"What did he do?" asked Martin. "Why was he a fool?" "Oh! he was a boy without sense--the only Russian boy I ever knew who had no sense at all. If he had belonged to some other nation, I should not have wondered so much. This fellow was about fifteen or sixteen, and ought to have known something of the world, but he knew nothing. He was going to the university when I was with him, but you might have thought he was a pupil at a mad-house. Whatever came into his cracked brain, came out of his mouth; and whatever he wanted to do, he did, without waiting to think whether it would be proper or not. The biggest fool could cheat him; and when anybody did cheat him, and his friends found it out and wanted to punish the rascal, this little fool of mine would come, with tears in his eyes, to beg for the poor wretch, who must feel already such remorse and such shame at being found out! Bah! I can hardly bear to think of him. Why, there was once a house afire, in a neighborhood where one of his friends lived, and what does this young fool do but jump out of his bed, in the middle of a stormy night, and run to this fire, with nothing but his night-clothes on!" "This is very curious," said Martin, laughing. "Nicolai Petrovitch, do you know----" "Well, as I was going on to tell you," said the old man, who seemed thoroughly wrapped up in his subject, "I couldn't stand any such folly as that, and so I soon left him and went to live with Colonel Rasteryaieff. I stayed there a long, long time. There I became a gardener, and there I learned almost all the poetry that I know. The colonel had a daughter, who was a little child when I went there; but when she grew old enough, she became a girl of great sense, and she liked poetry, and used to come and read to me, out of the books she had. I always tried to get at some work which would let me listen to her, during the hour that she would come to me in the afternoon. She read better than my little Axinia. I used to wish I was a poet, so that I could hear her read some of my songs." "But, Nicolai Petrovitch," cried Martin, his eyes fairly sparkling with a discovery he had made, "do you know that I believe that that fool of a boy you lived with was the poet who wrote the songs and the poetry that you like best--that he wrote the 'Dushenka,' which Axinia Nicolaievna is reading to you?" "What!" said the old gardener, laying down his knife and the piece of wood he was cutting. "I mean what I say," said Martin. "Wasn't his name Bogdanovitch?" [Illustration: A STORM ON THE STEPPES.] "Bog-dan-ovitch!" repeated Nicolai, his eyes wide open in surprise. "Yes--that was his name. How did you know him? It was nearly fifty years ago since I lived with him."