"What a dullard you are to ask about such simple things! Were you never given any sort of an education? Surely by this time you ought to be able to understand something?" Then, with a change of subject, and subduing his tone to one of snuffling supplication, he added in the sing-song chant of a person reciting a prayer: "'Oh Lord, suffer me not to become bound unto the clergy the priesthood, the diaconate, the tchinovstvo, [The official class] or the intelligentsia!' This was a petition which my mother used often to repeat." The raindrops now were falling more gently, and in finer lines and more transparent network, so that one could once more descry the great trunks of the blackened oaks, with the green and gold of their leaves. Also, our own hollow had grown less dark, and there could be discerned its smoky, satin-bright walls. From those walls Kalinin picked a bit of charcoal with finger and thumb, saying: "It was shepherds that fired the place. See where they dragged in hay and dead leaves! A shepherd's fife hereabouts must be a truly glorious one!" Lastly, clasping his head as though he were about to fall asleep, he sank his chin between his knees, and relapsed into silence. Presently a brilliant, sinuous little rivulet which had long been laving the bare roots of our tree brought floating past us a red and fawn leaf. "How pretty," I thought, "that leaf will look from a distance when reposing on the surface of the sea! For, like the sun when he is in solitary possession of the heavens, that leaf will stand out against the blue, silky expanse like a lonely red star." After awhile my companion began, catlike, to purr to himself a song. Its melody, the melody of "the moon withdrew behind a cloud," was familiar enough, but not so the words, which ran: Oh Valentina, wondrous maid, More comely thou than e'er a flow'r! The nurse's son doth pine for thee, And yearn to serve thee every hour! "What does that ditty mean?" I inquired. Kalinin straightened himself, gave a wriggle to a form that was as lithe as a lizard's, and passed one hand over his face. "It is a certain composition," he replied presently. "It is a composition that was composed by a military clerk who afterwards died of consumption. He was my friend his life long, and my only friend, and a true one, besides being a man out of the common." "And who was Valentina?" "My one-time mistress," Kalinin spoke unwillingly. "And he, the clerk--was he in love with her?" "Oh dear no!" Evidently Kalinin had no particular wish to discuss the subject, for he hugged himself together, buried his face in his hands, and muttered: "I should like to kindle a fire, were it not that everything in the place is too damp for the purpose." The wind shook the trees, and whistled despondently, while the fine, persistent rain still whipped the earth. "I but humble am, and poor, Nor fated to be otherwise,"