The soldier who was to drive us smiled as he saw
me.
"Only thirty versts, your honour ... or, thank God, even less. It will
take us no time." He was a large clumsy creature, like an eager
overgrown puppy; he was one of the four or five Nikolais in our
Otriad, and he is to be noticed in this history because he attached
himself from the very beginning to Trenchard with that faithful and
utterly unquestioning devotion of which the Russian soldier is so
frequently capable. He must, I think, have seen something helpless and
unhappy in Trenchard's appearance on this evening. Sancho to our Don
Quixote he was from that first moment.
"Yes, he's an English gentleman," I said when he had listened for a
moment to Trenchard's Russian.
"Like yourself," said Nikolai.
"Yes, Nikolai. You must look after him. He'll be strange here at
first."
"_Slushaiu_ (I hear)."
That was all he said. He got up on to his seat, his broad back was
bent over his horses.
"Well, and how have things been, Nikolai, busy?"
"_Nikak nyet_--not at all.
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