Upon that (not for the first time) the pair plunged into a discussion which had come so to weary them that now they spoke only indifferently, without effort. "The word 'faults' is, I consider, an insult," began the ex-soldier as he puffed at his pipe. "Besides, you don't speak consistently. Only this moment I observed a change in your terms." "To what?" "To the term 'Russians.'" "What should you prefer?" A new sound floated into the defile as from some point on the steppe the sound of a bell summoning folk to the usual Saturday vigil service. Removing his pipe from his mouth, the ex-soldier listened for a moment or two. Then, at the third and last stroke of the bell, he doffed his cap, crossed himself with punctilious piety, and said: "There are not very many churches in these parts." Whereafter he threw a glance across the river, and added venomously: "Those devils THERE don't cross themselves, the accursed Serbs!" Vasili looked at him, twisted a left-hand moustache, smoothed it again, regarded for a moment the sky and the defile, and sank his head. "The trouble with me," he remarked in an undertone, "is that I can never remain very long in one place--always I keep fancying that I shall meet with better things elsewhere, always I keep hearing a bird singing in my heart, 'Do you go further, do you go further.'" "That bird sings in the heart of EVERY man," the ex-soldier growled sulkily. With a glance at us both, Vasili laughed a subdued laugh. "'In the heart of every man'?" he repeated. "Why, such a statement is absurd. For it means, does it not, that every one of us is an idler, every one of us is constantly waiting for something to turn up--that, in fact, no one of us is any better than, or able to do any better than, the folk whose sole utterance is 'Give unto us, pray give unto us'? Yes, if that be the case, it is an unfortunate case indeed!" And again he laughed. Yet his eyes were sorrowful, and as the fingers of his right hand lay upon his knee they twitched as though they were longing to grasp something unseen. The ex-soldier frowned and snorted. For my own part, however, I felt troubled for, and sorry for, Vasili. Presently he rose, broke into a soft whistle, and moved away by the side of the stream. "His head is not quite right," muttered the ex-soldier as he winked in the direction of the retreating figure. "Yes, I tell you that straight, for from the first it was clear to me. Otherwise, what could his words in depredation of Russia mean, when of Russia nothing the least hard or definite can be said? Who really knows her? What is she in reality, seeing that each of her provinces is a soul to itself, and no one could state which of the two Holy Mothers stands nearest to God--the Holy Mother of Smolensk, or the Holy Mother of Kazan?"