loud laughter.
The battalion with which I had come from Fort N⸺ was also in the aoul . The Captain sat on the roof of a hut and sent thin whiffs of cheap tobacco smoke through his short pipe, with such an expression of indifference on his face that on seeing him I forgot that I was in a hostile aoul , and felt quite at home.
“Ah, you are here too?” he said when he noticed me.
The tall figure of Lieutenant Rosenkranz flitted here and there in the village. He unceasingly gave orders, and appeared exceedingly engrossed in his task.
I saw him come with a triumphant air out of a hut, followed by two soldiers leading an old Tartar. The old man, whose only clothing consisted of a mottled tunic all in rags and patchwork trousers, was so frail that his arms, tightly-bound behind his bent back, seemed scarcely to hold to his shoulders, and he could hardly drag his bare crooked legs along.
His face, and even part of his shaven head, were deeply furrowed. His wry toothless mouth kept moving beneath his short-cut moustache and beard, as if he were chewing something; but in his red lashless eyes there still sparkled a gleam, and they clearly expressed an old man’s indifference to life.
Rosenkranz, through an interpreter, asked him why he had not gone away with the others.
“Where should I go?” he answered, looking quietly away.
“Where the others have gone,” someone remarked.
“The braves have gone to fight the Russians, but I am an old man.”