Thoughts did come that time! I thought some of your soldiers, the devils, must have got into a Tartar village and seized the Chechen women, and one of the devils has killed the little one: taken it by its legs, and hit its head against a wall.

Don't they do such things?
Ah! Men have no souls! And thoughts came to me that filled me with pity.

I thought: they've thrown away the cradle and driven the wife out, and her brave has taken his gun and come across to our side to rob us.

One watches and thinks.

And when one hears a litter breaking through the thicket, something begins to knock inside one.