into the world like you, with my belly on my back, the Russians couldn't
have done anything to me."

The humpback seated himself quietly beside John without showing the
least sign of being insulted.

"The war hasn't made you any politer, I can see that," he remarked
drily. "You're not exactly in a happy frame of mind, which does not
surprise me. Yes, that's the way it is. The poor people must give up
their sound flesh and bone so that the enemy should not deprive the rich
of their superfluity. You may bless your stars you came out of it as
well as you did."

"I do," Bogdan growled with a glance of hatred. "The shells don't ask if
you are rich or poor. Counts and barons are lying out there, rotting in
the sun like dead beasts. Any man that God has not smitten in his cradle
so that he's not fit to be either a man or a woman is out in the
battlefield now, whether he's as poor as a church mouse or used to
eating from golden plates."

The humpback cleared his throat and shrugged his shoulders.

"There are all sorts of people," he observed, and was about to add
something else, but bethought himself and remained silent.

This Bogdan always had had the soul of a flunkey, proud of being allowed
to serve the high and mighty and feeling solid with his oppressors
because he was allowed to contribute to their pomp in gold-laced livery
and silver buttons. His masters had sicked him on to face the cannons in
defense of their own wealth, and now the man sat there disfigured, with