Osip looked through a chink in the partition. "That is he! Get the woman away." I also looked through the chink into just such a narrow stable as the one we were in. On the sill of the window, which was closely shuttered, burned a tin lamp, near which stood a squinting, naked, Tatar woman, sewing a chemise. Behind her, on two pillows on the bed, was raised the bloated face of Ardalon, his black, tangled beard projecting. The Tatar woman shivered, put on her chemise, and came past the bed, suddenly appearing in our room. Osip looked at her and again spat. "Ugh! Shameless hussy!" "And you are an old fool!" she replied, laughing, Osip laughed too, and shook a threatening finger at her. We went into the Tatar's stable. The old man sat on the bed at Ardalon's feet and tried for a long time unsuccessfully to awaken him. He muttered: "All right, wait a bit. We will go--" At length he awoke, gazed wildly at Osip and at me, and closing his bloodshot eyes, murmured: "Well, well!" "What is the matter with you?" asked Osip gently, without reproaches, but rather sadly. "I was driven to it," explained Ardalon hoarsely, and coughing. "How?" "Ah, there were reasons." "You were not contented, perhaps?" "What is the good--" Ardalon took an open bottle of vodka from the table, and began to drink from it. He then asked Osip: "Would you like some? There ought to be something to eat here as well." The old man poured some of the spirit into his mouth, swallowed it, frowned, and began to chew a small piece of bread carefully, but muddled Ardalon said drowsily: "So I have thrown in my lot with the Tatar woman. She is a pure Tatar, as Ephimushka says, young, an orphan from Kasimov; she was getting ready for the fair." From the other side of the wall some one said in broken Russian: "Tatars are the best, like young hens. Send him away; he is not your father." "That's she," muttered Ardalon, gazing stupidly at the wall. "I have seen her," said Osip. Ardalon turned to me: "That is the sort of man I am, brother." I expected Osip to reproach Ardalon, to give him a lecture which would make him repent bitterly. But nothing of the kind happened; they sat side by side, shoulder to shoulder, and uttered calm, brief words. It was melancholy to see them in that dark, dirty stable. The woman called ludicrous words through the chink in the wall, but they did not listen to them. Osip took a walnut off the table, cracked it against his boot, and began to remove the shell neatly, as he asked: "All your money gone?" "There is some with Petrucha." "I say! Aren't you going away? If you were to go to Tomsk, now--" "What should I go to Tomsk for?" "Have you changed your mind, then?" "If I had been going to strangers, it would have been different." "What do you mean?" "But to go to my sister and my brother-in-law--" "What of it?" "It is not particularly pleasant to begin again with one's own people." "The beginning is the same anywhere."