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"
"I am not a coward anyway!" replied Foma.
"I know that you are not a coward, but why do you boast of it?
One may do a thing as well without boasting."
Yozhov blamed him from a different point of view:
"If you thrust yourself into their hands willingly you can go to
the devil! I am not your friend. They'll catch you and bring you
to your father--he wouldn't do anything to you, while I would get
such a spanking that all my bones would be skinned."
"Coward!" Foma persisted, stubbornly.
And it came to pass one day that Foma was caught by the second
captain, Chumakov, a thin little old man. Noiselessly approaching
the boy, who was hiding away in his bosom the stolen apples, the old
man seized him by the shoulders and cried in a threatening voice:
"Now I have you, little rogue! Aha!"
Foma was then about fifteen years old, and he cleverly slipped out of
the old man's hands. Yet he did not run from him, but, knitting his
brow and clenching his fist, he said threateningly:
"You dare to touch me!"
"I wouldn't touch you.


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