Sirotkin was another type of ex-soldier who had found military discipline insufferable and was resolved to escape from it at any cost. All went wrong with him; every one was harsh and cruel and he was forever being punished, and sobbing as if broken-hearted in some remote corner. One dark night when on sentry duty he was so unutterably sad that he placed the muzzle of his piece to his breast and pressed the trigger with his big toe. The gun missed fire twice; then he paced his beat carrying his musket reversed. He was checked for this by the captain of the guard, whereupon he bayonetted his officer then and there. He received a long sentence and could never realise that he richly deserved it. He was an enigma to all; mild-mannered, with tranquil blue eyes, a clear complexion and a soft air, and seemingly quite incapable of a murderous crime. When addressed, he answered quickly and with deference, but otherwise spoke little and rarely laughed. There was an expression in his eyes as of a child of ten; he cared for nothing but ginger-bread cakes, on which he lavished the small sums he sometimes earned, although he was lazy and apathetic and had no trade. Luka Kuzmich was a convict who had killed as many as six men in cold blood and was much given to glory in his misdeeds. Yet for all his bragging words he was despised by his comrades, who summed him up as a conceited swaggerer inspiring no real fear. He often told the story of a crime of which he was especially proud, the murder of a major in another prison, but it made no impression because of his vanity and self-sufficiency. The major was a bully, one of those who used the blasphemous formula, customary at times with common men promoted undeservedly to high office, and who cried to his charges, “I will teach you to behave yourselves—I am your Czar, your God!” Luka, after upbraiding his comrades for not resenting these pretensions, borrowed the “rascal,” the one sharp knife permitted to be kept in the kitchen, went up to the major, and stabbed him in the intestines. He gained great notoriety for this horrible deed, and a crowd assembled to witness the infliction of the five hundred lashes given him for the crime, but no one in the prison thought the more of him when he told the story, or believed him when he posed as a very terrible person.