"What different positions they come from, all those fellows who are going off there," Katavasov said vaguely, not wishing to express his own opinion, and at the same time anxious to find out the old man's views.

The old man was an officer who had served on two campaigns.

He knew what makes a soldier, and judging by the appearance and the talk of those persons, by the swagger with which they had recourse to the bottle on the journey, he considered them poor soldiers.

Moreover, he lived in a district town, and he was longing to tell how one soldier had volunteered from his town, a drunkard and a thief whom no one would employ as a laborer.

But knowing by experience that in the present condition of the public temper it was dangerous to express an opinion opposed to the general one, and especially to criticize the volunteers unfavorably, he too watched Katavasov without committing himself.