three, on the contrary, very briskly, and accompanied them with little hops and shuffles of his feet; at the conclusion of each verse he cut a caper, in which he kicked himself with his own heels. As he shouted at the top of his voice: "The squint-eye is too sharp for us!" he turned a somersault. . . . His expectations were fulfilled. The brigadier suddenly went off into a thin, tearful little chuckle, and laughed so heartily that he could not go on, and stayed still in a half-sitting posture, helplessly slapping his knees with his hands. I looked at his face, flushed crimson, and convulsively working, and felt very sorry for him at that instant especially. Encouraged by his success, Cucumber fell to capering about in a squatting position, singing the refrain of: "Shildi-budildi!" and "Natchiki-tchikaldi!" He stumbled at last with his nose in the dust. . . . The brigadier suddenly ceased laughing and hobbled on.

XI

WE went on another quarter of a mile. A little village came into sight on the edge of a not very deep ravine; on one side stood the "lodge," with a half-ruined roof and a solitary chimney; in one of the two rooms of this lodge lived the brigadier. The owner of the village, who always resided in Petersburg,