"Before long those fellows will be properly drunk!" he said with a frown. "Ah, that vodka of ours! It is a perfect curse!" Then to me: "Do YOU drink?" "No," I replied. "Thank God for that! If one does not drink one will never really get into trouble." For a moment he gazed gloomily in the direction of the newcomers. Then he said without moving, without even looking at me: "You have remarkable eyes, young fellow. Also, they seem familiar to me--I have seen them somewhere before. Possibly that happened in a dream, though I cannot be sure. Where do you come from?" I answered, but, after scanning me perplexedly, he shook his head. "No," he remarked. "I have never visited that part of the country, or indeed, been so far from home." "But this place is further still?" "Further still?" "Yes--from Kursk." He laughed. "I must tell you the truth," he said. "I am not a Kurskan at all, but a Pskovian. The reason why I told the ex-soldier that I was from Kursk was that I neither liked him nor cared to tell him the whole truth-he was not worth the trouble. And as for my real name, it is Paul, not Vasili--Paul Nikolaev Silantiev--and is so marked on my passport (for a passport, and a passport quite in order, I have got)." "And why are you on your travels?" "For the reason that I am so--I can say no more. I look back from a given place, and wave my hand, and am gone again as a feather floats before the wind." * * * * * "Silence!" a threatening voice near the barraque broke in. "I am the foreman here." The voice of the ex-soldier replied: "What workmen are these of yours? They are mere sectarians, fellows who are for ever singing hymns." To which someone else added: "Besides, old devil that you are, aren't you bound to finish all building work before the beginning of a Sunday?" "Let us throw their tools into the stream." "Yes, and start a riot," was Silantiev's comment as he squatted before the embers of the fire. Around the barraque, picked out against the yellow of its framework, a number of dark figures were surging to and fro as around a conflagration. Presently we heard something smashed to pieces--at all events, we heard the cracking and scraping of wood against stone, and then the strident, hilarious command: "Hold on there! I'LL soon put things to rights! Carpenters, just hand over the saw!"