You ought to have seen how we ever after honoured Cock-of-the-Boots. As he and his wife passed a great part of their time in the tavern, they were treated to many a cup by anybody who happened to be there and who felt that they must offer them a part of their just labour. But Cock-of-the-Boots would keep one of his hands in his pocket, and with the other he would twist his moustache around his ears, saying:

“Now let we tell you why I am drinking all the time. It ’s because you are all fools, and I can’t do anything with you.”

“That ’s correct,” was the invariable refrain of his wife.

And to tell the truth, if he had not been drinking so hard, he could have gotten away with many a fellow, for he was very clever. He was a great hand at his business! He could make any kind of boots, gentlemen’s and shopkeepers’ boots, extensible and simple peasant boots,--it was just a joy to look at them! The only trouble was, that accursed Cock-of-the-Boots rarely ever finished a job. He nearly always carried the leather that his customers gave him to the tavern to exchange it for drinks.

“How did you dare, Cock-of-the-Boots, to buy drinks with my leather?” they would ask him.

“Simply because I wanted to,” says he.

Nobody entered any complaints against him, because it did no good. He knew how to amuse all the chiefs with his conversations and to gain all kinds of favours from them. They tried to take the law into their own hands, but that only ended in an all around fight, for his wife and sons took his side, and also a stalwart sexton,--they called him Katerínych,--and they easily vanquished the whole village. However, we learned to find our way into Cock-of-the-Boots’s heart, only it took us quite a while to find it out. All one had to do, when Cock-of-the-Boots had spent the leather in drinks, was to take at once another piece to him, and beg him not to spend this second piece.

“Won’t you, Grigóri Kuzmích, make me a pair of boots out of this? We ’ll square up about the first piece later.”

“That ’s what I like!” Cock-of-the-Boots would say. “I like to be trusted!” he would shout, “just as I would like to trust others, only I have nothing to give.” And he immediately ordered his sons to make a special effort with these boots.

“As you command, dad!” his sons would say, and they at once set to work, so that you could see chips flying. They were a fine lot, and they obeyed their parents so that we all envied them.

“Just look!” the whole village said, “father and mother are drunkards, but the children are all right.” They not only were skilled in their trade and could read and write, but every one of them had picked up some specialty: one could play the accordion, another the guitar, or horn. They used to go out, of a summer evening, into the street, after their work was done, and, seating themselves in front of their hut, they began to play some sweet song. There was not one of the whole family that did not have a good voice. Their mother was such an insignificant woman to look at; but when she began to trill “Lovely forget-me-not” with her soft voice, everybody would stop to listen. Cock-of-the-Boots himself was regarded as a first-class singer in these entertainments. At first he would start with a fine tenor, and then he would carry the whole song in a heavy bass. Where in the world did he get that bass from?

The whole village and people from the outlying hamlets used to come to hear them.

Cock-of-the-Boots lived in this manner for three or four years. We all got used to his intoxication, and shouting at night time, and his blaspheming. We quit getting angry at him, because, in the first place, he was a hopeless case, and, in the second, he did a great deal of good in the village and the neighbouring hamlets. For example, if a rich merchant began to flay the people in too open a manner, or the chief or scribe put down the screws a little too tight, Cock-of-the-Boots and his friend, the sexton, would go to their windows and would read them a sermon, which made them wish they were dead.

“Just go away from these windows, good fellows, and stop this disgraceful business,” such a man would say to them. “I ’ll treat you to all the brandy you wish,” he would add.

They particularly annoyed the village dean. His daughters did not dare to go out into the streets, or even stand outside the door, because the dean had offended the sexton.

“Just wait, Katerínych!” the dean threatened the sexton, “I ’ll see to it that you get your hair shaved off.”

“I am ready any minute,” said the sexton, “for I would rather live with the devil in hell than be under your rule.”

The dean would spit out in anger, as he listened to these talks of the sexton, and would walk away. But Cock-of-the-Boots and his friend rolled with laughter, and they proclaimed all his secrets to the whole Christian world:

“We ’ll teach you a thing or two! You just make a move against us!”

When they got tired standing under the window, they lay down opposite the house, and proceeded with their scolding, and they would not go away any sooner than they would be treated to brandy or money. When this was sent out to them they only laughed:

“Look at these infidel devils! They think that they can wash down their wrongs with this brandy. Don’t worry, you will not wash them down!” Having had their fun, they walked away, and the sexton invariably started a chant upon these occasions.

They were particularly successful in saving young men from conscription, if these were unjustly worried by the commune, on account of their poverty or orphaned state. All such an unfortunate man had to do was to buy a keg of brandy, paper, and ink, and the sexton was ready to compose a letter. He presented his case to the higher authorities in so convincing a manner that many a recruit was returned from service and the commune received severe reprimands. And if the higher authorities stood in with the commune against these luckless fellows, our scribes would add a postscript to their petition to the effect that: “If your honour will not free Iván Lúchin who has been shaven a recruit against the law, we will at once go to Peter to complain to our father the Tsar.” And they both signed that letter.

“This petition,” they wrote, “has been signed in person by the village sexton Kuzmá Lukích Zabubénny and the crown peasant and shoemaker Grigóri Kuzmích, nicknamed Cock-of-the-Boots.”

Many a fellow was freed after such a letter. But they refused to intervene in the case of a man whose evident fate it was to be a soldier, and in no case did they receive any other remuneration than brandy.

It was on account of his good soul, which we all saw, that we did not interfere with his drinking. All of a sudden we heard the news of a general conscription.

Our town officers scared us with such phrases: “There will be an unusually large conscription. Three countries have risen against us. We ’ll have a job on hand.”

“Well,” we said, “if there is to be a big conscription, let there be. Evidently it has to be.” In the meantime we began to fit out any of the young fellows that might be called, that they might be ready at any time and hour, for it was not for a day or two that our youngsters were to leave us----

These rumours began to spread just before the battle of Sebastopol.

At last the time came to draw lots, and then to be examined as recruits. Cock-of-the-Boots did not have to worry about his sons for something like three years, because a nephew of his had become a soldier and, consequently, his family was for the time being exempt.

“This Cock-of-the-Boots is a lucky chap,” we said. “He has raised six fine eagles, and there they are to stay at home.”

One morning, we saw to our surprise that Cock-of-the-Boots was starting out on the road with all his sons. He was walking at their head and smoking his pipe, and he looked gloomy and his moustache hung down, but he was not drunk. The mother was accompanying them and weeping torrents of tears.

“Where are you starting out, Grigóri Kuzmích? Have you taken a liking to another place, and do you want to leave us?”

“Good-bye, friends!” he said. “I am going to enter my sons, every one of them, into the army, because a large host is up against us, and there are as many of them as stars in heaven.”

Sexton Kuzmá was walking with them.

“Orthodox people,” he said, “don’t recall me with an evil thought! I sha’n’t think of you at all, because I am sick of your foolishness. I ’ll try to find a place somewhere.”

“They are jesting!” we thought. “They are, no doubt, going out on the chase or catching fish.”

But it was not a jest at all. He really inscribed all his sons and the sexton in the army! And the provincial authorities were so much pleased with his act, that he and his boys received a great deal of money, and he was promised that all his sons and the sexton were to serve in one and the same company.

They had wanted to put all his sons in the bodyguard, but Cock-of-the-Boots begged them to let them go straightway to the war.

“I have brought them to go against the enemy,” he said.

The authorities gave him a written document in which they expressed their thanks to him. When he returned home, he hung that letter up in the hut of the Blue Rig, and started on a protracted spree.

His wife could not believe for a long time that he would give up all his sons at once. She kept on hoping that to-day, or to-morrow, one of them at least would return, say, the youngest. But when she saw that there was no return from the army, she joined her husband in the spree.

She was all bent up and crushed, and she sailed along, vainly moving her hands, and mumbling something; her red shawl fell down from one shoulder and dragged along the ground.

She did not long continue to walk that way. She soon died. While on her deathbed, she gave her husband a terrible tongue-lashing for having separated her from her dear children.

Some people came to look at the dead person, and they found Cock-of-the-Boots talking to her as if she were alive, for he was dreadfully drunk just then.

“Foolish woman!” he muttered. “You do not know your own good luck. You will be better off there! I myself have long wished to die, but death does not come to me.”

He muttered that in an undertone, and not aloud as he used to. It was a pity to see him left so alone. The hut looked dreadfully desolate, and destitute of everything. The stove had all fallen in. The Blue Rig, tattered and torn, and all wrinkled up, lay on the stove, and looked at everybody like an insensate beast, and angrily gnashed her teeth at them----