The poor boy's heart sank lower and lower, and more and more frequently flashed the lightnings against the dark horizon, and the bombs screamed and burst about him with ever increasing frequency. Nikolaeff sighed, and all at once he began to speak, in what seemed to Volodya a frightened and constrained tone. “What haste we made to get here from home. It was nothing but travelling. A pretty place to be in a hurry to get to!” “What was to be done, if my brother was well again,” replied Volodya, in hope that he might banish by conversation the frightful feeling that was taking possession of him. “Well, what sort of health is it when he is thoroughly ill! Those who are really well had better stay in the hospital at such a time. A vast deal of joy there is about it, isn't there? You will have a leg or an arm torn off, and that's all you will get! It's not far removed from a downright sin! And here in the town it's not at all like the bastion, and that is a perfect terror. You go and you say your prayers the whole way. Eh, you beast, there you go whizzing past!” he added, directing his attention to the sound of a splinter of shell whizzing by near them. “Now, here,” Nikolaeff went on, “I was ordered to show Your Honor the way. My business, of course, is to do as I am bid; but the cart has been abandoned to some wretch of a soldier, and the bundle is undone.... Go on and on; but if any of the property disappears, Nikolaeff will have to answer for it.” After proceeding a few steps further, they came out on a square. Nikolaeff held his peace, but sighed. “Yonder is your artillery, Your Honor!” he suddenly said. “Ask the sentinel; he will show you.” And Volodya, after he had taken a few steps more, ceased to hear the sound of Nikolaeff's sighs behind him. All at once, he felt himself entirely and finally alone. This consciousness of solitude in danger, before death, as it seemed to him, lay upon his heart like a terribly cold and heavy stone. He halted in the middle of the square, glanced about him, to see whether he could catch sight of any one, grasped his head, and uttered his thought aloud in his terror:—“Lord! Can it be that I am a coward, a vile, disgusting, worthless coward ... can it be that I so lately dreamed of dying with joy for my father-land, my tsar? No, I am a wretched, an unfortunate, a wretched being!” And Volodya, with a genuine sentiment of despair and disenchantment with himself, inquired of the sentinel for the house of the commander of the battery, and set out in the direction indicated. XII.