The Cossacks: A Tale of 1852

e horses had been unharnessed and the companies' wagons were standing in the square. The cooks had dug a pit, and with logs gathered from various

mmaterial. Having received their pay and been dismissed, tired out and covered with dust, the soldiers noisily and in disorder, like a swarm of bees about to settle, spread over the squares and streets; quite regardless of the Cossacks' ill will, chattering merrily and with their muskets clinking, by twos and threes they entered the huts and hung up their accoutrements, unpacked their bags, and bantered the women. At their favourite spot, round the porridge-cauldrons, a large group of soldiers assembled and with little pipes between their teeth they gazed, now at the smoke which rose into the hot sky, becoming visible when it thickened into white clouds as it rose, and now at the camp fires which were quivering in the pure air like molte

fore, was quartered in one of the best houses in the village, the ho

who, dressed in a Circassian coat and mounted on a Kabarda horse which he had bought in Gro

oking merrily at the perspiring, dishevelled, and worried Vany

rs were now red with healthy sunburn. In place of a clean new black suit he wore a dirty white Circassian coat with a deeply pleated skirt, and he bore arms. Instead of a freshly starched collar, his neck was tightly clasped by the red band of his s

y set themselves against one and there's an end of it. You can't get as much as a word out of th

ak to the Chief

he lives,' said Vanyus

u so?' asked Olen

yusha, putting his hands to his head. 'How we shall live here I don't know. They are worse than Tartars, I do declare-though they consider themselves Christians! A Tarta

s' quarters at home, eh?' chaf

nyusha, evidently perplexed by this new orde

Vanyusha?' repeated Olenin, dism

You think it funny,' mu

I'll go and speak to the people of the house; you'll see I shall arrange everyt

much surprised if anyone had told them that they were friends, as they really were without knowing it themselves. Vanyusha had been taken into his proprietor's house when he was only eleven and when Olenin was the same age. When Ole

artar smock. Having opened the door wider, Olenin in the semi-darkness of the passage saw the whole tall, shapely figure of the young Cossack girl. With the quick and eager curiosity of youth he involuntarily noticed the firm maidenly form revealed by the fine print smock, and the beautiful black

her! I've come about

ending, turned her severe but

ch you to mock; may the black plague seize you!' she shouted,

fully, and especially by the Cossacks, our comrades in the war; and he therefore felt perplexed by this reception. Without losing

't want your dirty money! A likely thing-just as if we had never seen any! You'll stink the house out with your beastly tobacco and want to put it right

still wearing only her pink smock, but with her forehead covered down to her eyes by a white kerchief, suddenly slipped out from the passage past him. Pattering rapidl

ly build of the young beauty, struck Olenin even more powerfully than before. 'Yes, it must be SHE,' he thought,

Vanyusha, who though still busy with the luggage wagon had now cheered up