atchet-faced Nogaets[1] clad only in a shirt, and as the shirt was torn the whole of his breast was bare. The Tatar gave some orders to him. The workman brought a kolodka, that is to say, two oaken blocks fastened together by iron rings, and in one of the rings a cramping iron and a lock. Then they undid Zhilin's hands, attached the kolodka to his feet, led him into an outhouse, thrust him into it, and fastened the door. Zhilin fell upon a dung-heap. For a time he lay where he fell, then he fumbled his way in the dark to the softest place he could find, and lay down there.
II.
Zhilin scarcely slept at all during the night. It was the season of short nights. He could see it growing light through a rift in the wall. Zhilin arose, made the rift a little bigger, and looked out.
Through the rift the high road was visible going down the mountain-side, to the right was a Tatar saklyaft,[2] with two villages beside it. A black dog lay upon the threshold, a goat with her kids passed along whisking their tails. He saw a Tatar milkmaid coming down from the mountains in a flowered-belted blouse, trousers and boots, with her head covered by a kaftan, and on her head a large tin kuvshinchik.[3] of water. She walked with curved back and head bent forward, and led by the hand a little closely cropped Tatar boy in a little shirt.
