The evening began to fall, and cast its shadows on the refuse littering the court-yard of the doss-house; the last rays of sun lit up the roof of the tumble-down building. The air was cool and soft.

“Let us begin, brothers!” commanded the Captain. “How many cups have we? Six…and there are thirteen of us! Aleksei Maksimovitch, pour it out. Ready? Now then, the first toast.…Come on!”

They drank, grunted, and began to eat.

“The teacher is not here.…I have not seen him for three days. Has anyone seen him?” asked Kuvalda.

“No one.”

“It is unlike him. Well, never mind, let us drink, let us drink to the health of Aristid Kuvalda…the only friend who has never deserted me for one moment of my life! Devil take him all the same! I might have been the winner, had he left my society at least for a little while.”

“You are witty…” said Bag of Bones, and coughed.

The Captain, with a keen sense of his superiority, glanced at the others, but said nothing, for he was eating.

Having drunk twice, the company began to grow merry; the food was copious.

Taras-and-a-Half expressed a timid desire to hear a tale, but the Deacon was arguing with Spinning Top about the superiority of thin women over stout ones, and paid no attention to his friend’s request. He was asserting his views on the subject to Spinning Top with all the impetuousness and passion of a man deeply convinced of being right.

The naïve face of Meteor, who was lying on the ground near by, showed in its rapture that he was enjoying the Deacon’s strong language.

Martyanoff sat clasping his knees with his huge hands covered with black hairs. He looked silently and sadly at the bottle of vodka, and tried to catch his mustache with his tongue and pinch it between his teeth while Bag of Bones was teasing Tyapa.

“I have spied the place where your money is hidden, you sorcerer.”

“Your luck,” growled Tyapa.

“I’ll jolly well lay my hand on it, my lad.”

“All right, you’re welcome to it.…”

Kuvalda was bored with these men. Among them there was not one worthy of hearing his oratory or of understanding him.

“I wonder where the teacher is?” he asked, thinking aloud.

Martyanoff looked at him and said: “He’ll soon come.”

“I am positive that he will come on foot and not drive up in a carriage. Let us drink to your future health, you future jail-bird. If you kill any rich man go halves with me…then I shall go to America, brother. To those—what do you call them? Limpas? Pampas?—I will go there, and work my way up until I become the President of the United States, and then I will challenge the whole of Europe to war and will blow it up! I will buy an army …in Europe that is…I will invite the French, the Germans, the Turks, and so on, and will have them kill their own relatives…just as Ilya Morometz used Tartar against Tartar. With money it