similar situation, I should have——”

He did not finish his sentence, but the little, well-formed hand in which he held the reins was clenched so hard that it trembled. Lbov was seized with one of his usual paroxysms of laughter.

“Ah! you’re at it again,” Viätkin remarked severely.

“Pardon me, gentlemen, but I really couldn’t—ha, ha, ha! I happened to think of a tragi-comic scene that was enacted in the 17th Regiment. Sub-Ensign Krause on one occasion had a row with some one in an aristocratic club. The steward, to prevent further mischief, seized him so violently by the shoulder-knot that the latter was torn off, whereupon Krause drew his revolver and put a bullet through the steward’s skull. A little lawyer who incautiously mixed himself up in the game shared the same fate. The rest of the party rushed out of the room like so many frightened hens. But Krause quietly proceeded to the camp, and was then challenged by the sentry. ‘Who goes there?’ shouted the sentry. ‘Sub-Ensign Krause, who is coming to die by the colours of his regiment’; whereupon he walked straight up to the colours, laid himself down on the ground, and fired a bullet through his left arm. The court afterwards acquitted him.”

“That was a fine fellow,” exclaimed Biek-Agamalov.

Then began the young officers’ usual favourite conversation on duels, fights, and other sanguinary scenes, whereupon it was stated with great satisfaction that such transgressions of law and municipal order always went unpunished. Then, for instance, a story was told about how a drunken, beardless cornet had drawn his sword at random on a small crowd of Jews who were returning from keeping the Passover; how a sub-lieutenant in the infantry had, at a dancing-hall, stabbed to death an undergraduate who happened to elbow him at the buffet, how an officer at St. Petersburg or Moscow shot down like a dog a civilian who dared to make the impertinent observation that decent people were not in the habit of accosting ladies with whom they are not acquainted.

Romashov, who, up to now, had been a silent listener to these piquant stories, now joined in the conversation; but he did so with every sign of reluctance and embarrassment. He cleared his throat, slowly adjusted his eyeglass, though that was not absolutely necessary then, and finally, in an uncertain voice, spoke as follows—

“Gentlemen, allow me to submit to you this question: In a dispute of that sort it might happen, you know, that the civilian chanced to be a respectable man, even perhaps a person of noble birth. Might it not, in that case, be more correct to demand of him an explanation or satisfaction? We should both belong to the cultured class, so to speak.”

“You’re talking nonsense, Romashov,” interrupted Viätkin. “If you want satisfaction from such scum you’ll most certainly get the following answer, which is little gratifying: ‘Ah, well, my good sir, I do not give satisfaction. That is contrary to my principles. I loathe duels and bloodshed—and besides, you can have recourse, you know, to the Justice of the Peace, in the event of your feeling yourself wronged.’ And then, for the whole of your life, you must carry the delightful recollection of an unavenged box on the ears from a civilian.”

Biek-Agamalov smiled in approbation, and with more than his usual generosity showed his whole row of gleaming white teeth. “Hark you, Viätkin, you ought really to take some interest in this sabre-cutting. With us at our home in the Caucasus we practise it from childhood—on bundles of wattles, on water-spouts, the bodies of sheep.”

“And men’s bodies,” remarked Lbov.

“And on men’s bodies,” repeated Agamalov with unruffled calm. “And such strokes, too! In a twinkling they cleave a fellow from his shoulder to the hip.”

“Biek, can you perform a test of strength like that?”

Biek-Agamalov sighed regretfully.

“No, alas! A sheep, or a calf; I can say I could cleave to the neck by a single stroke, but to cut a full-grown man down to the waist is beyond my power. To my father it would be a trifle.”

“Come, gentlemen, and let us try our strength and sabres on that scarecrow,” said Lbov, in a determined tone and with flashing eyes. “Biek, my dear boy, come with us.”

The officers went up to the clay figure that had been erected a little way off. Viätkin was the first to attack it. After endeavouring to impart to his innocent, prosaic face an expression of wild-beast ferocity, he struck the clay man with all his might and with an unnecessarily big flourish of his sabre. At the same time he uttered the characteristic sound “Khryass!” which a butcher makes when he is cutting up beef. The weapon entered about a quarter of an inch into the clay, and Viätkin had some trouble to extricate his brave sabre.

“Wretchedly done,” exclaimed Agamalov, shaking his head. “Now, Romashov, it’s your turn.”

Romashov drew his sabre from its sheath, and adjusted his eyeglass with a hesitating movement. He was of medium height, lean, and fairly strong in proportion to his build, but through constitutional timidity and lack of interest not much accustomed to handling the weapon. Even as a pupil at the Military Academy he was a bad swordsman, and after a year and a half’s service in the regiment he had almost completely forgotten the art.

He raised his sabre high above his head, but stretched out, simultaneously and instinctively, his left arm and hand.

“Mind your hand!” shouted Agamalov.

But it was too late then. The point of the sabre only made a slight scratch on the clay, and Romashov, to his astonishment, who had mis-reckoned on a strong resistance to the steel entering the clay, lost his balance and stumbled forward, whereupon the blade of the sabre caught his outstretched hand and tore off a portion of skin at the lower part of his little finger, so that the blood oozed.

“There! See what you’ve done!” cried Biek angrily as he dismounted from his charger. “How can any one handle a sabre so badly? You very nearly cut off your hand, you know. Well, that wound is a mere trifle, but you’d better bind it up with your handkerchief. Ensign, hold my horse. And now, gentlemen, bear this in mind. The force or effect of a stroke is not generated either in the shoulder or the elbow, but here, in the wrist.” He made, as quick as lightning, a few rotary movements of his right hand, whereupon the point of his sabre described a scintillating circle above his head. “Now look, I put my left hand behind my back. When the stroke itself is to be delivered it must not be done by a violent and clumsily directed blow, but by a vigorous cut, in which the arm and sabre are jerked slightly backwards. Do you understand? Moreover, it is absolutely necessary that the plane of the sabre exactly coincides with the direction of the stroke. Look, here goes!”

Biek took two steps backwards from the manikin, to which he seemed, as it were, to fasten himself tightly by a sharp, penetrating glance. Suddenly the sabre flashed in the air, and a fearful stroke, delivered with a rapidity that the eye could not follow, struck like lightning the clay figure, the upper part of which rolled, softly but heavily, down to the ground. The cut made by the sabre was as smooth and even as if it had been polished.

“The deuce, that was something like a cut!” cried the enthusiastic Lbov in wild delight. “Biek, my dear fellow, of your charity do that over again.”

“Yes, do, Biek,” chimed in Viätkin.

But Agamalov, who was evidently afraid of destroying the effect he had produced, smiled as he replaced the sabre in its scabbard. He breathed heavily, and at that moment, by his bloodthirsty, wildly staring eyes, his hawk’s nose, and set mouth, he put one in mind of a proud, cruel, malignant bird of prey.

“That was