here’s my case now,” the latter began, with sudden animation. “As my father’s dead, my bit of land’s small, my mother’s old, all the land’s sucked dry, what am I to do? I must live. And how? There’s no telling.

“Am I to marry into some well-to-do house? I’d be glad to, if only they’d let their daughter have her share apart.

“Not a bit of it, the devil of a father-in-law won’t consent to that. And so I shall have to slave for him—for ever so long—for years. A nice state of things, you know!

“But if I could earn a hundred or a hundred and fifty rubles, I could stand on my own feet, and look askance at old Antip, and tell him straight out! Will you give Marfa her share apart? No? all right, then! Thank God, she’s not the only girl in the village. And I should be, I mean, quite free and independent.

“Ah, yes!” the young man sighed. “But as ’tis, there’s nothing for it, but to marry and live at my father-in- law’s. I was thinking I’d go, d’ye see, to Kuban, and make some two hundred rubles—straight off! Be a gentleman! But there, it was no go! It didn’t come off. Well, I suppose I’ll have to be a hired man. For I’ll never manage on my own bit—not anyhow. Heigh-ho!”

The lad extremely disliked the idea of bondage to his future father-in-law. His face positively darkened and looked gloomy. He shifted clumsily on the ground.

Chelkash asked him: “Where are you going now?”

“Why, where should I go? Home, to be sure.”

“Well, mate, I couldn’t be sure of that, you might be on your way to Turkey.”

“To Tu-urkey!” drawled the youth. “Why, what good Christian ever goes there! Well, I never!”

“Oh, you fool!” sighed Chelkash, and again he turned away from his companion. This stalwart village lad roused some feeling in him. It was a vague feeling of annoyance, that grew instinctively, stirred deep down in his heart, and hindered him from concentrating himself on the consideration of all that he had to do that night.

The lad he had dismissed thus unceremoniously muttered something, casting occasionally a dubious glance at Chelkash. His cheeks were comically puffed out, his lips parted, and his eyes were screwed up and blinking with extreme rapidity. He had obviously not expected so rapid and insulting a termination to his conversation with this long-whiskered tramp. The tramp took no further notice of him. He whistled dreamily, sitting on the stone post, and beating time on it with his bare, dirty heel.

The young peasant wanted to be quits with him.

“Hi, you there, fisherman! Do you often get drunk like this?” he was beginning, but at the same instant the fisherman turned quickly towards him, and asked: