"The commander of the regiment ordered me to be here by ten o'clock. It still wants three minutes to that hour. I do not consider I am justified in worrying and exerting my men unnecessarily." "Don't, if you please," croaked Liech, gesticulating and pulling his reins. "I must ask you to be silent when your superior officer makes a remark." But he only too well understood that he was wrong and would get the worst of it, and he rode quickly on, and visited his wrath on the 8th Company, whose officers had ordered the knapsacks to be opened. "What the deuce are you about? What is this foolery? Are you thinking of opening a bazaar or a general shop? This is just like beginning a hunt by cramming the hounds with food. Close your knapsacks and put them on quickly. You ought to have thought of this before." At a quarter to eleven they began dressing the companies on the lines laid down. This was for all a very minute, tedious, and troublesome task. Between the _échelons_ long ropes were tightly stretched along the ground. Every soldier in the front rank was obliged to see, with the most painful accuracy, that his toes just grazed the tightly-stretched rope, for in that lay the fundamental condition of the faultless dressing of the long front. Moreover, the distance between the toes, like the breadth of the gun-stock and the somewhat inclined position of the upper part of the body, had to be the same along the whole line. While anxiously superintending these details the Captains often flew into a towering rage. Frantic shouts and angry words of command were heard everywhere: "Ivanoff, more forward, you--Syaroschtan, right shoulder forward, left back!" At 10.30 a.m. the commander of the regiment arrived. He rode on a powerful chestnut-brown gelding with white legs. Colonel Shulgovich was an imposing, almost majestic, figure on horseback. He had a firm "seat," although he rode in infantry style, with stirrups far too short. In greeting his regiment he yelled in his tremendous voice, in which a certain jubilant heroic note in honour of the occasion was audible-- "Good morning, my fine fellows." Romashov, who remembered his 4th platoon and especially Kliabnikov's wretched appearance, could not refrain from smiling. "Pretty choice specimens, in all truth," thought he.