“And where, where is my master now!” said Nikita, with a drawl, for he was still rather drunk. “Oh, how I love that master of mine!—I don't know myself!—I love him so that if, which God forbid, they should kill him in this sinful fight, then, if you will believe it, aunty, I don't know myself what I might do to myself in that case—by Heavens, I don't! He is such a master that words will not do him justice! Would I exchange him for one of those who play cards? That is simply—whew! that's all there is to say!” concluded Nikita, pointing at the lighted window of his master's room, in which, as the staff-captain was absent, Yunker Zhvadchevsky had invited his friends to a carouse, on the occasion of his receiving the cross: Sub-Lieutenant Ugrovitch and Sub-Lieutenant Nepshisetsky, who was ill with a cold in the head. “Those little stars! They dart through the sky like stars, like stars!” said the little girl, breaking the silence which succeeded Nikita's words. “There, there! another has dropped! Why do they do it, mamma?” “They will ruin our little cabin entirely,” said the old woman, sighing, and not replying to her little daughter's question. “And when uncle and I went there to-day, mamma,” continued the little girl, in a shrill voice, “there was such a big cannon-ball lying in the room, near the cupboard; it had broken through the wall and into the room ... and it is so big that you couldn't lift it.” “Those who had husbands and money have gone away,” said the old woman, “and now they have ruined my last little house. See, see how they are firing, the wretches. Lord, Lord!” “And as soon as we came out, a bomb flew at us, and burst and scattered the earth about, and a piece of the shell came near striking uncle and me.” VII. Prince Galtsin met more and more wounded men, in stretchers and on foot, supporting each other, and talking loudly. “When they rushed up, brothers,” said one tall soldier, who had two guns on his shoulder, in a bass voice, “when they rushed up and shouted, ‘Allah, Allah!’[G] they pressed each other on. You kill one, and another takes his place—you can do nothing. You never saw such numbers as there were of them....” [G] A The Russian soldiers, who had been fighting the Turks, were so accustomed to this cry of the enemy that they always declared that the French also cried “Allah.”—AUTHOR'S NOTE. But at this point in his story Galtsin interrupted him. “You come from the bastion?” “Just so, Your Honor!” “Well, what has been going on there? Tell me.” “Why, what has been going on? They attacked in force, Your Honor; they climbed over the wall, and that's the end of it. They conquered completely, Your Honor.” “How conquered? You repulsed them, surely?” “How could we repulse them, when he came up with his whole force? They killed all our men, and there was no help given us.”