Some ten paces away flowed the dark, cold river. It seemed to grumble as it noised its way past the corroded clay bank and rapidly bore itself onward somewhere towards the distant sea. At the very edge of the bank there rose the dark, massive form of a barge, the kind called _karbass_ by the ferrymen. Looking in the distance towards the opposite bank, one could see numerous fires, flaring and retreating, and resembling so many leaping serpents. It was the burning of last year’s grass. And beyond the fires, again darkness. The sound of floating ice beating against the barge could be heard. It was damp, cold.... The Tartar glanced up towards the sky. There were just as many stars here as at home, and the same surrounding darkness; yet there was something lacking. Somehow, at home, in the Simbirsk province, there were no such stars and no such sky. “It’s miserable! Miserable!” he repeated. “You’ll get used to it!” said Wiseacre, and laughed. “You are still in your teens, and silly. Your mother’s milk hasn’t as yet dried upon your lips. Of course it seems to your foolish mind that there is no one more miserable than you; but the time will come when you yourself will say, ‘May God grant every one such a life!’ Now, look at me. In another week the water will be normal again; I shall take charge of the ferry-boat; you will go jaunting through Siberia, while I shall remain here and resume making my way from bank to bank. I’ve been doing it twenty-two years, night and day. The pike and the salmon under the water; I above it. And thank God for that! I want nothing. May God grant every one such a life!” The Tartar threw more brushwood into the fire, and, moving closer to it, said: “I have an ailing father. When he dies, my mother and my wife will join me here. They have promised.” “What do you want with a mother and a wife?” asked Wiseacre. “You’ll repent it, brother. It’s the devil that’s putting you up to it, curse his soul! Don’t listen to him, the accursed one! Don’t give in to him. When he gets your mind on women, just spite him; tell him, ‘I don’t want them!’ When he talks freedom to you, get stubborn; tell him, ‘I don’t want it! I want nothing--neither father, nor mother, nor wife, nor freedom, nor house, nor anything! I want nothing, confound their souls!’” Wiseacre took another gulp from his flask, and continued: