"A con-vey-ance, eh? Go along! Our brother the wayfarer here is used to lounging about the fields and villages--and we've no horses to spare. You must go on your own legs, that's all." "It doesn't matter, let us go, my father!" said the Sotsky cheerfully. "Surely you don't think it is too far for us? Twenty versts at most, thank God! Come, let us go, 'twill be nothing. We shall do it capitally, you and I. And when we get there you shall have a rest." "In a cold cellar," explained the Starosta. "Oh, that's nothing," the Sotsky hastened to say, "a man when he is tired is not sorry to rest even in a dungeon. And then, too, a cold cellar--it is cooling after a hot day--you'll be quite comfortable in it." The prisoner looked sourly at his escort--the latter smiled merrily and frankly. "Well, come along, honoured father! Good-bye, Vasil Gavriluich! Let's be off!" "God be with you, Efimushka. Be on your guard!" "Be wide-awake!" suggested some young rustic out of the crowd to the Sotsky. "Do you think I'm a child, or what?" replied the Sotsky. And off they went, sticking close to the huts in order to keep in the strip of shadow. The man in the cassock went on in front, with the slouching but rapid gait of an animal accustomed to roaming. The Sotsky, with his good stout stick in his hand, walked behind him. Efimushka was a little, undersized, muzhik, but strongly built, with a broad, good-natured face framed in a rough, red straggling beard beginning a little below his bright grey eyes. He always seemed to be smiling at something, showing, as he did so, his healthy yellow teeth, and wrinkling his nose as if he wanted to sneeze. He was clothed in a long cloak, trussed up in the waist so as not to hamper his feet, and-on his head was stuck a dark-green, brimless cap, drawn down over his brows in front, and very much like the forage cap of his prisoner. His fellow-traveller walked along without paying him the slightest attention, just as if he were unconscious of his presence behind him. They went along by the narrow country path, zigzagged through a billowy sea of rye, and the shadows of the travellers glided along the golden ears of corn. The mane of a wood stood out blue against the horizon; to the left of the travellers fields and fields extended to an endless distance, in the midst of which lay villages like dark patches, and behind these again lay fields and fields, dwindling away into a bluish mist. To the right, from the midst of a group of willows, the spire of a church, covered with lead, but not yet gilded over, pierced the blue sky--it glistened so in the sun that it was painful to look upon. The larks were singing in the sky, the cornflowers were smiling in the rye, and it was hot--almost stifling. The dust flew up from beneath the feet of the travellers.