X.
While we, of the artillery, were still busy about the ordnance, and placing the limbers and caissons, and picketing the horses, the infantry had stacked their arms, built camp-fires, constructed booths of boughs and corn-stalks, and were boiling their buckwheat grits.
It was growing dark. Pale blue clouds scudded over the sky. The fog, changed into a drizzly, damp mist, wet the earth and the overcoats of the soldiers; the horizon grew narrower, and the surroundings were overcast with gloomy shadows. The dampness, which I felt through my boots and behind my neck, the motion and conversation, in which I took no part, the viscous mud, in which my feet slipped, and my empty stomach, put me in a very heavy and disagreeable mood, after a day of physical and moral fatigue. Velenchúk did not leave my mind. The whole simple story of his military life uninterruptedly obtruded on my imagination.
His last minutes were as clear and tranquil as all his life. He had lived too honestly and too simply for his whole-souled faith in a future, heavenly life to be shaken at such a decisive moment.
"Your Honour," said Nikoláev, approaching me, "you are invited to take tea with the captain."
Making my way between the stacked arms and the fires, I followed Nikoláev to Bolkhóv's, dreaming with pleasure of a glass of hot tea and a cheerful conversation, which would drive away my gloomy thoughts. "Well,
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