XI + 

Four soldiers were carrying the Ensign on a stretcher, and behind them an ambulance soldier led a thin broken-winded horse with two green boxes containing surgical appliances on its back. They waited for the doctor. Officers rode up to the stretcher, and tried to cheer up and comfort the wounded lad. + 

“Well, friend Alanin, it will be some time before you will dance again with castanets,” said Lieutenant Rosenkranz, riding up to the stretcher with a smile. + 

He probably imagined that these words would keep up the young Ensign’s spirits, but, as far as one could judge by the latter’s coldly sad look, the words had not the desired effect. + 

The Captain rode up too. He looked intently at the wounded man, and his usually calm and cold face expressed sincere sympathy. “Well my dear Anatol Ivanich,” said he, in a voice of tender sympathy such as I never expected from him, “evidently it is God’s will.” + 

The wounded lad looked round, and his pale face lit up with a sad smile, “Yes, I disobeyed you.” + 

“Say rather, it was the will of God,” repeated the Captain. + 

The doctor arrived, and, having taken from his assistant bandages, a probe, and another implement, rolled up his sleeves and stepped up to the Ensign with an encouraging smile. “So it seems they have made a hole in a sound spot, for you too,” he said in a carelessly playful tone. “Let me see.” + 

The Ensign obeyed, but the look which he gave the merry doctor expressed astonishment and reproof, which the latter did not notice. The doctor began probing the wound and examining it from all sides; but the wounded Ensign, driven beyond the limits of endurance, pushed away the doctor’s hand with a deep groan. + 

“Leave me alone,” he said in a scarcely audible voice. “I shall die anyway.” + 

With those words he fell back, and five minutes later, when I passed the group that had formed round him, and asked a soldier, “How is the Ensign?” the answer was, “Passing away.” + 