"That's all. I became very friendly with this soldier, and accompanied him all the way to the Kars District. He was a good and very experienced little fellow, a typical barelegged vagrant. I respected him. We went together all the way to Asia Minor, and then we lost sight of each other." [4] Peasant's tobacco. "Did you think sometimes of the carpenter?" I asked. "As you see--or as you hear." "And there was nothing more?" He smiled. "What ought my feelings to have been in such a case--do you mean that? I was not to blame foe what happened to him, just as you are not to blame for what has happened to me. And nobody is to blame for anything, for all of us alike are--beasts of the same kidney." II.--TWENTY-SIX OF US AND ONE OTHER.[1] [1] Written in 1899. There were twenty-six of us--twenty-six living machines shut up in a damp cellar, where from morning to evening, we kneaded dough to make cakes and biscuits. The windows of our cellar looked upon a ditch yawning open before them and crammed full of bricks, green with damp; the window-frames were partly covered from the outside by an iron grating, and the light of the sun could not reach us through the window-panes covered with flour dust Our master had closed up the windows with iron in order that we might not give away a morsel of his bread to the poor, or to those of our comrades who were living without work, and therefore starving; our master called us galley-slaves, and gave us rotten entrails for dinner instead of butcher's meat.