There are people whose intelligence can be gauged at once by their voice and laughter.  The man with the black beard belonged to that class of fortunate individuals; impenetrable stupidity could be felt in his voice and laugh.  The flaxen-headed Dymov had finished, and lifting from the ground with his whip something like a cord, flung it with a laugh into the cart.

“That’s not a viper; it’s a grass snake!” shouted someone.

The man with the wooden gait and the bandage round his face strode up quickly to the dead snake, glanced at it and flung up his stick-like arms.

“You jail-bird!” he cried in a hollow wailing voice.  “What have you killed a grass snake for?  What had he done to you, you damned brute?  Look, he has killed a grass snake; how would you like to be treated so?”

“Grass snakes ought not to be killed, that’s true,” Panteley muttered placidly, “they ought not. . .  They are not vipers; though it looks like a snake, it is a gentle, innocent creature. . . .  It’s friendly to man, the grass snake is.”

Dymov and the man with the black beard were probably ashamed, for they laughed loudly, and not answering, slouched lazily back to their waggons.  When the hindmost waggon was level with the spot where the dead snake lay, the man with his face tied up standing over it turned to Panteley and asked in a tearful voice: 

“Grandfather, what did he want to kill the grass snake for?”

His eyes, as Yegorushka saw now, were small and dingy looking; his face was grey, sickly and looked somehow dingy too while his chin was red and seemed very much swollen.

“Grandfather, what did he kill it for?” he repeated, striding along beside Panteley.

“A stupid fellow.  His hands itch to kill, and that is why he does it,” answered the old man; “but he oughtn’t to kill a grass snake, that’s true. . . .  Dymov is a ruffian, we all know, he kills everything he comes across, and Kiruha did not interfere.  He ought to have taken its part, but instead of that, he goes off into ‘Ha-ha-ha!’ and ‘Ho-ho-ho!’ . . .  But don’t be angry, Vassya. . . .  Why be angry?  They’ve killed it—­well, never mind them.  Dymov is a ruffian and Kiruha acted from foolishness—­never mind. . . .  They are foolish people without understanding—­but there, don’t mind them.  Emelyan here never touches what he shouldn’t; he never does; . . . that is true, . . . because he is a man of education, while they are stupid. . . .  Emelyan, he doesn’t touch things.”

The waggoner in the reddish-brown coat and the spongy swelling on his face, who was conducting an unseen choir, stopped.  Hearing his name, and waiting till Panteley and Vassya came up to him, he walked beside them.

“What are you talking about?” he asked in a husky muffled voice.

“Why, Vassya here is angry,” said Panteley.  “So I have been saying things to him to stop his being angry. . . .  Oh, how my swollen feet hurt!  Oh, oh!  They are more inflamed than ever for Sunday, God’s holy day!”