As soon as we arrived at the village, a man was sent on the swiftest horse to be found, to the nearest _stannica_ (an administrative Cossack station) where a doctor was to be found.[12] It was not until late at night that the doctor arrived. When he had examined the wound, he said: "I can't understand how he has lasted so long with so little help." "Will he live?" some one asked. The doctor shook his head. "There's but little chance of that," he said. But I may as well say here that Mikhailov did live, his wonderful constitution pulling him through. His neck, however, was crippled, his head always inclining toward the left side, and his left arm practically disabled. The accident taught him wisdom, and later he took to hunting again, becoming the most renowned hunter of wolves and bears in our district. The tiger skin was sold to a passing merchant for sixty rubles, while the tiger's heart was bought by a Chinaman, who intended, it was said, to reduce it to powder and sell it to those who thought that they could thus have some of the tiger's bravery transmitted to them. The skull was given to Daria in acknowledgment of her services, and kept by her, with many other very curious things, in the front room of her little log house. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 12: Each district has its own doctor receiving pay from the government. His duty is to attend to all Cossacks and their families, free of charge, whenever necessary.] CHAPTER XI A JOURNEY One day, not long after a traveling merchant had brought us news of Dimitri, my father called me to the bench on which he sat, and putting his hands on my head, asked: "How would you like to learn to read and write?" At first I did not know what to answer, the question was so unexpected. Glancing at my mother, I saw that it made her so uneasy that she dropped a tumbler on the floor, a very unusual happening. Although father did not insist on my answering, the question kept coming back to me all that day and the next, until I decided that to learn to read and write would be a very good thing. For some days following this question, I noticed that father seemed to be brooding over something, and finally, to my great surprise, I accidentally learned that I was the cause of his worry. One night after I had gone to my bed, where I lay dreaming of having won distinction in the army, I heard mother say, "What's worrying you, Alexis? Are you sick? Or is anything wrong with the horses? Or"--here her voice trembled--"have you had bad tidings of Dimitri that you're afraid to tell me?" "Oh, no," father answered. "Nothing is wrong." Then he abruptly changed the conversation. "Do you remember Mongalov?" "Do you mean your chum, Vanka, whom my mother spanked when he threw mud at me as a child?" "That's the one," replied my father. "But you mustn't call him Vanka any more. Didn't Mitya tell you that he is now a _sotnik_?"[13] "What! An officer! Is it possible?"