But one day the soldier came to us a little the worse for liquor, he sat him down, began laughing, and when we asked him what he was laughing about, he explained: "Two of the wenches have been quarrelling about me, Liddy and Gerty," said he. "How they did blackguard each other! Ha, ha, ha! They caught each other by the hair, and were down on the floor in a twinkling, one on the top of the other; ha, ha, ha! And they tore and scratched like anything, and I was nearly bursting with laughter. Why can't women fight fair? Why do they always scratch, eh?" He was sitting on the bench; there he sat so healthy, clean, and light-hearted, and roared with laughter. We were silent. Somehow, or other, he was disagreeable to us at that moment. "No, I can't make it out. What luck I do have with women, it is ridiculous. I've but to wink, and--she is ready. The d-deuce is in it." His white arms, covered with shining gold down, rose in the air and fell down again on his knees with a loud bang. And he regarded us with such a friendly look of amazement, just as if he himself were frankly puzzled by the felicity of his dealings with women. His plump, ruddy face regularly shone with happiness and self-complacency, and he kept on noisily smacking his lips. Our chief baker scraped his shovel along the hearth violently and angrily, and suddenly remarked, with a sneer: "It is no great feat of strength to fell little fir-trees, but to fell a full-grown pine is a very different matter. "Is that meant for me, now?" queried the soldier. "It _is_ meant for you." "What do you mean?" "Nothing ... Never mind." "Nay, stop a bit! What's your little game? What pine-tree do you mean?" Our master-baker didn't answer, he was busily working with his shovel at the stove, shovelled out the well-baked biscuits, sifted those that were ready, and flung them boisterously on to the floor to the lads who were arranging them in rows on the bast wrappings. He seemed to have forgotten the soldier and his talk with him. But the soldier suddenly became uneasy. He rose to his feet and approached the stove, running the risk of a blow in the chest from the handle of the shovel which was whirling convulsively in the air. "Come, speak--what _she_ did you mean? You have insulted me. Not a single she shall ever get the better of me, n-no--I say. And then, too, you used such offensive words to me...." He really seemed to be seriously offended. No doubt he had but a poor opinion of himself except on this one point: his ability to win women. Possibly, except this one quality, there was nothing really vital in the man at all, and only this single quality allowed him to feel himself a living man.