water in lovely tassels. In one place the reeds were shaking and nodding, with their flowers rustling—Styopka and Kiruha were hunting crayfish.

“A crayfish, look, lads! A crayfish!” Kiruha cried triumphantly and actually showed a crayfish.

Yegorushka swam up to the reeds, dived, and began fumbling among their roots. Burrowing in the slimy, liquid mud, he felt something sharp and unpleasant—perhaps it really was a crayfish. But at that minute someone seized him by the leg and pulled him to the surface. Spluttering and coughing, Yegorushka opened his eyes and saw before him the wet grinning face of the dare-devil Dymov. The impudent fellow was breathing hard, and from a look in his eyes he seemed inclined for further mischief. He held Yegorushka tight by the leg, and was lifting his hand to take hold of his neck. But Yegorushka tore himself away with repulsion and terror, as though disgusted at being ouched and afraid that the bully would drown him, and said:

“Fool! I’ll punch you in the face.”

Feeling that this was not sufficient to express his hatred, he thought a minute and added:

“You blackguard! You son of a bitch!”

But Dymov, as though nothing were the matter, took no further notice of Yegorushka, but swam off to Kiruha, shouting:

“Ha-ha-ha! Let us catch fish! Mates, let us catch fish.”

“To be sure,” Kiruha agreed; “there must be a lot of fish here.”

“Styopka, run to the village and ask the peasants for a net!”

“They won’t give it to me.”

“They will, you ask them. Tell them that they should give it to us for Christ’s sake, because we are just the same as pilgrims.”

“That’s true.”

Styopka clambered out of the water, dressed quickly, and without a cap on he ran, his full trousers flapping, to the village. The water lost all its charm for Yegorushka after his encounter with Dymov. He got out and began dressing. Panteley and Vassya were sitting on the steep bank, with their legs hanging down, looking at the bathers. Emelyan was standing naked, up to his knees in the water, holding on to the grass with one hand to prevent himself from falling while the other stroked his body. With his bony shoulder- blades, with the swelling under his eye, bending down and evidently afraid of the water, he made a ludicrious figure. His face was grave and severe. He looked angrily at the water, as though he were just going to upbraid it for having given him cold in the Donets and robbed him of his voice.

“And why don’t you bathe?” Yegorushka asked Vassya.

“Oh, I don’t care for it,…” answered Vassya.

“How is it your chin is swollen?”

“It’s bad.…I used to work at the match factory, little sir.…The doctor used to say that it would make my jaw rot. The air is not healthy there. There were three chaps beside me who had their jaws swollen, and with one of them it rotted away altogether.”