It was a beautiful evening, the best players had come, and we were playing Gorodki. I, Ensign O⁠⸺, and Lieutenant O⁠⸺, lost two games running, and to the general amusement and laughter of the onlooking officers, and of soldiers and orderlies who were watching us from their tents, we twice carried the winners pickaback from one end of the ground to the other. Specially amusing was the position of the enormous, fat Lieutenant-Captain S⁠⸺, who, puffing and smiling good-humouredly, with his feet trailing on the ground, rode on the back of the small and puny Lieutenant O⁠⸺. But it was growing late. The orderlies brought three tumblers of tea without any saucers, for the whole six of us, and having finished our game we came to the rustic seats. Near them stood a short, bandy-legged man whom I did not know, dressed in a sheepskin coat, and with a large, white, long-woolled sheepskin cap on his head. As soon as we approached him he hesitatingly took off and put on his cap several times, and repeatedly seemed on the point of coming up to us but then stopped again. Having, I suppose, decided that he could no longer remain unnoticed, this stranger again raised his cap, and passing round us approached Lieutenant-Captain S⁠⸺.