The rain was pouring down as if from a bucket The sea raged with a muffled roar, and the waves now beat upon the shore with frantic rage. For a time both men were silent. "Well, good-bye!" said Chelkash coldly and sarcastically, and set off on his journey. He staggered as he went, his feet tottered beneath him, and he held his head so oddly, just as if he were afraid of losing it. "Forgive me, brother!" Gabriel besought him once more. "Bosh!" coldly replied Chelkash, pursuing his way. On he staggered, supporting his head all the time in the palm of his left hand, while with his right he gently twirled his fierce moustache. Gabriel continued to gaze after him till he disappeared in the rain, which was now pouring down more densely than ever from the clouds in fine endless jets, enveloping the steppe in an impenetrable mist of a steely hue. Then Gabriel took off his wet cap, crossed himself, looked at the money fast squeezed in his palm, sighed deeply and freely, hid the notes in his bosom, and with a spacious confident stride marched off along the sea-shore in the direction opposite to that in which Chelkash had vanished. The sea howled, and cast huge heavy waves on the strand, churning them up into foam and scud. The rain cut up sea and land furiously. Everything around was filled with howling, yelling, moaning. Neither sea nor sky was visible behind the rain. Soon the rain and the wash of the waves had cleansed the red spot on the place where Chelkash had lain, had washed away all traces of Chelkash, and all traces of the young rustic from the sand of the sea-shore. And on the desolate strand nothing remained as a memorial of the petty drama played there by two living souls. IX.--CHUMS. I. One of them was called Jig-Leg, and the other Hopeful, and they were thieves by profession. They lived on the outskirts of the town, in the suburb that straggled strangely along the gully, in One of those crazy shanties compounded of clay and half-rotten wood--probably the rubbish sweepings chucked down the gully. The chums went a-thieving in the villages adjoining the town, for in the town itself it was difficult to thieve, and their neighbours in the suburb were not worth robbing. Both of them were cautious, modest chaps--they were not above appropriating a piece of cloth, a peasant's coarse coat, or an axe, a bit of harness, a shirt, or a hen, and they always gave a very wide berth for a very long time to any village where they happened to "cop" anything. But despite such a sensible mode of procedure, the suburban muzhiks knew them very well, and occasionally threatened to beat them to death. But the muzhiks, so far, had never got their opportunity, and the bones of the two friends were still whole, though they had followed their profession and heard the threats of the muzhiks for quite six years.