I remember very little of my return to my island that night. The world was horribly dark and cold, the red moon had gone, and a machine-gun pursued me all the way home like a barking dog. I crossed the bridge frankly with nerves so harassed, with so many private anxieties and so much public apprehension, with so overpowering a suspicion that every shadow held a rifle that my heart leapt in my breast, and I was suddenly sick with fear when some one stepped across the road and put his hand on my arm. You see I have nothing much to boast about myself. My relief was only slightly modified when I saw that it was the Rat. The Rat had changed! He stood, as though on purpose under the very faint grey light of the lamp at the end of the bridge, and seen thus, he did in truth seem like an apparition. He was excited of course, but there was more in his face than that. The real truth about him was, that he was filled with some determination, some purpose. He was like a child who is playing at being a burglar, his face had exactly that absorption, that obsessing pre-occupation. "I've been waiting for you, Barin," he said in his hoarse musical voice. "What is it?" I asked. "This is where I live," he said, and he showed me a very dirty piece of paper. "I think you ought to know." "Why?" I asked him. "_Kto snaiet_? (who knows?) The Czar's gone and we are all free men...." I felt oddly that suddenly now he knew himself my master. That was now in his voice. "What are you going to do with your freedom?" I asked. He sighed. "I shall have my duties now," he said. "I'm not a free man at all. I obey orders for the first time. The people are going to rule. I am the people." He paused. Then he went on very seriously. "That is why, Barin, I give you that paper. I have friendly feelings towards you. I don't know what it is, but I am your brother. They may come and want to rob your house. Show them that paper." "Thank you very much," I said. "But I'm not afraid. There's nothing I mind them stealing. All the same I'm very grateful." He went on very seriously. "There'll be no Czar now and no police. We will stop the war and all be rich." He sighed. "But I don't know that it will bring happiness." He suddenly seemed to me forlorn and desolate and lonely, like a lost dog. I knew quite well that very soon, perhaps directly he had left me, he would plunder and murder and rob again. But that night, the two of us alone on the island and everything so still, waiting for great events, I felt close to him and protective. "Don't get knocked on the head, Rat," I said, "during one of your raids. Death is easily come by just now. Look after yourself." He shrugged his shoulders. "_Shto boodet, boodet_ (what will be, will be). _Neechevo_ (it's of no importance)." He had vanished into the shadows. XI