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Three Deaths asked one of the other drivers, "don't you know the carriage is waiting for you?"

"I wanted to ask him for his boots as mine are busted," replied the fellow, throwing back his hair and thrusting his gauntlet gloves into his girdle; "hie, Uncle Khveder, are you asleep?" he repeated, marching up to the stove.

"What is it?" sounded a faint voice, and a thin, red-bearded face peeped over the stove. A broad, bleached, and wasted hand, covered with hair, with an effort drew an armyak over a skinny shoulder, hardly hidden by a muddy shirt. "Give me a drink, brother! What's the matter?"

The young fellow brought him a pitcher full of water. "Look now, Teddy," said he, after a pause, "you won't want these new boots of yours any more now, give 'em to me. You won't walk about any more now, will you?"

The sick man bent his weary head over the glazed pitcher and, moistening his sparse pendent moustaches in the dark water, drank feebly and greedily. His touzled beard was not clean, his sunken, turbid eyes raised themselves with difficulty to the young fellow's face. On withdrawing from the water he wanted to raise his arm in order to wipe dry his moist lips but could not, and dried them on the sleeve of his armyak instead. In silence, and breathing heavily through his nose, he looked straight into the eyes of the young fellow, rallying all his strength.

"You haven't promised them to anyone else, have you?" said the youth, "it doesn't much matter.