'Daddy,' the loquacious Cossack would say from time to time, and point in the direction of the mountains; tears were standing in his eyes. Yakob put his swollen hand on his, and waited for him to say more. The soldier held his hand, pointed in the direction of the mountains again, and sniffled. 'He respects old age... they are human, there's no denying it,' thought Yakob, and got up to put more wood on the fire. They seized hold of him, they would not allow him to do it. A young soldier jumped up: 'Sit down, you are old.' Yakob held out his empty pipe, and the captain himself filled it. So there he sat, among these armed bandits. They were dressed in sheepskins and warm materials, had sheepskin caps on their heads; there was he with his bare arms, in well-worn grey trousers, his shirt fastened together at the neck with a piece of wood. Sitting among them, defenceless as a centipede, without anyone belonging to him, puffing clouds of smoke, he inwardly blessed this adventure, in which everything had turned out so well. The Cossacks looked at the fire, and they too said: 'This is very nice, very nice.' To whom would not a blazing fire on a cold winter's night appeal? They got more and more talkative and asked: 'Where are your wife and children?' They probably too had wives and children! 'My wife,' he said, 'has gone down to the village, she was afraid.' They laughed and tapped their chests: 'War is a bad thing, who would not be afraid?' Yakob assented all the more readily as he felt that for him the worst was over. 'Do you know the way to the village?' suddenly asked the captain. He was almost hidden in clouds of tobacco-smoke, but in his eyes there was a gleam, hard and sinister, like a bullet in a puff of smoke. Yakob did not answer. How should he not know the way? They started getting up, buckled on their belts and swords. Yakob jumped up to give them the rest of the sausages and food which had been left on the plates. But they would only take the brandy, and left the tobacco and the broken meat. 'That will be for you...afterwards,' said the young Cossack, took a red muffler off his neck and put it round Yakob's shoulder. 'That will keep you warm.' Yakob laughed back at him, and submitted to having the muffler knotted tightly round his throat. The young soldier drew a pair of trousers from his kitbag: 'Those will keep you warm, you are old.' He told him a long story about the trousers; they had belonged to his brother who had been killed. 'You know, it's lucky to wear things like that. Poor old fellow!' Yakob stood and looked at the breeches. In the fire-light they seemed to be trembling like feeble and stricken legs. He laid his hand on them and smiled, a little defiant and a little touched. 'You may have them, you may have them,' grunted the captain, and insisted on his putting them on at once.