When we were back in the hut the engineer began begging me to take his bed.

“Oh please!” he said imploringly, pressing both hands on his heart.  “I entreat you, and don’t worry about me!  I can sleep anywhere, and, besides, I am not going to bed just yet.  Please do—­it’s a favour!”

I agreed, undressed, and went to bed, while he sat down to the table and set to work on the plans.

“We fellows have no time for sleep,” he said in a low voice when I had got into bed and shut my eyes.  “When a man has a wife and two children he can’t think of sleep.  One must think now of food and clothes and saving for the future.  And I have two of them, a little son and a daughter. . . .  The boy, little rascal, has a jolly little face.  He’s not six yet, and already he shows remarkable abilities, I assure you. . . .  I have their photographs here, somewhere. . . .  Ah, my children, my children!”

He rummaged among his papers, found their photographs, and began looking at them.  I fell asleep.

I was awakened by the barking of Azorka and loud voices.  Von Schtenberg with bare feet and ruffled hair was standing in the doorway dressed in his underclothes, talking loudly with some one . . . .  It was getting light.  A gloomy dark blue dawn was peeping in at the door, at the windows, and through the crevices in the hut walls, and casting a faint light on my bed, on the table with the papers, and on Ananyev.  Stretched on the floor on a cloak, with a leather pillow under his head, the engineer lay asleep with his fleshy, hairy chest uppermost; he was snoring so loudly that I pitied the student from the bottom of my heart for having to sleep in the same room with him every night.

“Why on earth are we to take them?” shouted Von Schtenberg.  “It has nothing to do with us!  Go to Tchalisov!  From whom do the cauldrons come?”

“From Nikitin . . .” a bass voice answered gruffly.

“Well, then, take them to Tchalisov. . . .  That’s not in our department.  What the devil are you standing there for?  Drive on!”

“Your honour, we have been to Tchalisov already,” said the bass voice still more gruffly.  “Yesterday we were the whole day looking for him down the line, and were told at his hut that he had gone to the Dymkovsky section.  Please take them, your honour!  How much longer are we to go carting them about?  We go carting them on and on along the line, and see no end to it.”

“What is it?” Ananyev asked huskily, waking up and lifting his head quickly.

“They have brought some cauldrons from Nikitin’s,” said the student, “and he is begging us to take them.  And what business is it of ours to take them?”

“Do be so kind, your honour, and set things right!  The horses have been two days without food and the master, for sure, will be angry.  Are we to take them back, or what?  The railway ordered the cauldrons, so it ought to take them. . . .”