Once in April when the country-side had only just began to put forth its buds and shoots, when the woods were still wrapped in a dark blue gloom, and the grass had only just begun to appear on the fat fields basking in the sun--the chums were going along the high-road smoking _makharka_[1] cigars of their own manufacture, and conversing. [1] Coarse tobacco smoked by the peasants. "You are coughing worse than ever," said Jig-Leg to his comrade in a tone of mild reproach. "A fig for that! Look ye, the dear little sun will soon warm me up--and I shall feel alive again." "H'm! You may have to go into the hospital you know." "What do I want with hospitals? If die I must, let me die!" "Well, that's true enough." They were passing a tract of land planted with birches, and the birches cast upon them the patterned shadows of their fine slender leaves. The sparrows were hopping along the road chirping merrily. "You don't walk very well," remarked Jig-Leg after a moment's silence. "That's because I have a choky feeling," exclaimed Hopeful. "The air is now thick and damp, it is a fat sort of air and I find it hard to swallow." And stopping short, he fell a-coughing. Jig-Leg stood beside him, smoked away, and never took his eyes off him. Hopeful, shaken by his attack of coughing, held his bosom with his hands and his face grew blue. "It gives my lungs a good tearing any way!" said he, when he had ceased coughing. And on they went again after scaring away the sparrows. "Now we are coming to Mukhina," observed Jig-Leg, throwing away his cigarette, and spitting. "We must make a circuit round it at the back by the way of the outhouses, perhaps we may be able to pick up something. Then further on past the Sivtsova spinny to Kuznechikha.... From Kuznechikha we'll turn off towards Markvoka, and so home." "That will be a walk of thirty versts," said Hopeful. "May it not be in vain!" To the left of the road stood a wood uniformly dark and inhospitable, there was not a single patch of green amidst its naked branches to cheer the eye. On the outskirts of the wood a small, rough, shaggy little horse, with woefully fallen-in flanks was roaming, and its prominent ribs were as sharply denned as the hoops of a barrel. The chums stopped again and looked at it for a long time, watching how it slowly picked its way along, lowering its snout towards the ground, and cropping the herbage with its lips, carefully munching them with its worn-out yellow teeth. "She's starved too!" observed Hopeful. "Gee-gee!" cried Jig-Leg enticingly. The horse looked at him, and shaking his head, negatively bent it earthwards again. Hopeful explained the horse's wearisome movement: "He doesn't like you!" said he. "Come! If we hand him over to the gipsies, they no doubt will give us seven roubles for her," observed Jig-Leg meditatively. "No they won't! What could they do with her?" "There's the hide!"