"One is sleepy, and here this Von Rabbek with his tea! We know what tea means." "What the devil does it mean?" grumbled some of the officers, dispersing to their quarters. The horse turned, danced, and retired sideways the messenger raised his hat once more, and in an instant disappeared with his strange horse behind the church. "His Excellency Lieutenant-General von Rabbek invites the gentlemen to drink tea with him this minute."
When he reached the officers the man on the horse took off his hat and said: The little dun-coloured horse with a good neck and a short tail came, moving not straight forward, but as it were sideways, with a sort of dance step, as though it were being lashed about the legs. When the general commotion was at its height, while some officers were busily occupied around the guns, while others, gathered together in the square near the church enclosure, were listening to the quartermasters, a man in civilian dress, riding a strange horse, came into sight round the church. At eight o'clock on the evening of the twentieth of May all the six batteries of the N- Reserve Artillery Brigade halted for the night in the village of Myestetchki on their way to camp.