“Drunk?”

“Ill.”

“That means he is very drunk. Aye, teacher! Now, then, get up.”

“Wait, I will help you.…He is very ill.…He has been with me for the last two days.…Take him under the arms.…The doctor has seen him. He is very bad.”

Tyapa got up and slowly walked to the gates while Bag of Bones laughed, and took another drink.

“Strike a light over there!” shouted the Captain.

Meteor went into the house and lighted the lamp. Then a large stripe of light illuminated the court-yard, and the Captain, together with a small stranger, managed to get the teacher into the doss-house. His head was hanging limply on his breast, his feet trailed on the ground, and his arms hung in the air as if broken. With Tyapa’s help they placed him on a shelf. He was shivering all over and moaned as he stretched himself out on it.

“We worked on the same paper…he is very miserable.…I said, ‘Stay in my house, you are not in my way,’…but he begged me to send him ‘home.’ He was so troubled about it that I brought him here thinking it might do him good.…Home! This is it, isn’t it?”

“Do you suppose he has a home anywhere else?” asked Kuvalda, roughly, staring fixedly at his friend. “Tyapa, fetch me some cold water.”

“I fancy I am of no more use,” remarked the man in some confusion. The Captain looked at him critically. His clothes were rather shiny, and tightly buttoned up to his chin. His trousers were frayed, his hat almost yellow with age and crumpled like his lean and hungry face.

“No, you are not needed! We have plenty like you here,” said the Captain, turning away.

“Then, good-by!” The man went to the door, and said softly from there, “If anything happens…let me know in the office.…My name is Ryzhoff. I might write a short obituary. He was after all a member of the Press.”

“H’m, an obituary, you say? Twenty lines forty kopecks? I will do more than that. When he dies I will cut off one of his legs and send it to you. That will be of more profit to you than an obituary. It will last you for three days. His legs are fat. You devoured him, all of you, when he was alive. You may as well continue to do so after he is dead.…”

The man sniffed in an odd way and disappeared. The Captain sat down on the wooden shelf beside the teacher, felt his forehead, his breast, and called “Philip!”

The sound re-echoed from the dirty walls of the doss-house and died away.

“This is absurd, brother,” said the Captain, gently stroking the teacher’s untidy hair with his hand. Then he listened to his breathing, very rapid and uneven, and peered into his sunken gray face. Then he sighed and glanced around him, knitting his eyebrows. The lamp gave a poor, tremulous light and threw dark flickering shadows on the doss-house walls. The Captain stared at their silent dance, stroking his beard. Tyapa returned, bringing a pail of water, and, placing it on the shelf by the teacher’s head, raised his arm as if weighing it in his hand.

“No need for the water,” and the Captain shook his head.

“A priest, that’s what’s needed,” said the old rag-collector.