“Now, what do you do it for, gentlemen? I don’t understand it,” remarked the commissioner. “I’d be ready to walk to Petersburg on foot, I think, if they’d let me go. My word, I’m sick of this damned life!”

“What have you to complain of?” asked the elder Kozeltsóf, “as if you were not well enough off here.”

The contractor gave him a look and turned away.

“The danger, privations, lack of everything,” continued he, addressing Volódya. “And what induces you to do it? I do not at all understand you, gentlemen. If you got any profit out of it; but no. Now would it be nice, at your age, to be crippled for life?”

“Some want to make a profit and others serve for honour’s sake,” said the elder Kozeltsóf crossly, again intervening in the conversation.