“Yes, it was there he got more worse! So we considered it with Anoshenka⁠—he was an old artillery sergeant. ‘Now really he can’t live, and he’s asking for God’s sake to be left behind; let us leave him here.’ So we decided. There was a tree, such a branchy one, growing there. Well, we took some soaked hardtack Zhdanov had, and put it near him, leant him against the tree, put a clean shirt on him, and said goodbye⁠—all as it should be⁠—and left him.”

“And was he a good soldier?”

“Yes, he was all right as a soldier,” remarked Zhdanov.

“And what became of him God only knows,” continued Antonov; “many of the likes of us perished there.”

“What, at Dargo?” said the infantryman, as he rose, scraping out his pipe, and again half-closing his eyes and shaking his head; “all sorts of things happened there.”

And he left us.