I had a presentiment that I should feel a constraint in a private conversation with him; but still I was anxious to learn from him several things, and, above all, why it was, when his father had been so rich, that he was in poverty, as was evident by his dress and appearance.

The adjutant greeted us all, including Guskof, and sat down by me in the seat which the cashiered officer had just vacated.  Pavel Dmitrievitch, who had always been calm and leisurely, a genuine gambler, and a man of means, was now very different from what he had been in the flowery days of his success; he seemed to be in haste to go somewhere, kept constantly glancing at everybody, and it was not five minutes before he proposed to Lieutenant O., who had sworn off from playing, to set up a small faro-bank.  Lieutenant O. refused, under the pretext of having to attend to his duties, but in reality because, as he knew that the adjutant had few possessions and little money left, he did not feel himself justified in risking his three hundred rubles against a hundred or even less which the adjutant might stake.

“Well, Pavel Dmitrievitch,” said the lieutenant, anxious to avoid a repetition of the invitation, “is it true, what they tell us, that we return to-morrow?”

“I don’t know,” replied the adjutant.  “Orders came to be in readiness; but if it’s true, then you’d better play a game.  I would wager my Kabarda cloak.”

“No, to-day already” . . .

“It’s a gray one, never been worn; but if you prefer, play for money.  How is that?”

“Yes, but . . .  I should be willing—­pray don’t think that” . . . said Lieutenant O., answering the implied suspicion; “but as there may be a raid or some movement, I must go to bed early.”

The adjutant stood up, and, thrusting his hands into his pockets, started to go across the grounds.  His face assumed its ordinary expression of coldness and pride, which I admired in him.

“Won’t you have a glass of mulled wine?” I asked him.

“That might be acceptable,” and he came back to me; but Guskof politely took the glass from me, and handed it to the adjutant, striving at the same time not to look at him.  But as he did not notice the tent-rope, he stumbled over it, and fell on his hand, dropping the glass.

“What a bungler!” exclaimed the adjutant, still holding out his hand for the glass.  Everybody burst out laughing, not excepting Guskof, who was rubbing his hand on his sore knee, which he had somehow struck as he fell.  “That’s the way the bear waited on the hermit,” continued the adjutant.  “It’s the way he waits on me every day.  He has pulled up all the tent-pins; he’s always tripping up.”

Guskof, not hearing him, apologized to us, and glanced toward me with a smile of almost noticeable melancholy, as though saying that I alone could understand him.  He was pitiable to see; but the adjutant, his protector, seemed, on that very account, to be severe on his messmate, and did not try to put him at his ease.