At first I did not know what this peculiar command meant, but after a short pause I heard the thin bark of a dog, and as the gate of the enclosure was open I drew nearer and saw in the wide open door of the yurta a small black dog, tiny and light, repeatedly raising itself on its hindlegs and barking up at the blue sky while it jumped and turned about. Of course I went away and put off my visit to a more suitable occasion. At last I saw him. He was of middle stature, quite greyheaded, and he looked very neglected. The ashen complexion common to all exiles distinguished him in a high degree, so that it gave me pain to look into his face with the black shadows. If he had not been talking, and moving about, it would have been hard to guess that one was looking at a living being. And yet, glances like lightning would sometimes dart from the large eyes surrounded by broad, dark circles, and they showed that death had not yet numbed the inner life of this moving corpse, but that he was still capable of emotion. As long as he was sitting I could bear the sight of his suffering face, but when he got up I had to turn away my eyes, for then his clump-feet seemed to cause him the greatest agony. He spoke Polish correctly and with a pure accent. He carefully avoided any direct or indirect allusion to his past, and shrank equally from information about his native country. He talked exclusively about the present, principally about his dog, with whom he held long conversations. Only once in the course of the few weeks during which I visited him did he get animated: that was when I mentioned Plotsk; his eyes shone as with a hidden fire while he asked: 'Do you know that part?' I answered that I had lived there for a year, and he said, half to himself: 'I suppose it is all quite changed, so many years have passed. You probably were not born at the time when I came to Siberia. In what part of the province did you stay?' 'Not far from Raciaz.' He opened his mouth, but he felt he had said too much, or that I was listening with curiosity; enough--he only uttered a long-drawn 'Oh...' and was silent again. This was the only allusion Kowalski ever made to his past. I felt inclined to draw him out, but he knew how to parry these attempts in a delicate way by calling his dog and saying to him while he caressed him: 'Go, bark at the Almighty!' And the obedient creature would continue for a long time to bark at the sky. As soon as Kowalski gave this order, it was a sure sign that he would not open his mouth except for conversation about his dog, of which he never tired. Although this dog was quite ordinary, he was in several ways distinguished from his Yakut brothers. For one thing he had no name and was simply addressed as 'Doggy', though he was his master's pet and was attached to the house and enclosure. 'Why didn't you give your dog a name?' I asked casually.