"Thou shalt have it. Stay here by this cart, or rather lie down in it; nobody will see thee--all are sleeping. I'll be back directly." And he went to the waggons where the provisions of his kooren were kept. His heart beat high. All the past which had been hidden, stifled by his present Cossack life and by the hardships of warfare, rose once more to the surface, drowning in return all the present. Again he saw emerging before him, as if from the depths of some ocean cavern, the form of the glorious lady; again his memory brought back the recollection of her fine arms, of her eyes, of her smiling lips, of her thick dark chestnut hair (whose locks hung curling over her bosom), and of all those elastic limbs which so well harmonised with her maidenly figure. No; these recollections were never extinguished in his breast; they had, only for a time, given place to other mighty impressions. But often--often had they disturbed the young Cossack's slumber, and often did he long lie sleepless on his bed without knowing how to explain the cause of his sleeplessness. He went on, and his heart beat higher and higher, and his young knees shook at the mere thought of seeing her again. When he reached the waggons he had entirely forgotten why he had come, and, raising his hand to his brow, remained some time trying to recollect what he had to do. At last he shuddered, and felt terror-stricken: the thought flashed across his mind that she might be dying from hunger. He rushed to one of the waggons, and took some great rye loaves under his arm; but then he thought that this food, which suits the unspoiled taste of the strong Zaporoghians, would be too coarse and unsuited to her tender person. He remembered that, the day before, the Koschevoï had scolded the cooks for taking the whole of the buckwheat flour to make _salamata_[27], when the quantity would have been quite sufficient for more than three days. Certain of finding enough salamata left in the coppers, Andrew took the travelling kettle of his father and went with it to the cook of his kooren, who was sleeping beside two enormous cauldrons, under which the ashes were not yet extinguished. Looking into the cauldrons, he was astonished to find both of them empty. It ought to have required more than human exertions to eat up all their contents; the more so as their kooren was not so numerous as the others. He peeped into the kettles of the other koorens--there was nowhere anything left. Involuntarily he recollected the saying that Zaporoghians are like children:--Is there but little food? they will eat it; is there much? they will still leave nothing. What was to be done? There was yet somewhere, he thought, in the waggons of his father's regiment a sack of white bread, which the Cossacks had found while pillaging the cloister kitchen. Andrew went straight to his father's waggon: the sack was not there! Ostap had taken it to rest his head upon, and, stretched on the ground, he made the whole field