. . . Do you know, let me
spend the night with you: with us, they will play all night long; it
makes no difference, anywhere, on the ground."
While Nikita was making the bed, we got up, and once more began to walk
up and down in the darkness on the battery. Certainly Guskof's head must
have been very weak, because two glasses of liquor and two of wine made
him dizzy. As we got up and moved away from the candles, I noticed that
he again thrust the ten-ruble bill into his pocket, trying to do so
without my seeing it. During all the foregoing conversation, he had held
it in his hand. He continued to reiterate how he felt that he might
regain his old station if he had a man such as I were to take some
interest in him.
We were just going into the tent to go to bed when suddenly a cannon-
ball whistled over us, and buried itself in the ground not far from us.
So strange it was,--that peacefully sleeping camp, our conversation, and
suddenly the hostile cannon-ball which flew from God knows where, the
midst of our tents,--so strange that it was some time before I could
realize what it was. Our sentinel, Andreief, walking up and down on the
battery, moved toward me.
"Ha! he's crept up to us.
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