"Well, who else? It wasn't you, eh? And I suppose you won't say it was--me? Well, so much for your bookworms! He managed very cleverly with the man ... and has left his comrades in the lurch. Had I suspected it, I could have killed 'the student' yesterday evening. I could have killed him at a blow ... Smash with my fist on his forehead, and there would have been one blackguard the less in the world. See what he has done, and remember it! Now we must move on so that not a human eye may see us in the steppe. Do you understand? Recollect, we came upon the carpenter to-day, throttled and plundered. And we'll search for our brother ... find out in what direction he went, and where he passed the night. Well, suppose they seize us ... although we have nothing upon us ... except his revolver in my bosom!" "Throw it away," I advised the soldier. "Throw it away?" said he thoughtfully, "why it's a precious thing. And then, too, they may not seize us yet ... No, I'll not chuck it ... Who knows that the carpenter carried arms? I'll not chuck it ... It's worth three roubles ... And there's a bullet in it. How I should like to fire this selfsame bullet into the ear of our dear comrade! I wonder how much money he filched, the hound! May he be anathema!" "And there are the carpenter's little daughters!" said I. "Daughters? What?... Well, they'll grow up, and it's not for us to find them husbands; they don't concern us at all ... Let us go, my brother, quickly. Whither shall we go?" "I don't know ... it's all one to me." "And I don't know, and I know it is all one. Let us go to the right ... the sea must be there." We went to the right. I turned to look back. Far away from us in the steppe rose a dark little mound, and on it the sun was shining. "Are you looking to see whether he will rise again? Don't be afraid, he won't rise up to pursue us. The scholar is evidently a chap up to a dodge or two, and dealt with the case thoroughly. Well, he has saddled us with it finely. And our comrade too! Ah, my brother! Folks are degenerating! From year to year they degenerate more and more," observed the soldier sadly. The steppe, speechless and desolate, flooded by the bright morning sun, unfolded itself all around us, blending on the horizon with the sky, so bright and friendly and lavish of light, that any black and iniquitous deed seemed impossible in the midst of the grand spaciousness of that free expanse, covered by the blue cupola of heaven. "Feel hungry, brother?" said the soldier, twisting himself a cigarette out of his _makharka._[4] "Where are we going to-day, and how?" "That's the question!" * * * * * Here the narrator--my next neighbour in the hospital hammock--broke off his story and said to me: