"Nay, brother, 'a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush----'" Chelkash fell in with his humour. "No more gabble! Wait! come to the pub!" And they walked along the street side by side, Chelkash twisting his moustaches with the impudent air of a master, the rustic with the expression of a complete readiness to buckle under, yet at the same time full of uneasiness and suspicion. "What do they call you?" inquired Chelkash. "Gabriel," replied the rustic. When they came to the filthy and smoke-black inn, Chelkash, going up to the buffet with the familiar tone of an old habitué, ordered a bottle of vodka, cabbage-soup, a roasted joint, tea; and totting up the amount of the items, curtly remarked to the barmaid: "All to my account, eh?" whereupon the barmaid nodded her head in silence. And Gabriel was suddenly filled with a profound respect for his master, who, notwithstanding his hang-dog look, enjoyed such notoriety and credit. "Well, now we can peck a bit, and have a talk comfortably. You sit here. I'll be back directly." Out he went. Gabriel looked about him. The inn was on the ground-floor, it was damp and dark, and full of the stifling odour of distilled vodka, tobacco smoke, tar, and a something else of a pungent quality. Opposite Gabriel, at another table, sat a drunken man in sailor's costume, with a red beard, all covered with coal dust and tar. He was growling, in the midst of momentary hiccoughs, a song, or rather the fragmentary and inconsecutive words of a song, his voice now rising to a frightful bellow, now sinking to a throaty gurgle. He was obviously not a Russian. Behind him sat two young Moldavian girls, ragged, dark-haired, sun-burnt, also screeching some sort of a song with tipsy voices. Further back other figures projected from the surrounding gloom, all of them strangely unkempt, half-drunk, noisy, and restless.... Gabriel felt uncomfortable sitting there all alone. He wished his master would return sooner. The din of the eating-house blended into a single note, and it seemed to him like the roar of some huge animal. It possessed a hundred different sorts of voices, and was blindly, irritably, soaring away out of this stony prison, as if it wanted to find an outlet for its will and could not.... Gabriel felt as if something bemused and oppressive was sucking away in his body, something which made his head swim, and made his eyes grow dim as they wandered, curious and terrified, about the eating-house. Chelkash now arrived, and they began to eat and drink and converse at the same time. At the third rummer Gabriel got drunk. He felt merry, and wanted to say something pleasant to his host who--glorious youth!--though nothing to look at, was so tastefully entertaining him. But the words, whole waves of them, pouring into his very throat, for some reason or other wouldn't leave his tongue, which had suddenly grown quite cumbersome.