'Have done laughing!' said the corporal. 'And take the body away.
Why have you put the nasty thing by the hut?'

'What are you standing there for? Haul him along, lads!' shouted
Lukashka in a commanding voice to the Cossacks, who reluctantly
took hold of the body, obeying him as though he were their chief.
After dragging the body along for a few steps the Cossacks let
fall the legs, which dropped with a lifeless jerk, and stepping
apart they then stood silent for a few moments. Nazarka came up
and straightened the head, which was turned to one side so that
the round wound above the temple and the whole of the dead man's
face were visible. 'See what a mark he has made right in the
brain,' he said. 'He won't get lost. His owners will always know
him!' No one answered, and again the Angel of Silence flew over
the Cossacks.

The sun had risen high and its diverging beams were lighting up
the dewy grass. Near by, the Terek murmured in the awakened wood
and, greeting the morning, the pheasants called to one another.
The Cossacks stood still and silent around the dead man, gazing at
him. The brown body, with nothing on but the wet blue trousers
held by a girdle over the sunken stomach, was well shaped and
handsome. The muscular arms lay stretched straight out by his
sides; the blue, freshly shaven, round head with the clotted wound
on one side of it was thrown back. The smooth tanned forehead
contrasted sharply with the shaven part of the head. The open
glassy eyes with lowered pupils stared upwards, seeming to gaze
past everything. Under the red trimmed moustache the fine lips,
drawn at the corners, seemed stiffened into a smile of good-