II.

In winter even the wolves, who are far better adapted for the struggle for life than our two friends, even the wolves have a bad time of it. Empty, ravenous, and fierce, they even run about the high-ways, and though we kill them we fear them. They have claws and teeth for self-defence, and--the main thing--their hearts are softened by nothing. This last point is very important, for, in order to triumph in the struggle for existence, one ought to have much wisdom, or the heart of a beast.

In the winter the chums also fared ill. Often in the evening they both went out into the streets of the town and begged for alms, trying at the same time to escape the notice of the police. Very rarely did they succeed in stealing anything; it was inexpedient to go into the country because it was cold, and they left their traces in the snow; besides, it was fruitless to visit the villages when everything in them was closed and covered with snow. The comrades lost much strength in the winter in their struggle with hunger, and possibly there was nobody who awaited the spring as eagerly as they did.

And behold!--at last spring arrived. The comrades, sick and extenuated, emerged from their gully and looked joyously at the fields where the snow thawed more and more rapidly every day; dark-brown patches began to appear everywhere, the meadows sparkled like mirrors, and the streams fell a babbling. The sun poured down his unselfish favours upon the earth, and the two friends warmed themselves in his rays, calculating at the same time how soon the earth would get dry, and then they might go and take pot-shots at luck among the villages. Frequently Hopeful, who suffered from sleeplessness, would awake his friend in the early morning with a piece of joyous intelligence:

"Hie! get up! the rooks are flying by!"

"Flying by, eh?"

"Yes, listen to their cawing!"

Emerging from their wretched shanty, they watched the black heralds of the spring carefully building new nests or repairing old ones, and filling the air with their hoarse and anxious cawing.

"Now it will be the turn of the larks," said Hopeful, setting about mending his old and much worn bird-net.

And now the larks also appeared. Then the chums went into the fields, spread their nets on one of the brown thawed patches, and running about in the moist and muddy fields, drove into the nets the hungry birds, who, wearied by their long flight, were seeking their food on the grey earth which had only just freed itself from the snow. On catching the birds they sold them at a _pyatachek_[1] or a _grivenik_[2] per head. Then the nettles appeared, which they gathered and carried to the bazaar for the market-garden huckster women. Nearly every day of the spring gave them something fresh to do, some fresh if but trifling bit of work. They could turn everything to some use: osiers, sorrel, mushrooms, strawberries, fungi--nothing passed through their hands in vain. Sometimes the soldiers would come out for firing-practice. After the practice was over the chums would ferret about the earthworks and fish up the bullets, which they would sell subsequently at twenty kopecks the pound. All these occupations certainly prevented the chums from dying of hunger, but very rarely gave them the opportunity of eating their fill, rarely gave them the pleasant feeling of a full stomach working warmly away upon hastily swallowed food.

[1] A silver five kopeck piece.

[2] A ten kopeck piece.

III

Once in April when the country-side had only just began to put forth its buds and shoots, when the woods were still wrapped in a dark blue gloom, and the grass had only just begun to appear on the fat fields basking in the sun--the chums were going along the high-road smoking _makharka_[1] cigars of their own manufacture, and conversing.

[1] Coarse tobacco smoked by the peasants.

"You are coughing worse than ever," said Jig-Leg to his comrade in a tone of mild reproach.

"A fig for that! Look ye, the dear little sun will soon warm me up--and I shall feel alive again."

"H'm! You may have to go into the hospital you know."

"What do I want with hospitals? If die I must, let me die!"

"Well, that's true enough."

They were passing a tract of land planted with birches, and the birches cast upon them the patterned shadows of their fine slender leaves. The sparrows were hopping along the road chirping merrily.

"You don't walk very well," remarked Jig-Leg after a moment's silence.

"That's because I have a choky feeling," exclaimed Hopeful. "The air is now thick and damp, it is a fat sort of air and I find it hard to swallow."

And stopping short, he fell a-coughing.

Jig-Leg stood beside him, smoked away, and never took his eyes off him. Hopeful, shaken by his attack of coughing, held his bosom with his hands and his face grew blue.

"It gives my lungs a good tearing any way!" said he, when he had ceased coughing.

And on they went again after scaring away the sparrows.

"Now we are coming to Mukhina," observed Jig-Leg, throwing away his cigarette, and spitting. "We must make a circuit round it at the back by the way of the outhouses, perhaps we may be able to pick up something. Then further on past the Sivtsova spinny to Kuznechikha.... From Kuznechikha we'll turn off towards Markvoka, and so home."

"That will be a walk of thirty versts," said Hopeful. "May it not be in vain!"

To the left of the road stood a wood uniformly dark and inhospitable, there was not a single patch of green amidst its naked branches to cheer the eye. On the outskirts of the wood a small, rough, shaggy little horse, with woefully fallen-in flanks was roaming, and its prominent ribs were as sharply denned as the hoops of a barrel. The chums stopped again and looked at it for a long time, watching how it slowly picked its way along, lowering its snout towards the ground, and cropping the herbage with its lips, carefully munching them with its worn-out yellow teeth.

"She's starved too!" observed Hopeful.

"Gee-gee!" cried Jig-Leg enticingly.

The horse looked at him, and shaking his head, negatively bent it earthwards again.

Hopeful explained the horse's wearisome movement: "He doesn't like you!" said he.

"Come! If we hand him over to the gipsies, they no doubt will give us seven roubles for her," observed Jig-Leg meditatively.

"No they won't! What could they do with her?"

"There's the hide!"

"The hide? Do you suppose they'll give as much as that for the hide? Look at it! What sort of a hide do you call that? Why it isn't equal to old shoe leather."

"Well, they'd give something any way."

"Yes, I suppose that's true enough."

Jig-Leg looked at his comrade, and after a pause, said:

"Well?"

"Awkward...." replied Hopeful doubtfully.

"How?"

"We should leave tracks. The ground is damp ... they could trace where we took it."

"We could put clouts on her feet."

"As you like."

"Come along! Let's drive her into the wood and pass the night in the gully. In the night we'll bring her out and drive her to the gipsies. It's not far--only three versts."

"Let's go then," said Hopeful, shaking his head. "A bird in the bush you know.... But suppose something comes of it?"

"Nothing will come of it," said Jig-Leg with conviction.

They quitted the road, and after glancing carefully around them, entered the wood. The horse looked at them, snorted, waved her tail, and again fell to munching the withered grass.