Then Zhilin wrote the letter, and he wrote no
address on the letter, so that it should not go. But
he thought to himself:
"I'll run away."
Then they led away Zhilin and Kostuilin to the outhouse, brought them maize-straw to spread on the ground, water in a kuvshin, bread, two old Circassian costumes, and two pairs of tattered military boots. They had plainly been taken from off the feet of slain soldiers. At night they took off their kolodki and fastened the door.
III.
Zhilin and his comrade lived there for a whole
month. And Zhilin's master was as radiant as ever.
"Ivan," he would say laughing, "thy good is my
good — Abdul's good" They were badly fed all the
same, getting nothing but unleavened bread, made
from indifferent meal, and tough and doughy hearth-cakes.
Kostuilin wrote home once more, and waited for the money to be sent, in utter weariness. The whole day they sat in the outhouse and counted the days it would take the letter to arrive, or else they slept Zhilin, however, knew very well that his letter would not arrive, and he did not write another.
"Where I should like to know," thought he, " would my mother be able to scrape together so much money to pay me out? It was as much as she could do to live on what I sent her. If she had to collect five
