"What are you thinking of, you fools? The washhouse is the best place for you, for if the police get you, they'll soon find you a lodging, and no mistake!" One of the townspeople put in officiously: "Aye, aye. The police have been sent for." And this led Boev to exclaim to Ossip: "Why pretend like that?" "Pretend? I?" "Yes--you." "What do you mean?" "I mean that it was you who egged us on to cross the river." "You say that it was I?" "I do." "Indeed?" "Aye," put in Budirin quietly, but incisively. And him the Morduine supported by saying in a sullen undertone: "It was you, mate. By God it was. It would seem that you have forgotten." "Yes, you started all this business," the old soldier corroborated, in dour, ponderous accents. "Forgotten, indeed? HE?" was Boev's heated exclamation. "How can you say such a thing? Well, let him not try to shift the responsibility on to others--that's all! WE'LL see, right enough, that he goes through with it!" To this Ossip made no reply, but gazed frowningly at his dripping, half-clad men. All at once, with a curious outburst of mingled smiles and tears (it would be hard to say which), he shrugged his shoulders, threw up his hands, and muttered: "Yes, it IS true. If it please you, it was I that contrived the idea." "Of COURSE it was!" the old soldier cried triumphantly. Ossip turned his eyes again to where the river was seething like a bowl of porridge, and, letting his eyes fall with a frown, continued: "In a moment of forgetfulness I did it. Yet how is it that we were not all drowned? Well, you wouldn't understand even if I were to tell you. No, by God, you wouldn't!... Don't be angry with me, mates. Pardon me for the festival's sake, for I am feeling uneasy of mind. Yes, I it was that egged you on to cross the river, the old fool that I was!" "Aha!" exclaimed Boev. "But, had I been drowned, what should you have said THEN?" In fact, by this time Ossip seemed conscious to the full of the futility and the senselessness of what he had done: and in his state of sliminess, as he sat nodding his head, picking at the sand, looking at no one, and emitting a torrent of remorseful words, he reminded me strongly of a new-born calf. And as I watched him I thought to myself: "Where now is the leader of men who could draw his fellows in his train with so much care and skill and authority?" And into my soul there trickled an uneasy sense of something lacking. Seating myself beside Ossip (for I desired still to retain a measure of my late impression of him), I said to him in an undertone: "Soon you will be all right again." With a sideways glance he muttered in reply, as he combed his beard: "Well, you saw what happened just now. Always do things so happen." While for the benefit of the men he added: "That was a good jest of mine, eh?"