Page:Tales from Gorky (1902).djvu/28

 his own hands" at Kherson; over the shirt he wore a warm wadding vest; on his head was a military forage cap of indeterminate colour, worn, according to the service regulations, "with the flap of the upper segment over the left brow"; on his legs were broad baggy chumak trousers. He was barefooted. I also had clothes on and was barefooted.

On we went, and around us in every direction, in heroic proportions, stretched the steppe, covered by the blue sultry cupola of the cloudless summer sky, and lying before us like a huge round black platter. The grey dusty road intersected it like a broad ribbon and burnt our feet. Here and there we fell in with bristly patches of trampled-down corn, having a strange resemblance to the long unshaven cheeks of the soldier. The soldier marched along, singing in a hoarse bass:

While under arms he had held some sort of office resembling that of clerk in the battalion church, and knew a countless number of liturgical snatches and fragments, the knowledge of which he constantly abused every time our conversation happened to flag.

In front of us on the horizon certain forms with soft outlines and pleasant shades of colour, from faint lilac to fresh pink, began to stand forth prominently.