The Short Stories of Anton Chekhov

"You're a donkey, Pashka! Kow aren't. you a donkey? You ought to be whipped . . . .''

VIEROCHKA

Ivan Alexeyevich Ogniov well remembers the A^ust evening when he opened noisily the glazed hall door ar.d went out on to the terrace. He wore a light cloak and a wide- brimmed straw hat—the very hat which now, beside his top- boots, lies in the dust underneath his bed. He remembers that he carried a heavy package of books and manuscripts, and that in his free hand was a stout stick.

In the doorway, holding up a lamp, stood his host, Kuz- :netzov, aged and bald-headed, with his long grey beard, and his cotton jacket, white as snow. And Kuznetzov smiled benevolently and nodded his head.

"Good-bye, oJd friend!" cried Ogniov.

Kuznetzov laid the lamp on the hall table, and followed Ogniov to the terrace. The narrow shadows of the two men swe.pt down the steps, and, crossing the flower-beds, swayed, and came to a stop with the heads silhouetted against the lime-trees.

"Good-bye, and yet once more, thank you, old friend," said Ogniov. "Thanks for your heartiness, your kindnes, your love. . . . Never . . . never in my whole life shall I forget your goodness. . . . You have been so kind . . . and your daughter as been so kind . . . all of you have been so kind, so gay, so hearty. . . . So good, indeed, that I cannot express my gratitude."

Under stress of feeling, under influence of the parting glass, Ogniov's voice sounded like a seminarist's, and his feeling showed not only in his words but in the nervous twitching of eyes and shoulders. And Kuznetzov, touched

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also by emotion and wine, bent over the young man and kissed him.

"I have grown as used to you as if I were your dog," continued Ogniov. "I have been with you day after day. I have spent the night at your house a dozen times, and drunk so much of your liqueurs that it frightens me to think of it. . . . But, most of all, Gavriil Petrovich, I thank you for your co-operation and help. Without you, I should have been worrying over my statistics till October. But I will put in my preface: 'It is my duty to express to l\1. Kuznetzov, President of the N. District Zemstvo Executive, my gratitude for his kind assistance.' Statistics have a brilliant future! Give my deepest regards to Vera Gavriilovna! And tell the doctors, the two magistrates, and your secretary that I shall never forget their kindness. . . . And now, old friend, let us embrace and kiss for the last time!"

Ogniov again kissed the old man. When he reached the last step, he turned his head and said—

"I wonder shall we ever meet again."

"God knows," answered Kuznetzov. "Probably never."

"I fear so. Nothing will lure you to Petersburg, and it is not likely that I shall ever return to these parts. Good-bye!"

"But leave your books," called Kuznetzov after him. "Why carry such a weight? My man will bring them to-morrow."

But Ogniov, who had not heard him, walked quickly away. Warmed with wine, his heart was full at the same time of sorrow and joy. He walked forward reflecting how often in life we meet such kindly men and women, how sad it is that they leave but memories behind. It is as on a journey. The traveller sees on the flat horizon the outline of a crane; the weak wind bears its plaintive cry; yet in a moment it is gone; and strain his eyes as he may towards the blue distance, he sees no bird, and hears no sound. So in the affairs of men, faces and voices tremble a moment before us, and slip away into the gone-before, leaving behind them nothing but the vain records of memory. Having been every day at hearty Kuznetzov's house since be arrived that spring at NOgniov had come to know and love as kinsmen the old man, his daughter, their servants. He knew every spot in the old house, the cosy terrace. the turns in the garden paths, the trees outlined against garden and bathing-box. And now in a few seconds when he had passed the wicket-gate, all these would be memories, void for evermore of real significance. A year—two years—would pass, and all these kindly images, dulled beyond restoring, would recur only in memory as the shapeless impressions of a dream.

"In life," thought Ogniov, as he approached the gate, "there is nothing better than men. Nothing!"

It was warm and still. The whole world smelt of heliotropes, mignonette, and tobacco-plants which had not yet shed their blooms. Around shrubs and tree-trunks flowed a sea of thin, moonlight-soaked mist; and—what long remained in Ogniov's memory—wisps of vapour, white as ghosts, floated with motion imperceptibly slow across the garden path. Near the moon, shining high in heaven, swam transparent patches of cloud. The whole world, it seemed, was built of coal-black shadows and wandering wisps of white; and, to Ogniov, it seemed as if he were looking not at Nature, but at a decorated scene, as if clumsy pyrotechnists, illuminating the garden with white Bengal fire, had flooded the air with a sea of snowy >moke.

As Ogniov approached the wicket-gate a black shadow moved from the low palisade and came to meet him.

"Vera Gavriilovna," he exclaimed joyfully. "You here! After I had looked for you everywhere to say good-bye! . . . Good-bye, I am going."

"So early—it is barely eleven o'clock."

"But late for me. I have a five-verst walk, and I must pack up to-night. I leave ea.rly to-morrow. . . ."

Before Ogniov stood KJJznetzov's daughter, twenty-one- year-old Vera, whom he had seen so often, pensive and care- lessly-dressed and interesting. Day-dreaming girls who spend whole days lying down in desultory reading, who suffer from tedium and melancholy, usually dress without care. But if Nature has given them taste and the instinct of beauty, this negligence in dress has often a charm of its own. And, indeed, Ogniov, recalling the vision of prettv Vera, cannot imagine her without a loose jacket, hanging in folds away from her waist, without untidy curls on her forehead, without the red, shaggy-tasselled shawl which all day long lay in the hall among the men's caps, or on the chest in the dining-room, where the old cat used it unceremoniously as bed. The shawl and the creased jacket seemed to express the easy-going in - dolence of a sedentary life. But perhaps it was because Ogniov liked Vera, that every button and fold exhaled to him goodness and poetry, something foreign to women in- sincere, void of the instinct of beauty, and cold. • . . And Vera, too, had a good figure, regular features, and pretty wavy hair. To Ogniov, who knew few women, she seemed beautiful.

"I am going away," he said again, bidding her good-bye at the wicket-gate. "Think well of me! And thanks for every- thing!"

And agairi twitching his shoulders, and speaking in the sing-song seminarist's voice which he had used to the old man, he thanked Vera for her hospitality, her kindness, her heartiness.

"I wrote about you to my mother in every letter," he said. "If all men were like you and your father, life on earth would be paradise. Every one in your house is the same. So simple, so hearty, so sincere. . . ."

"Where are you going?"

"First to my mother, in Oriol. I shall spend two days •,here. Then to Si. Petersburg to work."

"And then?"

"Then? I ;;hall work all winter, and in spring go some- where in the country to collect material. Well . . . be happy.

live a hundred years, and think well of me! This is the Jast time we meet."

Ogniov bowed his head and kissed Vier^ika's hand, then silent confusion straightened his cloak, rearranged his package of and said—

"W'hat a thick mist to-night!"

'Yes. Have you not forgotten anything?"

''Xothing ... I think."

For a moment Ogniov stood silently. Then he tu^d awkwardly to the gate and went out of the garden.

"Wait! Let me go with you as far as the wood," said \'era, running after him.

They followed the road. Trees no longer obscured the ,;ew, and they could see the sky, and the country far ahead. Through breaks in the veil of semi-transparent smoke, the world e^Msed its fairness; the white mist lay unevenly around jcshes and hayricks, or wandered in tiny cloudlets, clinging to the surface as if not to cut off the view. The road could seen all the way to the and in the ditches beside

it rose little bushes which trapped and hindered the vaga- bond mist wisps. Half a verst away rose a dark belt of forest.

"\\\'hy has she come? I shall have to se her home,'' Ogniov asked himself. But looking at Vera's profile, be smiled kindly, and said—

"I hate going away in weather like this. This evening is quite romantic, what with the moonlight, the silence . . . and all the honours! Do you know what, \'era Gavriilovna? I am now twenty-nine years old, yet have never iad a single romance! In all my life so far, not one! So of trysts, paths of sighs, and kisses, I know only by hearsay. It is abnormal. Sitting in my own room ii town, I never notice the void. But here in the open air l somehow feel it • . . strongly

• . it is almost annoying."

"But wh:?.t is the cause?"

-'X ^^'t say. Perhaps it is so far I have never had time, perhaps simply because I have never yet met a woman who . . . Bat I have few friends, and seldom anywhere."

They walked three hundred yards in silence. As Ogniov looked at Vera's shawl and uncovered head, he recalled the past spring and summer days, when far from his grey St. Petersburg rooms, caressed by kindly Kature and by kindly friends, pursuing his much-loved work, he had seen slip by. uncounted, sunset after dawn, day after day, nor noticed how, foreshadowing summer's end, the nightingale first, the quail, and then the corncrake ceased their songs. Time had passed unseen; and that, he supposed, meant that life had spun out pleasantly and without jar. He recalled how at the end of April he had arrived at N., a poor man, unused to society; and expected nothing but tedium, solitude, and contempt for statistics—which in his opinion took a high place among the useful sciences. He remembered the April evening of his arrival at the inn of Old-Believer Riabukhin, where for twenty kopecks a day he wli.s given a bright, clean room, with only one restriction, that he should smoke out of doors. He remembered how he had rested a few hours, and, asking for the address of the President of the Zemstvo Executive, had set out on foot to Gavriil Petrovich's house; how he had tramped through four versts of rich meadows and young plantations; how high under a veil of cloud trembled a lark, filling the world with silver sounds, while above the green pastures, with a stolid, pompous flapping of wings, the rooks flew up and down.

"Is it possible.?'" Ogniov asked himself, "that they breathe this air every day, or is it perfumed only this evening in honour of me?"

He remembered how, expecting a dry, business-like recep- tion, he had entered Kuznetzov's study timidly, with averted face, and shyly stroked his beard. And how the old man ^untracted his brows, and failed utterly to understand what thi. voting man with his statistics wanted with the Zemstvj

Executive. But as he began to understand what statistics really mean, and how they are collected, Gavriil Petrovich woke up, smiled, and with infantile curiosity began to exam- ine his visitor's note-books. . . . And on the evening of the same day, Ogniov sat at Kuznetzov's supper-table, grew tipsy on strong liqueurs, and, watching the placid faces and lazy gestures of his new acquaintances, felt spreading througb his whole body that sweet, drowsy indolence of one who, wanting to continue his sleep, stretches himself and smiles. And his new-found friends looked at him lovingly, asked were his father and mother alive, how much he earned a month, and whether he often went to the theatre.

Ogniov recalled the long drives through the cantons, the picnics, the fishing parties, the trip to the convent when the Mother Superior presented each visitor with a bead-purse; he recalled the endless, heated, truly Russian arguments in which the disputants, banging their fists on the table, mis- understood and interrupted without knowing what they meant to say, wandered from the subject, and after arguing fiercely a couple of hours, exclaimed with a laugh, "The devil knows what this dispute is about. We began about health, and are now arguing about rest in the grave!"

"Do you remember when you and I rode to Shestovo with the doctor?" asked Ogniov as they drew near to the wood. "We met a lunatic. I gave him five kopecks, and he crossed himself thrice, and threw the money in my face. What hosts of impressions I carry away—if fused in a compact mass, I should have a big ingot of gold! I never understood why clever, sensitive men crowd into big cities instead of living in the country. Is there more space and truth on the Nevsky, and in the big damp houses? l\Iy house, for instance, which is packed from top to bottom with artists, students, and journa!- ists, always seems to me to embody an absurd prejudice."

Some twenty paces from the wood the road crossed a narrow bridge with post!> 11.t the corners. During their spring walks, this bridge was a stupoing place for the Kuznetzo^ and their visitors. Thence they could draw echoes from the .vood, and watch the road as it vanished in a black drive.

"\Ve are at the bridge," sa!d Ogniov. "You must return."

Vera stopped, and drew a deep breath.

"Let us sit down for a minute," she said, seating hersell on a pillar. "When we say good-bye to friends we always sit down here."

Ogniov sat beside her on his parcel of books, and con tinued to speak. Vera breathed heavily, and looked straighf into the distance, so that he could not see her face.

"Perhaps some day, in ten years' time, we'll meet some- where again," he said. "Things will be different. You wiP be the honoured mother of a family, and I the author of 3 respectable, useless book of statistics, fat as forty albums put together. . . . To-night, the present counts, it absorb? and agitates us. But ten years hence we shall remembcr iieither the date nor the month, nor even the year, when we sat on this bridge together for the last time. You, of course, will be changed. You will change."

"\Vhat?"

"I ask you just now. . . •''

"I did not hear."

Only now did Ogniov notice the change that had come over Vera. She was pale and breathless; her hands and lips trembled; and instead of the usual single lock of hair falling on her forehead, there were two. She did her best to mask her agitation and avoid looking him in the face; and to help in this, she first straightened her collar as if it were cutting her neck, and then drew the red shawl from one side to thP. other.

''You are cold, I am afraid," began Ogniov. "You must not sit in the mist. Let me see you home."

Vera did not answer.

'What is the matter?" resumed Ogniov. "You do not an- =>wt"r my questions. You are ill?"

Vera pre^ed her hanri fU"miy to her cheek, and suddenly drew it away.

"It is too awful," she whispered, with a look of inteme agony. "Too awful!"

"What is too awful?" asked Ogniov, .ohrugging: his shoul- ders, and making no effort to conceai his surpr.se. "\\'hal is the matter?"

Still breathing heavily and twitching her sbuulders, Vera turned away from him, and after looking a moment at the sky, began—

"1 have to speak to you, Ivan Alekseyevich. . .

"I am listening."

"I know it will seem strange to you . . . you will be -a.stonished, but I de not care. . . ."

Ogniov again shrugged his shoulders and prepared to listen.

"It is this . • . ," began Vera, averting her eyes, and twirling the shawl-tassel in her fingers. "You see, this is . . . that is what I wanted to say. . . . It will seem absurd to you . . . and stupid . . . but I cannot bear it!"

Vera's words, half smothered in incoherent stammerings, were suddenly interrupted by tears. She hid her face in the shawl, and wept bitterly. Ogniov, confused and stupefied, coughed, and, having no idea what to say or do, looked help- lessly around. He was unused to tears, and Vera's break- down seemed to make his own eyes water.

"Come, come!" he stammered helplessly. "Vera Gavriil- ovna? What does this mean? Are you ill? Some one has annoyed you? Tell me what it is ... and perhaps I can help you."

And when, in a last attempt to console her, he drew her hands cautiously from her face, she smiled at him through her tears, and said—

"1 . . . I love you! "

The words, simple and ordinary, were spoken in a simple and ordinary voice. But Ogniov, covered with intense con- fusion, turned his face away.

His confusion was followed by fright. The atmosphere of mournfulness, warmth, and sentiment inspired by liqueurs and leave-takings, suddenly made way for a sharp, un- pleasant feeling of awkwardness. Feeling that his whole soul had been turned inside out, he looked shyly at Vera; and she, having avowed her love, and cast for ever away her woman's enhancing inaccessibility, seemed smaller, simpler, meaner.

"What does it all mean?" he asked himself in terror. "And then . . . do I love her . . . or not?—that is the problem."

But she, now that the hardest, painfulest part was ended, breathed easily and freely. She rose from her seat, and, looking straight into Ogniov's eyes, spoke quickly, warmly, without constraint.

Those who have been overtaken by sudden terror seldom remember details, and Ogniov to-day recalls not one of Vera's words. He remembers only their import and the emotions they brought forth. He remembers her voice, which seemed to come from a strangled throat, a voice hoarse with emotion, and the magic passion and harmony in its intonations. Cry- ing, smiling, scattering tear-drops from her eyes, she con- fessed that since the first days of their friendship she had been won by his originality, his intellect, his kind, clever eyes, and by the aims and aspirations of his life. That she loved him devoutly, passionately, madly; that in summer when she went from the garden into the house, and saw his coat in the hall, or heard his voice, her heart thrilled with a presage of intense joy; that his most trivial jokes had made her laugh; that every figure in his note-books exhaled to her wisdom and majesty; that even his cane standing in the hall had seemed to her lovelier than the trees

The wood, the patches of mist, even the black roadside ditches were charmed, it seemed, as they listened. But Ogniov's heart felt only estrangement and pain. Avowing her love, Vera was entrancingly fair; her words were noble and impassioned. But Ogniov felt not the pleasure or vital joy which he himself yearned for, but only sympathy with Vera, and pain thai: a fellow-creature should suffer so for his sake. Heaven only knows why it was so! But whether the cause was book-learned reason, or merely that impreg- nable objectivity which forbids some men to live as men, the ecstasy and passion of Vera seemed to him affected and unreal. Yet even while he felt this, something whispered that, in the light of Nature and personal happiness, that "'■hich he listened to then was a thousand times more vital than all his books, his statistics, his eternal verities. And he was angry, and reproached himself, though he had no idea wherein he was at fault.

What increased his confusion was that he knew he must reply. An answer was inevitable. To say to Vera plainly "I do not love you!" he had not the strength. But he could not say "I do," for with all his searchings he could not find in his heart a single spark.

And he listened silently while she said that she could know nu greater happiness than to see him, to follow him, to go with him wheresoever he might go, to be his wife and helper . . . and that if he abandoned her she would die of grief.

"I cannot stay here," she exclaimed, wringing her hands. "I have come to detest this house, and this wood, and this air. I am tired of this changeless restfulness and aimless life; I can stand no longer our colourless, pale people, as like one another as two drops of water! They are genial and kind . . . because they are contented, because they have never suffered and never struggled. But I can stand it no more. . . . I want to go to the big grey houses, where people suffer, embittered by labour and need. . . ."

And all this seemed to Ogniov affected and unreal. \When Vera ceased to speak he was still without an answer. But silence was impossible, and he stammered out—

"I . . . Vera Gavriilovna ... I am very grateful to you, although I feel that I deserve no such . . . such feelings. In the second place, as an honest man, I must say that . . . happiness is based on mutuality . . . that is, when both parties . . . when they love equally."

Ogniov suddenly felt ashamed of his stammering speech, and was silent. He felt that his expression was guilty, stupid, and dull, and that his face was strained and drawn out. And Vera, it seemed, could read the truth in his looks, for she paled, looked at him with terror, and averted her eyes.

"You will forgive me," stammered Ogniov, feeling the silence past bearing. "I respect you so very, very much that . . . that I am sorry . . ."

Vera suddenly turned away, and walked rapidly toward9 the house. Ogniov followed her.

"No, there is no need!" she said, waving her hand. "Do not come! I will go alone. . . ."

"But stil! ... I must see you home."

All that Ogniov had said, even his last words, seemed to him flat and hateful. The feeling increased with each step. He raged at himself and, clenching his fists, cursed his cold- ness and awkwardness with women. In a last vain effort to stir his own feelings he looked at Vera's pretty figure, at her hair, at the imprints of her little feet on the dusty road. He remembered her words and her tears. But all this filled him only with pain, and left his feelings dead.

"Yes. . . . A man cannot force himself to love!" he rea' soned, and at the same time thought, "When shall I evef love except by force? I am nearly thirty. Better than Vierochka among women I have never met . . . and never shall meet. Oh, accursed old age! Old age at thirty!"

Vera walked before him, each moment quickening her step. Her face was bowed to the ground, and she did not look round once. It seemed to Ogniov that she had suddenly grown slighter and that her shoulders were narrower.

"I can imagine her feelings," he said to himself. "Shame . . . and such pain as to make her wish for death! • • • And in her words there was life and poetry, and meaning enough to have melted a stone! But I . • . I am senseless and blind."

"Listen, Vera Gavriilovna." This cry burst from him against his will. "You must not think that I . . . that I . . ."

Ogniov hesitated and said nothing more. At the wicket- gate Vera turned, looked at him for an instant, and, wrap- ping her shawl tightly around her shoulders, walked quickly up the path.

Ogniov remained alone. He turned back to the wood, and walked slowly, stopping now and then and looking towards the gate. His movements expressed doubt of himself. He searched the road for the imprints of Vierochka's feet. He refused to credit that one whom he liked so much had avowed to him her love, and that he had awkwardly, boorishly scorned her. For the first time in life he realised how little one's actions depend from mere goodwill; and he felt as feels every honourable, kindly man who, despite his intentions, has caused his nearest and dearest unmeant and unmerited suffering.

His conscience stung him. When Vierochka vanished in the garden he felt that he had lost something very dear which he would never find again. With Vera, it seemed to him, a part of his youth had passed away, and he knew that the precious moments he had let slip away without profit would never return.

When he reached the bridge he stopped in thought, and sought the cause of his unnatural coldness. That it lay not outside himself, but within, he saw clearly. And he frankly confessed that this was not the rational calmness boasted by clever men, not the coldness of inflated egoism, but simply impotence of soul, dull insensibility to all that is beautiful, old age before its day—the fruit, perhaps, of his training, his grim struggle for bread, his friendless, bachelor life.

He walked slowly, as if against his own will, from the bridge to the wood. There where on a pall of impenetrable black the moonlight shone in jagged patches he remained alone with his thoughts; and he passionately longed to re- gain all that he had lost.

And Ogniov remembers that he returned to the house. Goading himself forward with memories of what had passed, straining his imagination to paint Vera's face, he walked quickly as far as the garden. From road and garden the mist had melted away, and a bright, newly washed moon looked down from an unflecked sky; the east alone frowned with clouds. Ogniov remembers his cautious steps, the black windows, the drowsy scent of heliotropes and mignonette. He remembers how old friend Karpo, wagging genially his tail, came up and snuffed at his hand. But no other living thing did he see. He remembers how he walked twice around the house, stood awhile before the black window of Vera's room; and abandoning his quest with a sigh returned to the road.

An hour later he was back in town; and, weary, broken, leaning his body and hot face against the gate, knocked at the inn. In the distance barked a sleepy dog; and the night watchman at the church beat an iron shield.

"Still gadding about at night!" grumbled the Old-Believer, as in a long, woman's night-dress he opened the door. "What do you gain by it? It would be better for you if you stayed at home and prayed to God! "

When he entered his room Ogniov threw himself upon the bed, and long gazed steadily at the fire. At last he rose, shook his head, and began to pack his trunk,

THE STEPPE

I

EARLY one July morning a springless bone-shaking britchka —one of those antediluvian ones in which only commercial travellers, drovers, and the poorer clergy drive nowadays in

Russia, clattered out of K , the chief town of the gov-

ernment of Z , on to the country road. The vehicle

screeched and uttered a loud scream at the slightest move- ment; the bucket fastened on behind sullenly chimed in. By these sounds, apart from its woefully torn leather-lining dangling on the inside of its peeling interior, you might ar- rive at a conclucsion as to its antiquity and readiness to fall to pieces.

In the vehicle sat two inhabitants of : the trader,

Ivan Ivanitch Kuzmitchov, a clean-shaven man wearing spectacles and a straw hat, thereby resembling some func- tionary rather than a tradesman, and Father Christopher

Siriski, prior of the Church of St. Nicholas in N , a

long-haired little old man in a grey linen caftan, a wide- brimmed black hat, and an embroidered coloured belt. The first mentioned was absorbed in thought, and was shaking his head to keep awake; on his face the usual stern man-of-busi- ness look was struggling with the stirred feelings of a man taking leave of his native town, and who has just had a good drink. The other was looking with admiration and moist eyes at God's earth, smiling a broad smile, so broad that it seemed as if it would reach the brim of his hat; he had a red face, and it looked as if he were cold. Both of them, Kuzmitchov and Father Christopher, were going away to sell wool. As they took leave of their homestead they ate their fill Qf pastry

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and sour-cream, and, notwithstanding the early hour, had had a drink of wine, so they were both in the best of spirits.

Besides the two above-mentioned and the coachman Deniski, who unweariedly whipped his pair of fast little bay horses, there was another passenger in the vehicle, a smal; boy of nine, with a sun-burnt face wet with tears. This waf Egorooshka, Kuzmitchov's nephew. According to the deci- sion of his uncle, and with the blessing of Father Christopher, he was going somewhere to school. His mother, Olga Ivan- ovna, the widow of a collegiate-secretary and own sister to Kuzmitchov, fond of cultured people and well-bred society, implored her brother, who was going away to sell wool, to take Egorooshka with him and place him in a Gymnasium. So now, the boy, not understanding whither and why he was going, sits on the box-seat by the side of Deniski, holding on to his elbow so as not to tumble or bounce off like a teapot down a slope. They are driving so fast that his red shirt is blown out like an inflated bladder in his back, and his new waggoner's hat, with a peacock feather in it, has slipped to the back of his head. He feels he is the unhappiest of mor- tals, and wants to cry.

When the vehicle passes by the gaol, Egorooshka glances at the sentinel who is slowly marching by the towering white walls, at the small barred windows, at the cross glittering on the roof, and he thinks of a week ago, when, on the feast of St. Mary of Kazan, he went with his mamma to the prison church and partook of the Sacrament. And before that, at Easter, he went to the prison with the cook Ludmilla and Deniski, and took with them "Easter cakes," eggs, pasties, and roast beef; the prisoners thanked them and crossed them^ selves, and one of them made a present to Egorooshka of a tin shirt-button which he himself had made.

The boy observed all the well-known spots, but that hateful britchka fled past them, leaving them all behind. Beyond the gaol flashed by the black besmoked forge; and next, the snug green cemetery surrounded by a cobblestone wall. Behind the wall of the cemetery peeped the white crosses and monu- ments, which among the verdure of the cherry trees, and from a distance, look like white blots. He remembered when the cheery trees are in flower that these white blots blend with the cherry blossom, and it all looks like a sea of foam; and when the cherries are ripe, the white monuments and crosses are strewn with purple blood-like drops. Behind that wall and under the cherry trees sleep day and night Ego- rooshka's father and grandmother Zinaida Danilovna. When grandmother died, they laid her in a long narrow coffin, and placed on her eyes—because they would not close—two five-kopeck pieces. She was cheerful till the hour of her death, and always brought soft cracknels powdered with poppy from market, and now she is sleeping, sleeping. . . •

And beyond the cemetery came the smoky brick-kilns. Thick black clouds of curling smoke were issuing from be- neath the long, low rush-covered roofs which were hardly above the ground, and surged slowly upwards. Above the kilns and the cemetery the sky was quite dark, and large shadows cast by the clouds of smoke crept across the field and over the road. People and horses covered in red dust were moving about in the smoke around the roof.

The town came to an end beyond the kilns, then began the open country. Egorooshka took a last look at the town, pressed his face against. Deniski's elbow, and sobbed bitterly.

"That's right—not done bellowing yet!" said Kuzmit- chov. "The pet again has dissolved into tears! If you don't want to go, then remain behind. Nobody is forcing you!"

"Nitchevo, never mind, sonny Egor, never mind," mumbled the voluble Father Christopher. "Never mind, sonny. . . . Say a prayer to God. . . . You are not going towards evil, but towards good. Learning, they say, is light, and ignorance i.e darkness—and that is so."

"Do you want to go back?" Kuzmitchov asked.

"I ... I . . . want to," sobbed Egorooshka.

"And if you did return? It would be no use—it's going seven versts for a spoonful of jelly (it will not requite the cost)."

"Never mind, never mind, sonny," continued Father Christopher. "Say a prayer to God. Why, Lomonossov went with fishermen, and he became a man known all over Europe. Intelligence coupled with faith produces results well-pleasing to God. What we do say in our prayers? Let us praise our Creator, be a solace to our parents, be of use to our Church and Country. . . . That is so."

"Results may vary," said Kuzmitchov, smoking a cheap cigar. "Some learn for twenty years without doing any good."

"That may happen."

"To some learning is an advantage, to others only a mud- dle. My sister is a woman of not much understanding; she does everything for gentility, and wants Egor to be a scholar, and does not see that I, with my business, might make Egor happy for life. I assure you if people are c:.ll going to be well born and learned, then no one will attend to trade or sow corn. They will all die of hunger."

"And if everyone attended to trade and sowing corn, there would be no one to learn."

Thinking they had both said something quite convincing and weighty, Kuzmitchov and Father Christopher each put on a serious face and coughed simultaneously. Deniski, listen- ing to their conversation and not unders^.anding it, shook his head, and, straightening himself, whipped both the bayŝ. After that there was a silence.

l\Ieanwhile, a broad limitless plain, intercepted by a chain of hills, unrolled before the eyes of the wayfarers. These hills peep and rise one behind the other until they attain an eleva- tion which, stretching to the right of the road as far as the horizon, flows into the lilac atmosphere. You go on and on, and never can see where this horizon begins or where it ends.

The sun has already made its appearance, behind the town, and slowly, without any fuss, has begun its day's work. A« first, a long way ahead, where the sky is divided from the earth near the tumuli and the windmill—which from a dis- tance looks like a little dwarf waving his arms—a broad bright yellow streak of light crept across the earth; in a few moments the light of that streak had come a little nearer, had crept to the right and acquired possession of the hills. Something warm touched Egorooshka's back, a streak of light had come stealthily up behind, slipped past the vehicle and the horses, rose to meet the other streak, and suddenly all the wide steppe cast aside the penumbra of dawn, smiled, and began to sparkle with dew. The reaped corn, the high grass, the wart-wort, the wild hemp, all a rusty brown and half dead from the summer heat, now bathed in dew and caressed by the sun, revived, ready to flower again. An arctic petrel flew across the road with a cheerful cry, the Siberian marmots called to each other in the grass; far away to the left somewhere, a peewit wailed; a covey of partridges, startled by the britchka, rose up, and with their soft "trrr" flew away to the hills; grasshoppers, crickets, field-mice and mole-rats struck up their squeaking monotonous music in the grass.

But after a short lapse of time the dew evaporated, the air lost its freshness and the misguided steppe reassumed its languishing July appearance. The grass drooped, and the sounds of life died away. The brown-green, sunburned hills, the lilac distance with its tints as restful as shade, the plain with its misty limits, and the inverted-looking sky—for in the steppes, where there are no forests or high mountains, the sky seems fearfully deep and pellucid—at this moment ap- peared limitless and torpid with grief.

How suffocating and depressing! The britchka speeds along, and Egorooshka sees all the while the same thing: sky, plain, hills. The sounds in the grass have subsided, the petrel has flown away, there are no partridges to be seen. Tired of doing nothing, the rooks flj over the withered grass;

they all resemble one another, and render the steppe even more uniform

A kite with a flowing movement of his wings floats in the" air, then suddenly stops, as if it recollected the nuisance of existing, then, shaking his wings, darts off like an arrow across the steppe, and no one knows why he is flying, nor what he wants. In the distance the windmill is waving its fans.

To make a little variety, a white bit of bark or cobblestone gleams in the long grass; or a grey stone-pile or a dried white- willow, with a blue crow sitting in its topmost branch, up- rises for a minute: a marmot runs across the road; then once more you settle down to the long steppe-grass, hills and rooks. But now, thank God, a cart laden with sheaves of corn is coming towards them. A girl is lying on the top of the load. Sleepy and overcome by the heat, she just raises her head to look at the travellers. Deniski gaped at her, the horses put out their heads towards the corn, the britchka gave a piercing scream as it saluted the cart, and a shower of spiky ears of corn settle wreathlike round the brim of Father Christopher's black hat.

"Don't run over people, fat-face!" Deniski calls to her. "What's the matter with your face, has a bee stung you?"

The girl smiles sleepily, moves her lips, and lies down again . . . . And now, behind a hill, a solitary poplar ap- pears; who put it there, and why it is there, God alone knows! One can hardly take one's eye off its symmetrical form and green attire. Is this handsome stripling happy? In summer the heat, in winter the cold and the blizzards, in the autumn the awful nights when there is only fog to be seen and there is no sound except that of the wanton angry raging wind, and worst of all, being alone, alone, all one's life. . . . Be- yond the poplar is a bright yellow carpet. Great stretches of wheat reach from the summit of the hills to the edge of the road; on the hillocks the wheat is cut and gathered into sheaves, at their base the corn is still standing. . . . There are six mowers in a line swinging their scythes; the scythes flash brightly ancl rhythmically, and all together make the same sound: "vjjji, vjjji." From the way the women tie up the sheaves, from the faces of the mowers, by the glint on the scythes, it is not difficult to see how oppressive and suffocating the heat is. A black dog with his tongue hanging out runs from the mowers towards the britchka, no doubt with the intention of barking, but stops halfway and looks with indifference at Deniski threatening him with the whip; it's too hot to bark! One woman, standing up and holding her aching back with both hands, follows with her eyes Egorooshka's red fustian shirt. Is it that the colour pleases her, or is she thinking of her own children? Anyhow she stands a long time looking at the wayfarers without moving.

And now the wheat has vanished, the burnt expanse of plain appears again, the scorched hillocks, the blazing sky, and once more the kite is floating in the air. Far away, as before, the windmill is waving its fans, and looks like a little dwarf waving its arms. It is tiresome to look at, for it seems as if one would never reach it, and as if it were running away from the vehicle.

Father Christopher and Kuzmitchov remain silent, Deniski whipped the bays and shouted, Egorooshka was no longer crying, and looked at the landscape with indifference—the heat and the tediousness of the steppe had exhausted him. It seemed to him that they had been bumping and driving, and that the sun had been baking his back, for a very long while. They had not gone ten versts yet, and he was already thinking: "It is time we rested!" The look of benevolence on his uncle's face gradually wore off, leaving only the stern business look; this stern look on his dean-shaven gaunt face, particularly in spectacles and when his nose and temples were covered in dust, added something implacable and inquisitorial to his expression. Father Christopher continued to look with admiration at God's world, and smiled; he was silently think- ing of something innocent and pieasant, and a kind benign smile coagulated on his face; it seemed also as if the innocent and pleasant thought had coagulated in his brain irom the heat.

"Well, Deniski, do you think we shall overtake the train of waggons?" Kuzmitchov asked.

Deniski looked at the sky, sat up, whipped the horses, and subsequently answered:

"At night-fall, God grant it, we may overtake them. . . ."

Then there was a sound of dogs barking, and six enormous sheep-dogs of the steppes sprang out as from an ambush, and rushed with savage howlings at the vehicle. They were all six of them unusually vicious, with very hairy pointed muzzles and wrathful red eyes. They surrounded the britchka, and with much jealous emulating of each other yelled hoarsely; their hatred was so great that it looked as if they were prepared to tear to pieces horses, vehicle, and people. Deniski, who loved scolding and whipping, rejoiced at this opportunity, so, with a malevolent expression on his face, he leant over and lashed at the dogs. The dogs' howling grew hoarser and more furious, and the horses bolted. Egorooshka, hardly able to maintain himself on his seat, seeing the eyes and teeth of these dogs, understood that if he fell off he would be torn to bits in a moment, but he felt no fear and looked just as malignant as Deniski, and was only sorry that he, too, had not a whip in his hands.

The britchka drew alongside a flock of sheep.

"Stop!" cried Kuzmitchov. "Wait! Tprrri!"

Deniski, lying right back, reined in the horses, and thE' vehicle came to a standstill.

"Come here!" Kuzmitchov called to the shepherd. "Stop those damned dogs! "

The old shepherd, ragged and barefooted, wearing a thick cap, with a dirty sack slung over his hip, and holding in his hand a staff with a crook to it—quite an Old Testament figure—quieted the dogs, and, removing his cap from his head, walked up to the britchka. A similar Old Testament figure

stood without moving at the side of the flock, and looked unconcernedly at the travellers.

"Whose flock is this?" asked Kuzmitchov.

"Varlamov's," loudly answered the old man.

"Varlamov's," repeated the shepherd standing at the far side of the flock.

"Oh! Did Varlamov go past here last night or not?"

"Not at all. . . • His steward went by, that's all. . . ."

"Go on."

The vehicle moved on, and the shepherds and their vicious dogs remained behind. Egorooshka involuntarily looked ahead into the lilac distance, he began to think that the windmill with its waving fans was getting nearer. It was growing larger and larger and one could get quite a precise idea of its fans: one was old and patched, the other had been recently made with new wood and looked quite polished in the sun.

The britchka went to the right, and the windmill began to move somewhat to the left; they went on and on, and it moved always to the left without disappearing from sight.

"What a splendid windmill Boltva's son put up!" Deniski remarked.

"Isn't his farm in sight?"

"It's over there, in the valley."

Soon Boltva's farm appeared in sight, and still the wind- mill was not left behind, but continued to watch Egorooshka, waving its polished fan. What a wizard!

ii

About mid-day the britchka turned off the road to the right, went a little distance at a foot's pace, and then came to a standstill. Egorooshka heard a soft, very soothing murmur, and felt something cool and velvety on his face like some other kind of air. From a hillock, made by nature cementing some immense and monstrous stones together, ran a narrow stream of water through a pipe of hemlock, placed there by some unknown benefactor. The stream was clear, playfully splashed to the ground, glistened in the sun, and, roaring gently as if it imagined itself a strong and boisterous brook, flowed swiftly somewhere to the left. Not far from the hillock the stream crept down into a little pool; the burning rays and the parched soil thirstily drank it up and bereft it of itЈ strength; but a little farther on it seemingly flowed into an- other such streamlet, for along its course, a hundred steps or V from the hillock, grew some green thick luxuriant reed- grass, out of which, when the vehicle went by, flew three snipe with a cry.

The wayfarers disposed themselves to rest by the stream and feed their horses. Kuzmitchov, Father Christopher, and Egorooshka sat on a felt mat spread in the scant shade af- forded by the vehicle and the unharnessed horses, and took a little food. The innocent and pleasant thought which had coagulated from the heat in Father Christopher's brain, after he had had a drink of water and eaten a boiled egg, evinced itself outwardly. He looked fondly at Egorooshka, munched .1 little, and began:

"I too studied, sonny. From my earliest youth God had endowed with me sense and understanding, so that I cannot serve as an example to others, for even when I was only as old as you I cheered my parents and instructors by my intelligence. When not yet fifteen I could recite and compose Latin verses just as easily as Russian. I remember I was crosier-bearer to the Most Eminent Christopher. Once, after mass—1 remember it as if it were now, it was on the names- day of the Most Pious Emperor Alexander Pavlitch, of blessed memory—he was putting off his vestments in the sanctuary; he looked kindly at me, and asked: 'Puer bone, quam ap~ pelaris?' and I answered: 'Christophorus sum,' and he: 'Erga connominati sumus,' that is to say, 'We are name-sakes, • . .' Then he asked me in Latin 'Who are you?' and 1 again answered in Latin that I was the son of the Cantor Siriski of the vHlage of Lebedinsko. Pleased with my precocity and the directness of my answers, the Most Eminent gave me his blessing and said: 'Write to your father that I will not forget him, and that I will keep my eye on you.' The. archpriest and the priest who were in the sanctuary, hearing a Latin disputation, were not a little surprised, and both of them expressed their satisfaction by praising me. When I was still without a moustache, sonny, I could read Latin, Greek, French. I had learnt philosophy, mathematics, civil law, and all the sciences. God had given me a surprising good memory. If I read a thing through twice I knew it by heart. My in- structors and benefactors were astonished, and prophesied that I would become the most learned of men, a luminary of the Church. I myself thought of going to Kieff to continue my studies, but my parents did not consent. 'You will be learning your whole life,' said my father, 'when shall we ever see its use?' On hearing such remarks I threw up my studies and took up my duties. Of course I did not become a man of learning, but, as against that, I was not undutiful to my parents; I comforted them in their old age, and buried them with honour. Obedience is more than fasting or prayers!"

"You must have forgotten all your learning now," Kuz- mitchov remarked.

"How could I help forgetting it? Thank God, I have passed the eighth decade! I still remember something of philosophy and rhetoric, but languages and mathematics I have entirely forgotten."

Father Christopher screwed up his eyes, thought a little, then said in an undertone:

"What is a being? That which is self-existent and not requiring aught else for its completion."

He turned away his head, and smiled a little with emotion. "Spiritual food!" he said. "Of a truth, matter feeds the flesh and spirtual food the soul!"

"That is the lesson of lessons," sighed Kuzmitchov; "and if we don't overtake Varlamov it will be a lesson to us!"

"A man is not a needle—we shall find him! He is 'circling' somewhere in these parts."

Over the reed-grass flew the three afore-mentioned snipe, by their piping they expressed their agitation and annoyance at being driven from their stream. The horses gravely browsed and snorted; Deniski moved about near them, and, wishing to show his complete indifference towards the cucum- bers, pies, and eggs which the masters were eating, was absorbed in killing the gadflies and flies which were settling on the horses' stomachs and backs. He struck apathetically at his victims, uttering some rather peculiar and spiteful sound in his throat if successful, or in the case of failure croaking with vexation and following with his eyes each lucky fly who escaped death.

"Deniski, what are you doing there? Come and eat," said Kuzmitchov with a deep sigh, meaning thereby that he had eaten enough.

Deniski shyly approached the felt mat, and chose for him- self five large yellow cucumbers known as "saffronated" (he scrupled to choose smaller or fresher ones), he took twc boiled eggs which were dirty and cracked, then undecidedly, as if he feared he might get a rap on his outstretched hand, touched a patty with the tips of his fingers. "Take it, take it," Kuzmitchov hastened to reassure him. Deniski took the patty resolutely, and, moving well away to one side, sat on the ground with his back to the britchka; immediately after was heard such a loud munching that even the horses turned round and looked suspiciously at Deniski.

Having eaten all he wanted, Kuzmitchov took some sort of a bag out of the vehicle, and said to Egorooshka:

"I am going to sleep, just you watch that no one takes this bag from under my head." ₍

Father Christopher took off his cassock, his belt and caftan. Egorooshka, who was watching him, nearly died of surprise. He never supposed that priests wore trousers, but Father Christopher disclosed proper linen trousers in addition to his high boots; he also wore a short jacket of striped linen. Egorooshka thought in this costume, so incongruous to his position, and with his long hair and beard, that he looked very like Robinson Crusoe. Having undressed, Father Chris, topher and Kuzmitchov lay down in the shade of the britchka, face to face, and closed their eyes. Deniski, having finished chewing, stretched himself out in the blazing sun face up- wards, and also closed his eyes.

"Just see that no one takes the horses," he said to Ego- rooshka, and immediately fell asleep.

Then, no more sound of voices; one heard the horses munching and snorting, and the snoring of the sleepers; .>omewhere quite far away one heard the cry of a peewit; and now and again was neard the piping of the three snipe who had flown back to see if the unwelcome guests had not gone; softly whirring, babbled the brook; but all these sounds did not break the silence, they did not stir the stagnant air—on the contrary, they lulled it to sleep.

Egorooshka, oppressed by the heat, which was particularly observable after eating, ran towards the reed-grass and sur- veyed the locality from there. He saw exactly the same as that which he had seen till noon—the plain, the hillocks, the sky, the lilac distance: the only thing was, the hillocks were nearer, and there was no windmill—it had remained far be- hind. Beyond the rocky hillock, in which the stream had its source, rose another hillock, smoother and wider; to it clung a little village of five or six: houses. There was no life to be seen near the cottages, nor trees, nor shade, just as if the little village had been overcome by the burning rays and had pined away. As he had nothing to do, Egorooshka caught a "fiddler" in the grass, held it in the palm of his hand to his ear, and listened to it for a long time playing on its fiddle. When the music bored him, he began to chase a number of yellow butterflies fluttering about the reed-grass, and did not notice that he was approaching the vehicle again. His uncle and Father Christopher were sleeping soundly; their sleep would probably last two or three hours, till the horses were rested. How was he to kill that long time, and where was he to go to escape the heat? Rather a difficult problem . . . . Mechanically Egorooshka put his mouth to the trickle flowing from the pipe; the water was cold and smelt of hemlock; at first he drank from thirst, but afterwards immoderately, till the pungent cold in his mouth had overrun his whole body, and until his shirt was soaked. Then he walked back to the vehicle, and took a look at the sleepers. His uncle's face still wore that stern business look. Being a fanatic in his affairs. Kuzmitchov even in his sleep, or during prayers in church. when they were singing "Hail, cherubim," &c., was thinking of his business; he could not forget it for a moment, and now probably he was dreaming of bales of wool, horses and carts, prices, Varlamov . . . . And Father Christopher, a gentle. heedless person, always disposed to laugh, never once in his life had understood any business which could, like a boa- constrictor, stifle his soul. All the various concerns which he had undertaken during his life-time had tempted him not so much for themselves as by reason of the fuss and the intercourse with people which necessarily follows any under- taking. As, for instance, in the present trip, it was not so much the wool, Varlamov, and prices, which interested him, as much as the long journey, the conversations en route, the sleeping in the shade of the vehicle, eating at irregular hours. . . . And now, judging by his face, he was dreaming undoubtedly of the Most Eminent Christopher, the Latin disputation, his popess, the puffs with sour-cream, and all that about which Kuzmitchov was unable to dream.

While Egorooshka looked at the sleeping faces he suddenly heard a low singing. Somewhere quite far away a woman was singing, but where exactly, and on which side, it would have been difficult to say. The song was tender and melan- choly, more resembling weeping, scarcely audible; it sounded now to the right, now to the left, now in the air, now on the ground, just as if some unseen spirit were floating about thf!

Steppe and singing. Egorooshka looked round, and could not understand where this strange singing came from; after- wards, when he had listened attentively, he began to think that it was the grass singing. In her song without words she, half dead and passed away, plaintively and simply, was persuading someone that she was in no way to blame, that the sun had scorched her unjustly; she affirmed that she passionately desired to live, that she was still young and would be pretty if it were not for the heat and the drought; it was no one's fault, but she begged someone's forgiveness, averring it was unbearably painful, sad, and a pity for her.

Egorooshka listened a little while, then began to think that owing to the plaintive tender song the air was becoming stuf- fier, hotter, and stiller. So as to drown the singing he hummed, tapped with his feet, and ran back to the reed-grass. From thence he looked on all sides, and discovered what was sing- ing. By the nearest cottage of the little village stood a woman. She wore short small-clothes, was long-footed and long-legged like a heron, and her hair was turning a little grey. From beneath her sieve some white dust lazily trailed down the hill-side. It was evident now that she it was who was sing- ing. About two and a half yards away from her stood a little boy, hatless, and wearing only a shirt; he stood quite still as if fascinated by the song, and was gazing at something below, probably at Egorooshka's red fustian shirt.

The song ceased. Egorooshka went slowly back to the vehicle; having nothing to do, he again played with the trickle of water. The plaintive song began again; that same long- legged woman was singing in the little village on the hillock. Then suddenly Egorooshka's feeling of weariness returned; he left the pipe alone, and looked up. What he now saw was so unexpected that he was rather frightened. Above his head, on one of the large misshapen rocks, stood a small puffy- faced boy with a prominent stomach, thin little legs, and wearing nothing but a shirt; it was the same little boy who had been standing by the woman. In dumb astonishment, not unmixed with fear, as if he saw a spirit from the world beyond, he stared with wide-open mouth at Egorooshka's red fustian shirt, and at the vehicle. The colour of the shirt allured and tempted him, and the vehicle with the sleeping people be- neath it aroused his curiosity. It may be that he himself was not aware how pleasant the red colour was, and it was curi- osity that drew him away from the little village; very likely he was surprised now at his temerity. Egorooshka looked at him a long while, and he at Egorooshka; they both remained silent and felt a certain awkwardness. After a protracted silence, Egorooshka asked: "\Yhat's your name?"

The clieeks of the stranger grew puffier, he pressed closer to the rock, opened his eyes very wide, made a movement of his lips, and answered in a hoarse low voice: "Tit."

The boys said not one word more to each other. Still keep- ing silence and without taking his eyes off Egorooshka, the mysterious Tit drt'w up a leg, felt for a projection with his heel, and clambered up the rock. From thence he moved backwards, keeping his eye on Egorooshka as if he were afraid this latter might strike him in the back; he climbed over the next rock, and so on till he disappeared from sight over the summit of the hillock.

Having followed him with his eyes, Egorooshka sat down, doubled himself up and hugged his knees. The glowing ray?. of the sun scorched his head, neck, and back; the plaintive song at times died down, then again broke on the stagnant air; the stream murmured monotonously, the horses went on browsing, and the hours seemed never ending, just as if they too had coagulated and stood still. It seemed as if a hundred years had gone by since the morning. . . . Was it not God's desire that Egorooshka, the britchka, and horses should die in this atmosphere, turn to stone like the hillocks, and so re- main in this place for evermore t

Egomoshka raised his head, and with dim-grown eye:,

looked straight in front of him. The lilac distance, which had remained motionless till now, began to rock, and together with the sky move somewhere farther away; some noiseless power was drawing it, and the heat and that wearisome song started in pursuit of them. Egorooshka's heaC: dropped for- ward and his eyes closed. . . .

The first to awake was Deniski; something must have stung him, for he jumped up hastily, scratched his shoulder, and muttered:

"Anathema, the demons! Destruction be upon them!"

Then he went towards the stream, drank some water and washed himself for a long time. His snuffling and splashing awoke Egorooshka from his slumbers. The boy looked at the drops and large freckles on the man's wet face, and thought it very much resembled marble. He asked:

"Are we going soon?"

Deniski looked to see how high the sun stood, and an- swered :

"Sure to, soon."

He wiped himself on the end of his shirt, then, looking very serious, stood on one leg.

"Come along, who'll get to the reed-grass first!" he said.

Egorooshka was exhausted from the heat, and was still half-asleep, but all the same he raced after him. Deniski was already nearly twenty years old: he acted as coachman, and was about to get married, but he was none the less of a boy. He was very fond of letting fly at a snake, chasing pigeons, playing at knuckle-bones, running races, and was always mixed up in the children's games and quarrels. It was only necessary for the masters to go out or to go to sleep, for him at once to start doing some such thing as hopping or throw- ing pebbles. All the grown-ups, at the sight of the unaffected enthusiasm which he exhibited in the company of the little ones, found it difficult to refrain from saying: "What a dotty fellow!" But the children did not see anything strange in the invasion of the big coachman into their domain: let him play, provided he did not fight thern ! J uit in the same way, small dogs see nothing strange in some big light-hearted dog thrusting himself upon them and joining in their games.

Deniski out-hopped Egorooshka, which apparently pleased him very much. He winked an eye, and, so as to show that he could hop any distance you liked, he proposed to Egorooshka that they should both hop as far as the road and back to the vehicle without resting. Egorooshka rejected this proposal, as he was very out of breath and felt languid.

Suddenly Deniski, looking very serious—a thing which did not happen even when Kuzmitchov was giving him a scolding and waving his stick over him—listened attentively and went down on one knee, while on his face appeared an expression ot awe and fear, such as you notice on the faces of people hearing some heresy. He fixed his eyes on one spot, slowly raised a tuft of grass with one hand, and, arching the other, fell sud- denly forward on the ground, clapping his hand over some- thing in the grass.

"It is!" he said in hoarse triumphant tones, and as he gol up he placed a large grasshopper before Egorooshka's eyes.

Imagining the grasshopper liked it, Egorooshka and Deniski stroked its wide green back, and touched its feelers; then Deniski caught a fat fly tipsy with blood and presented it to the grasshopper; this latter quite calmly, and as if he had known Deniski all his life, extended his large maxillaries, which resembled a visor, and ate the fly's stomach. Then they released him; he flashed the pink lining of his wings and flut- tered into the grass, at once croaking his little song. They also let the fly go; it spread its wings, and stomachless flew to the horses.

There was the sound of a deep sigh behind the vehicle; it was Kuzmitchov waking up. He quickly raised his head, and looked anxiously in the distance; by that look, which disregarded Egorooshka and Deniski, it was evident that on awaking he had only thought of wool and Varlamov.

"Father Christopher, get up, it's time," he said in alarm.

''You'd sleep on and miss all your business! Deniski, harness quick!"

Father Christopher awoke with the same smile with which he had gone to sleep; his face looked wrinkled and creased, and seemed to have shrunk to half its size. Having washed and dressed himself, he drew a small greasy psalter from his pocket, then standing with his face to the East, began to whisper and cross himself.

"Father Christopher!" said Kuzmitchov reproachfully. "It's time to start, the horses are ready, and you, for God's sake. . . ."

"Yes, yes, at once . . ." murmured Father Christopher. "I must read the Cathisma. ... I have not done so yet."

"You can do your Cathismas afterwards."

"Ivan Ivanitch, each day, it is my rule. . . . No, it is im- possible. . . ."

"God will not call you to account."

Father Christopher stood a whole quarter of an hour with his face to the East moving his !ips, while Kuzmitchov looked at him almost with hatred, and shrugged his shoulders im- patiently; it made him particularly angry when Father Christopher, after each "Gloria," drew in his breath, crossed himself quickly, and purposely, so that the others should cross themselves, said aloud three times:

"Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, praise be to God!"

At last he smiled, looked up at the sky, replaced his psalter in his pocket, and said:

"Fini!"

The next minute the britchka had started on its way. It seemed as if the travellers were going back instead of forward. The iandscape was the same as it had been at noon. The hillocks faded into the lilac distance—one saw not the end of them; tne steppe-grass, the pebble-stones flashed by, the bands of reaped corn rushed past, and there were all those same rooks and the kite sedately flapping their wings flying over the steppe. The air had become even more stagnant from the heat and stillness; submissive nature grew torpid in silence; there was not a breath of wind, nor a cheering cool sound, nor a cloud. But now, at last, when the sun was about to descend towards the west, the steppe, the hills and the air could no longer bear the pressure; jaded and their patience worn out, they made an attempt to throw off the restraint. Beyond the hills unexpectedly appeared an asii-grey curly cloud. It exchanged a glance with the steppe—well, I'm ready—and looked threatening. Immediately there was a rift in the stagnant air, the wind sprang up, and with a clamour and a whistling whirled about the steppe. The grass and the steppe-grass at once began to whisper, a spiral cloud of dust got up from the road, and fled over the steppe, drawing after it bits of straw, dragon-ilies, and feathers, and the dark twirling column rose towards the sky, darkening the sun. The rolling-flax fluttered and tripped about the steppe, and one of them got .:aught in the whirlwind, twisted like a bird, flew up towards the sky and, transforming itself into a black dot, disappeared from sight. Then another one got caught, then a third, and Egorooshka saw two rolling-flaxes hurtling themselves in the azure heights and clinging to each other as if engaged in a duel.

A bustard took wing from the sides of the road; as it flashed its wings and tail in the sun's glare it resembled some tin- bait for fish, or some pool's butterfly whose wings as it flits over trie water blend with its antennae, with the result that antennae seem to grow in front, behind, at the side; . . . quivering in the air like an insect, with a shimmer of speckled colours, the bustard rose upwards in a straight line, then, probably frightened by the cloud of dust, it shifted away to one side, though for a long while the flash of its wings was to be seen. . . .

Next, alarmed by the whirlwind, and not understanding what was the matter, a corn-crake rose out of the grass. It flew with the wind, and not against it as most birds, conse- quently his feathers were flisarranged; he seemed to swell to the size of a partridge, and he looked very angry and im- portant. Only the rooks who had grown up in the steppe, and were used to the steppe disturbances, calmy floated above the grass, or placidly, without heeding anything else, prodded the hard ground with their beaks.

Beyond the hillocks came a distant sound of thunder, fol- lowed by a little breath of fresh air. Deniski gave a cheerful whistle and whipped up his horses. Father Christopher and Kuzmitchov held on to their hats, and strained their eyes in the direction of the hillocks. . . . How nice if there were to be a drop of rain! Just one more little effort, so it seemed, one .;purt, and the steppe would have the upper hand. But an invisible tyrannical power little by little fettered the wind and the air, laid the dust, and once more, as if nothing had happened, silence reigned. The cloud went and hid itself, the sun-burned hillocks grew wrinkled, the air submissively stag- nated; only some startled peewits puled and complained of their fate. . . . Shortlf afterwards the daylight crept away.

III

Through the dusk appeared a large one-storied house with a rusty iron roof and unlit windows. This house called itself a tavern, and consequently professed to have a yard—but there was no such thbg, as it stood unsurrounded in the middle of the steppe. Somewhat to one side a woeful little cherry garden was discernible; besides which, by the windows, stood some somnolent sunflowers hanging their heavy heads. Tn the little garden a tiny mill was rattling so as to frighten the hares away with its noise. Otherwise, nothing else was to be seen or heard near the house except the steppe.

Hardly had the vehicle drawn up to the littie perron with its pent-roof, than there was a sound of glad voices from the house—one was a man's, the other a woman's voice; a swing- door gave a squeak, and in another moment a full-grown tall spare figure stood by the brit^^. waving his arms and the folds of his coat. This was the taverner, Moses Mosevitch, a middle-aged man, with a very pale face and a handsome beard black as Indian ink. He wore a worn black frock-coat, which dangled from his narrow shoulders as from a clothes-peg, and the folds flapped like wings each time Moses Mosevitch clasped his hands with joy or fear. Besides the frock-coat, this taverner wore wide white trousers, and a velvet waistcoat with a pattern of reddish flowers rather resembling gigantic bugs. Moses Mosevitch, when he recognised the arrivals, at first nearly died in the fulness of his joy, then clasped his hands and moaned. The folds of his frock-coat flapped, he bowed till his back was bent double, and his face became dis- torted with such a smile that it seemed as if the sight of the britchka was not only pleasant but also too painful-sweet.

"Ach! Oh God, oh God!" he began saying in a high sing- song voice, breathless, fussing, and with his many ,gestures preventing the wayfarers from climbing out of the vehicle. "How fortunate a day this is for me! Ach, and what now shall I do? Ivan Ivanitch! Father Christopher! And what a dear little gentleman is sitting on the box-seat, God bless me! Ah! What am I doing standing here and not inviting the guests in? Come in, I most humbly beg . . . welcome, welcome! Give me all your things. . . . Ach, oh God!"

Moses Mosevitch fumbling in the britchka and helping the arrivals to climb out, suddenly made a half-turn back and called in an odd choked voice, just as if he were drowning and calling for help:

"Solomon! Solomon! "

"Solomon! Solomon!" a woman's voice repeated in the house.

The swing-door squeaked, and on the threshold appeared a shortish young Jew with a large beaky nose, coarse curly carroty hair and a bald place on top; he wore a short very shabby jacket with rounded folds and abbreviated sleeves, so, with his short woven trousers as well, he presented the appearance of a tailless fledgling. This was Solomon, brother of Moses Mosevitch. Silently, without bestowing any greet- ing, merely smiling strangely, he went up to the vehicle.

"Ivan Ivanitch and Father Christopher have come," Moses Mosevitch said to him, in the tone of one who was afraid he might be disbelieved. "Aye, aye, a wonderful thing such good people arriving without warning! Here, Solomon, take the things. Pray come in, welcome guests!"

Shortly afterwards, Kuzmitchov, Father Christopher, and Egorooshka were seated in a large sombre and empty room at an old oak table. The tabJe was quite lonesome, ior in this large room besides itself, a wide divan upholstered in an oil- cloth full of holes, and three chairs, there was no other furni. ture whatever. Moreover, it is not everyone who would have decided to call them chairs. They were something which had a kind of pitiful resemblance to furniture, assisted by oil-cloth which had outlived its century, and backs curved so unnatu- rally far outward that the chairs were really more similar to children's sleighs. It was difficult to grasp what convenience the unknown joiner had in view when he so unmercifullly bent those backs, and one was rather inclined to think that, in this Instance, it was not the joiner who was to blame, but some passing athlete, who, desirous of exhibiting his strength, bent the backs of the chairs, then attempted to straighten them, and bent them yet more. It was a gloomy room. The walls were grey, the ceiling and cornice blackened with smoke, in the floor were lengthened crevices and gaping holes of incon- ceivable origin (one might imagine that same athlete had broken them through with his heels).Altogether, it seemed as if even if one hung half a score of lamps in the room it would not be otherwise than gloomy. Neither on the walls nor in the windows was anything resembling adornment. However, on one wall was hung in a grey wooden frame some kind of pre- cept with a double-headed eagle, and on another, in the same kind of frame, an engraving with the inscription, "The indif- ference of men." Towards what men were indifferent it was impossible to gather, as the engraving was very much dimmed by age and liberally fly-blown. The room, too, had a musty noisome smell.

As he led his guests into the room Moses Mosevitch con. tinued to bow and clasp his hands, hesitate, and utter exclama. tions of joy: he considered it necessary to go through all this to appear unusually pleasant and civil.

"When did our waggons go by?" Kuzmitchov asked him.

"One lot went by this forenoon, Ivan Ivanitch, and the other rested here for dinner and moved on before evening."

"Ah! . . . Has Varlamov gone by or not?"

"No, Ivan Ivanitch. Yesterday forenoon his agent, Gregory Egoritch, passed, and said most likely by now he would be at the Milkite's farm-house."

"Excellent; therefore we shall soon overtake the train of waggons, and then go on to the 'Milkite.' "

"God have mercy on us, Ivan Ivanitch!" said Moses ?o.Iosc- vitch in alarm and clasping his hands. "Where will you get to at night? Ko, sup and spend the night, and to-morrow, God be willing, you leave in the forenoon and overtake whom you like!"

"No, no, . . . excuse me, Moses Mosevitch, some other time, not now. We will remain a quarter of an hour and then go on, and perhaps spend the night at the Milkite's."

"A quarter of an hour!" with a piercing scream said Moses Mosevitch. "Have the fear of God, Ivan Ivanitch! You al- most compel me to hide your hats and double-lock the doors! At least have a bite of something and drink some tea!"

"There's no time for tea and sugar!" said Kuzmitchov.

Moses Mosevitch inclined his head to one side, bent his knees, and stretching out the palms of his hands as if defend- ing himself from a blow, and with the painecl-sweet smile, began imploring:

"Ivan Ivanitch! Father Christopher! Do be so kind as to take tea with me! Am I indeed such an unworthy persor, that you cannot 2ven drink tea with me? Ivan Ivanitch!"

"Oh, well, we might have a little tea," Father Christopher sighed feelingly. "That won't keep us."

"Oh, very well!" assented Kuzmitchov.

Moses Mosevitch jumped up with a sigh of relief, l!nd hesitatingly, as if he had only just come out of the cold water into the warmth, ran to the door and called in the odd choked voice with which he had previously called to Solomon:

"Rosa! Rosa! Bring the samovar!"

A moment later the door opened, and Solomon entered car- rying a large tray. Having placed the tray on the table, he looked away derisively and, as before, smiled a strange smile. By the present light of the lamp it became possible to examine that smile. It was very complex, and expressed much feeling, but that which predominated was—unfeigned scorn. He seemed to be thinking of something humorous and foolish, of some one whom he disliked and despised, of something which pleased him, and he was only watching for the suitable moment to sting with ridicule, and burst out laughing. His long nose, fleshy lips, cunning mouth, and his protruding eyes, seemed strained with suppressed laughter. As Kuz- mitchov glanced at his face he smiled quizzically, and asked:

"Solomon, why did you not come to our Fair in N

this summer and give us a Jewish recitation?"

Egorooshka very well remembered that two years ago

Solomon at the N ski Fair had related scenes out of

Jewish life in one of the booths, and had had a great success. The remembrance of this made no impression whatever on Solomon. Without giving an answer he left the room, and shortly afterwards returned with the samovar.

Having performed his duties at the table he stepped to one side, crossed his arms, stood with one foot in advance of the other, and stared derisively at Father Christopher. There was something defiant, arrogant, and scornful in his attitude; at the same time it was in the highest degree pitiful and comic, because the more imposing his attitude became the more con- spicuous became his short trousers, his short-tailed coat, cari- cature of a nose, and fledgling-like appearance.

l\1oses Mosevitch brought a stool from another room, and <;at down at some distance from the table.

"A good appetite to you! Tea and sugar!" he began by way of amusing the guests. "Drink to your healths! Such rare guests, so very rare; and Father Christopher I have not seen for five years. And no one seems to want to tell me to whom this dear little man belongs!" he enquired, looking tenderly at Egorooshka.

"He i? the son ofmy sister Olga Ivanovna," answered Kuz- mitchov.

"And where is he going to?"

"To be educated. We are taking him to the Gymnasium."

Moses Mosevitch out of politeness evinced an air of sur- prise, and significantly nodded his head.

"Oh, that's right!" he said menacing the samovar with a finger. "That's right!" You will come away from the Gym- nasium such a gentleman that we shall all take our hats off to you. You will be learned, rich, ambitious, and your mamma will be glad. Oh, that's right!"

He was silent for a little, rubbed his knees, and then con- tinued in a tone of deferential raillery:

"You will forgive me, Father Christopher, if I write a letter to the Prelate saying that you are deflecting the traders' living! L shall write on stamped paper, and say that evidently Father Christopher has such a small pittance he is obliged to take to trade, and is selling wool."

"Yes, this entered his head in his old age," said Father Christopher laughing. "Instead of pope I am now inscribed as trader. Instead of sitting at horne, and praying to Gocl, I race along like a Pharaoh in a chariot. . . . How vain- glorious!"

"Still, groats will accumulate!"

"Oh! no! Pears come more my way than groats. The goods are not mine but my son-in-law :\!ichael's."

"Why has he not come himself?."

"Oh, because. . . . Well, his mother's milk is not dry on his lips yet! He does not know what wool to buy or how to sell it, he is too young. He squandered all his money wanting to prosper and fling up a dust, he hurried hither and thither, and no one would attend to him or his prices. The youth lived from hand to mouth for a year, then came to me: 'Papa, be so kind as to sell the wool! I understand nothing in these mat- ters!' That's how it was. And as it was then so it may be the same with papa as it formerly was without him! When he purchased he stopped to ask no questions, and in a like hurry am I. If it were not for Ivan Ivanitch, papa would have done nothing at all! Bother take them all!"

"Yes, children are troublesome, I tell you!" sighed Moses Mosevitch. "I myself have six of them. One has to be edu- cated, another doctored, the third has to be made a fuss of, and when they grow up there is even more bother. It is not only nowadays—in Holy Scriptures it was just the same. When Jacob had young children he wept, and when they grew up he wept even more."

"M—yes," agreed Father Christopher thoughtfully look- ing at his glass. "For myself, I have no grudge against God. I have fulfilled the term of my life, as may God grant to others. . . . My daughters are settled, my sons made their way in the world—they are now independent, have their business, although they are scattered far and wide. I live quietly with my popess, I have enough to eat and drink, I can sleep, I have my grandchildren, I pray to God, and I have no need of anvthing further. I ride like cheese on butter, and mind nothing or no one. From my youth upwards I have had no sorrows, and supposing now the Tsar were to say: 'What would you like? What do you want?'—why, I want nothing! I have everythirg I could wish, thank God! 'Ihere is no hap- pier man than I in the town. Only, I am a sinful man; but then, after all, God alone is without sin. Is not that true?"

"It is so.''

"Of course, I have no teeth, my back is rheumatic—it goes without saying I have asthma and such like . . . .I fall ill, the body is weakly, but then there is no denying, I am a good age! I am in my eighth decade! One cannot last for ever, we must not ask for too much."

Father Christopher suddenly remembered something, laughed in his glass, and choked. Moses Mosevitch, for de- corum's sake, also laughed and choked.

"Such a joke!" said Father Christopher waving his hand. "l\Iy eldest son Gavrila came to pay me a visit. He is in the medical profession, and is a countrv doctor in the government of Tchernigov. Very well. ... I said to him: 'See here, l have asthma, you are a doctor, cure your father!' At once he stripped me, sounded me, listened, various tricks of that sort . . . kneaded my stomach; at last he said: 'Papa, what you want is a compressed air-cure.' "

Father Christopher went into convulsions of laughter, wept, and got up.

"And I said to him: 'To the deuce with the compressed air!' "—he articulated through his laughter, and waving both hands, " 'to the deuce with the compressed air!'"

Moses Mosevitch also got up, and, holding his stomach. laughed a shrill laugh, resembling the bark of a lapdog.

"To the deuce with the compressed air!" Father Christo- pher repeated, still laughing.

^loses Mosevitch went two notes higher, and laughed so -.:onvulsiveIy that he could hardly stand on his feet.

"Oh, good Lord! . . .'' he groaned in his laughter. "Give one time to draw breath . . .I have laughed so, that . . . och! ... it'll be my death . . . .''

He spoke and laughed, all the time casting suspicious and timid glances at Solomon. The latter was standing in the same attitude as before, still smiling. Judging by the look in his eyes and his smile, he despised and hated them in sober earnest, yet his expression appeared to correspond so little with his fledgling appearance, that it seemed to Egoronshka as if the defiant attitude and sarcastic scornful smile were adopted on purpose, like the play-acting of a facetious per- son, and to amuse favoured guests.

Having drunk six glasses of tea in silence, Kuzmitchov cleared a space in front of him on the table, took out his bag, the very same which while he slept by the vehicle he had laid under his head, untied the slender cord, and shook it out Out of the bag fluttered whole packets of paper-money.

"Now that we have time, come on, we'll count, Father Christopher," said Kuzmitchov.

At the sight of the money Moses Mosevitch was put out of countenance; he got up again from his seat, and, like a tactful person afraid of prying into other people's secrets, left the room on tiptoe, swaying his arms. Solomon remained where he was.

"In how many shall I do the rouble-packets?" inquired Father Christopher.

"By fifties. . • • The three-rouble ones by nineties. . . . The quarter and hundred-roubles put together in thousand packets. Count out seven thousand eight hundred for Var- lamov, and I will count the same for Gussevitch. And see that you don't make a mistake . . . ."

Never in his life had Egorooshka seen such a heap of money as now lay on the table. There must in fact have been a lot of money, for the packet of seven thousand eight hundred roubles which Father Christopher put aside for Varlamov, in comparison with the entire lot, looked quite small. At any other time perhaps such a quantity of money would have astounded Egorooshka, and tempted him to speculate how many piles of Easter-cakes, knuckle-bones, poppy-seed cakes one could buy with it. He looked at it now, however, unmoved, and was only aware of a loathsome smell of rotten apples and kerosene which emanated from the pile. He was worn-out by the jd.ting drive in the britchka, and longed to drop asleep. His head was growing very heavy, his eyes would close and his thoughts get mixed like tangled threads. If it had been possible he would so gladly have dropped his head on the table, have closed his eyes so as not to see the lamp and the fingers moving over the packets of money, and would have permitted his drowsy sluggish thoughts to confuse themselves altogether. When he strove to overcome his sleepiness the flame of the lamp, the glasses, the fingers all seemed doubled; the samovar rocked, and the smell of the rotten apples be- came even more sour and loathsome.

"Ah, money, money!" sighed Father Christopher with a smile. "Woe to you! No doubt, now, my Michael is sleeping, and sees that I am bringing him this pile."

"Your Michael Timothevitch is an incompetent person," said Kuzmitchov in an undertone. "He does not look after his affairs, but you have understanding and judgment. If you gave up your wool to me, as I have said, and you yourself go back, and I gave you—as I have already consented—half a rouble more than my price, and that, only out of considera- tion . . ."

"No, Ivan Ivanitch," sighed Father Christopher. "I thank you for your kindness. . . . Naturally, if it were mine I would not have any discussion about it, but, as you well know, the goods are not mine. . . ."

Moses Mosevitch entered on tiptoe. With a tactful effort not to look at the piles of money, he stole up to Egorooshka and tugged him by the back of the shirt.

"Here, come with me, little man," he said in an undertone. "I have such a mole-rat to show you! Such a fearful angry one! Ugh!"

Sleepy Egorooshka got up, and lazily dragged himself after Moses Mosevitch to look at the mole-rat. He entered a small room, the noisome musty smell of which caught his breath before he ever saw the inside of the room. The smell was much worse here than in the large room, and probably it was from here that it spread over the whole house. One half of the room was occupied by a large bed covered with a filthy counterpane, the other half by a chest of drawers and a high mountain of every conceivable kind of rag, beginning witb a stiffly starched petticoat and finishing with children's braces and trousers. On the drawers burned a tallow dip.

Instead of the promised mole-rat, Egorooshka saw a large very fat Jewess with flowing hair wearing a red spotted black flannel costume. She was with difficulty squeezing through the narrow passage between the bed and the chest of drawers, heaving the while long-drawn moaning sighs just as if she had a toothache. When she saw Egorooshka she screwed up her face, drew a deep breath, and before he had time to look round she had shoved into his mouth a slice of bread spread over with honey.

"Eat, childie, eat!" she said. "You are here without your '1iammy, and nobody has given you anything to eat. Eat!"

Egorooshka ate, although, after the barley-sugar and the poppy-seed cakes which he had every day at home, he did not. find anything specially good in the honey, half of it being com- posed of wax and bees' wings. He ate, and Moses Mosevitch and his wife looked and sighed.

"Where are you going to, childie?" asked the Jewess.

"To school," answered Egorooshka.

"How many children has your mammy?"

"Only me; there are no others."

"Ah!—oh!" with a sigh said the Jewess and casting her eyes upwards. "Poor mammy, poor mammy! How lonely she will be, how she will cry l In a year we shall be sending our Neomi to his studies! Oh, ho!"

"Ah, Neomi, Neomi!" sighed Moses Mosevitch, while his white face twitched nervously. "And he is so sickly."

The filthy counterpane heaved, and from beneath it ap- peared a child's curly head, a very thick neck, and two shin- ing black eyes which looked inquisitively at Egorooshka. Moses Mosevitch and his wife, not ceasing to sigh, went to the chest of drawers and began to speak in Hebrew about something. Moses Mosevitch spoke in a deep bass undertone and altogether his Hebrew conversation sounded like an in- cessant: "Gaul—gaul—gaul—gaul . . ." and his wife an- swered him in a high turkey-hen voice, and it sounded some- thing like: "Too—too—too—too. . . ." While they were consulting by the tallow-dip, another curly he::u:l looked out from under the filthy counterpane, then a third, then a fourth. . . . Had Egorooshka possessed a fertile imagination he might have thought that a hundred-headed hydra lay be- neath that counterpane.

"Gaul—gaul—gaul—gaul ..." said l\Ioses Mosevitch.

"Too—too—too—too ..." answered the Jewess.

The conference ended by the Jewess diving into the chest of drawers, unwrapping a green rag and procuring from thence a large heart-shaped rye-gingerbread.

"Here, childie," she said, handing the gingerbread to Egorooshka. "Your mammy is not here, and there is no one to give you presents."

Egorooshka thrust the gingerbread into his pocket and directed his steps towards the door, as he could no longer breathe in the musty noisome atmosphere in which these peo- ple lived. Returning to the larger room, he settled himself as comfortably as he could on the divan, and did not trouble any further to control his thoughts.

Kuzrnitchov had just finished counting his money and was putting it back into the bag. He was not treating it with such regard, piling it into the dirty bag without any care whatever, and with as much indifference as if instead of money it was nothing but paper rubbish.

Father Christopher was talking to Solomon.

"Well, now, Solomon the Wise?" he said yawning and making a cross over his mouth, "how is business?"

"Of what business are you speaking?" asked Solomon as spitefully as if he had been detected in some crime.

"In general. . . . What are you doing?"

"What am I doing?'' repeated Solomon shrugging hi? shoulders. "Why, the same as others. . . . You can see foi yourself: I ^ a servant, I serve my brother, my brother is a servant to the passers-by, the passers-by are servants to Varlamov, and had I ten millions Varlamov would be a servant to me."

"What do you mean? How would he be your servant?"

"How? Because there is no gentleman or millionaire who will not shake hands with a miserly Jew if only he has a super- fluity of kopecks. I, at present, am a miserly and indigent Jew, and everyone treats me like a dog, but if I had money, then Varlamov would make as great a fool of himself before me as Moses does before you."

Father Christopher and Kuzmitchov glanced at one an- other. Neither of them understood Solomon; Kuzmitchov looked at him sharply and sternly, and said:

"How does a fool like you dare to compare himself to Varlamov?"

"I am not yet such a fool as to compare myself to Var- lamov," Solomon answered, looking sarcastically at his in- terlocutors. "Although a Russian, Varlamov is at heart a miserly Jew ; the whole interest of his life is in money and profits, whereas I burnt my money in the stove. I do not require money, nor land, nor sheep, nor people to be afraid of me or take off their hats when I pass; which means I am wiser than your Varlamov, and am more human."

Shortly afterwards Egorooshka through his dreams heard Solomon speaking in a hollow hoarse voice about the Jews, choking with hatred, and with a thick hurried pronunciation. At first he had spoken in correct Russian, afterwards he re- lapsed into the manner of a narrator of Jewish life, and began to speak as he did that time in the booth with an egregiously Jewish accent.

"Stay," Father Christopher interrupted him. "If you are dissatisfied with your faith, change it, but it is wicked to make fun of it. He who scoffs at his faith is the most des- picable of creatures."

"You don't understand anything," rudely retorted Solo- mon. "I am speaking of one thing and you of another. . . •"

"One can see at once that you are a stupid fellow," sighed Father Christopher. "I am teaching you what I know, and you get angry. I do it gently like an old man, while turkey- like you go 'bla—bla—bla!' In truth, you are very odd. . . ."

Moses Mosevitch came in. He looked anxiously at Solo- mon and at his guests, and again his face twitched nervously. Egorooshka raised his head and looked round. He caught a glimpse of Solomon's face just at the moment when it was three-quarters turned towards him, and with the shadow of his long nose lying across his left cheek. The contemptuous smile, combined with the shadow, the gleaming sarcastic eyes, arrogant expression and plucked appearance, flashing across Egorooshka twice as vividly as before, now gave him no longer the resemblance to a buffoon, but rather to some evil spirit one might dream about.

"Someone in your house is possessed, Moses Mosevitch. God be with him!" said Father Christopher with a smile. "You ought to make some provision for him, or marry him or something. . . . He is unlike a human being. . . ."

Kuzmitchov frowned angrily. Moses ::\Iosevitch agaia looken anxiously and searchingly at his brother and at his guests.

"Solomon, leave the room!" he said sternly. "Go!" and he added something in Hebrew.

Solomon gave a short laugh, and went out.

"What is the matter?" Moses Mosevitch anxiously asked Father Christopher.

"He forgets himself," answered Kuzmitchov. "He is rude and thinks too much of himself."

"I knew it!" said Moses Mosevitch in horror and wringing his hands. "Oh God! oh God!" he muttered to himself. "But you will be so good as to forgive, and not be angry. Oh, what a man, what a man! Oh God! oh God! He is my own brother, and he has caused me nothing but sorrow. For you know. he . . ."

Moses Mosevitch tapped his forehead with his fingers and continued:

"He is not right in the head . . . he is a ruined man. And what I am to do with him I don't know. He is fond of no one, respects no one, is afraid of no one. . . . Do you know, he laughs at everyone, talks nonsense, thees-and-thous everyone to their face. You would scarce believe it, Varlamov came here once, and Solomon said such things to him that he beat him with a whip, and me too. . . . Now why beat me? Is it my fault? God deprived him of reason, it was therefore His Will, but is it my fault?"

Ten minutes went by, and Moses Mosevitch was still grumbling in a low voice and sighing.

"He doesn't sleep at night, but thinks and thinks and thinks; and what does he think about? God alone knows! If you go to him at night he gets angry and laughs at you. He does not like me. . . . And he does not want anything! Papa when he died left us each six thousand roubles. I bought my- self a tavern, married, and have got children. He burnt all his money in the stove. What a shame, what a siiame! Where- fore burn it? You don't want it; well, give it to me, but why hurn it?"

Suddenly the swing-door squeaked, and the floor shook with someone's footsteps. A light breeze blew over Ego- rooshka, and it seemed to him that some large black bird poised just above his face and waved its wings. He opened Itis eyes. . . . His uncle, with his bag in his hand ready to set forth, was standing by the divan. Father Christopher holding his black hat in his hand, was bowing to someone, and smiling, not softly and tenderly as he usually did, but deferentially and stiffly, which did not at all suit his style of face. And Moses Mosevitch, exactly as if his body had been broken into three parts, was swaying and doing his utmost not to overbalance. Solomon alone, a:; if nothing was bappening, stood in a corner with his arms crossed, and as \lefore smiling contemptuously.

"Pray forgive us, your Excellency, it is not very clean here!" stuttered Moses Mosevitch with his pained-sweet smile, no longer taking any notice of Kuzmitchov or Father Christopher, merely swaying with his whole body so as not to overbalance. "We are simple folk, your Excellency!"

Egorooshka opened his eyes. There in the room no doubt stood Her Excellency, in the person of a young, very pretty and plump lady in a black dress and a straw hat. Befow Egorooshka had time to look at her features, somehow tha tall lonely poplar which he had seen that day by the hillock came into his mind.

"Has Varlamov passed here to-day?" asked a woman's voice.

"No, your Excellency," answered Moses Mosevitch.

"If you see him to-morrow, ask him to come and see me for a minute."

Suddenly, quite unexpectedly, half a yard away from his face, Egorooshka saw a pair of dark velvety brows, large brown eyes, soft dimpled cheeks, and a smile which like the rays of the sun was diffused over the whole face—someone who smelt quite deliciously.

"What a dear little boy!" said the lady. "Who does he be- long to? Kasimir Michaelitch, look what a darling! Oh God! He is asleep! Dear little chubby child! . . ."

The lady gave Egorooshka two good kisses on either cheek; he smiled and, thinking he was dreaming, closed his eyes. The swing-door squeaked—and he heard some hasty footsteps— somebody came in and went out.

"Egorooshka! Egorooshka!" came the sound of two deep voices in a wh;sper. "Get up; we must go!"

Someone, probably Deniski, placed Egorooshka on his feet and led him by the hand. On the way he half-opened his eyes, and once more he saw the lovely lady in the black dress who had kissed him. She was standing in the middle of the room, and smiled as she watched him go out, and gave him a friendly nod. When he got to the door he saw a handsome stout dark man in a bowler hat and gaiters. Evidently he wvas the lady's escort.

"Tprrr!" sounded in the yard.

Egorooshka saw a new luxurious-looking carriage and a pair of black horses standing by the door. On the box-seat sat a man in livery with a long whip in his hand.

Solomon was the only one who accompanied them to the door. His face wore a strained expression of suppressed laughter; he looked as if he were waiting in the greatest im- patience for the departure of the guests in order to indulge in a good laugh at them.

"The Countess Dranitska," whispered Father Christopher, getting into the vehicle.

"Yes, Countess Dranitska," repeated Kuzmitchov, also in a whisper.

The impression created by the arrival of the Countess was evidently very great, for even Deniski spoke in a whisper, and he only made up his mind to whip his bays and shout at them when they had driven a quarter of a verst away, and when far behind, instead of the tavern, nothing but a dim light was to be seen.

IV

But who, finally, is this elusive mysterious Varlamov, of whom everyone is speaking, whom Solomon despises, and who is wanted even by the beautiful Countess? As he sat by Deniski on the box-seat this very man was the object of sleepy Egorooshka'e thoughts. He had never seen him, but had often heard of him, and not infrequently pictured him to himself. He knew that Varlamov owned several tens of thousands of acres of land, nearly a hundred thousand sheep, and a very great deal of money. Of his mode of life and occupations Egorooshka only knew that he always "circled about these parts," and that everyone was always looking for him.

At home Egorooshka had also heard a lot about the Countess Dranitska. She too owned several tt.ns of thousands of acres, large numbers of sheep, a stud, and lots of money; but she did not "circle," she lived on her own rich property, about which Ivan Ivanitch and others, who had several times been to visit the Countess on business, reported wonderful things. Thus_; so they said, in the Countess's drawing-room, where hung portraits of all the Polish kings, was a large table- clock in the shape of a rock, on the rock stood a rearing gold horse with eyes of brilliants, and on the horse sat a gold rider, who, every time the clock struck, waved his hat to the right and to the left. They also said that the Countess gave a ball twice a year to which she invited all the nobles and functionaries in the district, and to which Varlamov also went. All the guests had tea from silver samovars, were given the most unexpected things to eat—for instance, in winter, at Christmas-time, raspberries and strawberries were served to them—and they danced to a band which played day and night. . . .

"And how pretty she is!" thought Egorooshka remember- ing her face and smile.

Kuzmitchov was evidently also thinking of the Countess, for when the vehicle had gone about two versts, he said:

"He swindles her well that Kasimir Michaelitch! Three years ago, do you remember, when I bought some wool from her, he made a profit of three thousand over one of my pur- chases."

"It is useless to expect anything else from a Pole," said Father Christopher.

"And she does not care much. As they say, young and foolish. There is nothing but air in her head!"

For some reason or other Egorooshka felt inclined to think only of Varlamov and the Countess, particularly this latter. His drowsy brain utterly refused to think the usual things; it was befogged, and managed to get hold of nothing but im- probable and fantastic forms, which, however, have the one convenience, that they somehow arise in the brain of them- selves without any effort on the part of the thinker, and it.

only becomes necessary to shake one's head when they disap- pear and leave no trace. None of the surroundings either adapted themselves to the wonted thoughts. To the right were the dark shadows of the hillocks, looking as if they were hiding something unknown and fearful; to the left, all over the horizon, the sky was flushed incarnadine, and it was difficult to ascertain whether it was owing to some conflagration or whether it was the moon preparing to rise. The horizon was as visible as in the day-time, but its soft lilac tints had disap- peared in the black night-mist; the whole steppe was hid in the mist, like Moses Mosevitch's c-bildren under the counter- pane.

At dusk, and in the night-time in July, quails and corn- crakes no longer utter their call-notes, nor does the night- ingale sing in the woody swamps; there is no scent of flowers, yet the steppe is still beautiful and full of life. No sooner has the sun set and a mist enwrapped the earth, than the woes of the day are forgotten and forgiven, and the steppe breathes evenly and deeply. Owing perhaps to the fact that the state of the grass is invisible in the dusk, there arises the sound of a cheerful youthful buzz, which does not occur in the day-time; there are buzzings, whistlings, scratchings; steppe-basses, tenors, and trebles all mingle in one incessant monotonous sound, to the accompaniment of which it is pleasant to think and be melancholy. The monotonous crackling lulls one to sleep like a cradle-song. You drive along aware that you are dozing, when suddenly, from somewhere comes the short alarmed cry of some unsleeping bird, or there echoes an undefinable sound resembling some human voice saying an astonished "A-ah," then slumber again closes your eyes. Then you may perchance drive by the edge of a swamp, where bushes grow, and you hear a bird which the dwellers of the steppe cal 1 "spluker" for it calls to someone "Splu, splu, splu"; sometimes it goes "Ha, ha, ha," or indulges in hysterical weeping—it is an owl. Who it calls to, and who listens to it in this plain, God alone knows, but its cry has something sad and plaintive. . . . There is a smel! of hay, dried-up grass, and belated flowers; it is a heavy, stale, sweet, and delicate smell.

Everything is visible through the mist, but it is difficult to make out the colour and features of the objects. Things look different from what they are. You drive along, and sud- denly you see standing before you by the side of the road a silhouette resembling that of a monk; it stands motionless, waiting, and holding something in its hand. . . . Is he a cut- throat? The figure approaches, gets taller, it is now on a line with the vehicle, and you discover it is not a human being but a lonely bush or a bit of rock. Similar motionless expectant forms are dotted about the hillock, hide behind the tumuli, peep out of the steppe-grass; they all have a resemblance to human beings and fill one with suspicious fears.

When the moon rises, the night grows pale and dim. The mist seems to disappear, the atmosphere becomes clear, light and warm, everything becomes more distinct, and by the road-side you can even distinguish the separate stalks of the steppe-grass. In the far distance you can discern bits of bark and stones. The suspicious-looking figures resembling monks, against the pale background of the night, look blacker and sterner. Often and often amid the monotonous buzzing, that someone's "A-ah" of astonishment resounds in the silent air, or the cry of a wakeful or delirious bird is heard. Broad shadows pass over the plain like clouds in the sky, and in the far inconceivable distance, if you keep your eyes on them, you see dark and fantastic shapes issuing and grouping themselves one after the other. . . . It is rather frightening. If you glance up at the pale green star-sprinkled sky, where there is not a cloud or a blot, you understand why the warm air is so still, why nature is on the watch and afraid to stir: she is sorry and afraid of misapplying even one instant of life. It is only possible to conceive how immense and limit- less is the sky, either at sea or in the steppe at night when the moon is shining. It is fearful, beautiful, inviting, looks languid, beckons to one till one turns giddy with its blandish- ments.

On you drive for another hour. . . . By the road-side you come across some silent time-honoured tumulus, or a stone- pile, put there by God knows whom, and when some night- bird flies noiselessly over the ground, little by little there come into your mind those legends of the steppes, wayfarers' stories, old steppe folk-tales, and all those things which you yourself can imagine and apprehend in your soul. And then in the buzz of the insects, in the suspicious figures and tumuli, in the azure sky, in the light of the moon, in the flight of night-birds, in all that which you see and hear, is discernible a great beauty, youth, revival of strength and passionate thirst for life. The soul responds to lovely stern nature, and is desirous of flying over the steppe together with the night- birds. But in its solemn beauty and its excess of joy you are aware of tension and grief, as if the steppe acknowledges she is lovely, that her richness and inspiration perishes for the universe in vain, her praises celebrated by no one, she is needed by no one, and amid her joyous accents you detect the melancholy, hopeless call for: "A bard! a bard I"

"Tprrr! How are you, Panteli? All well?"

"Yes, praise be to God, Ivan Ivanitch!"

"Have you seen Varlamov, my lad?"

"No, I have not o;een him."

Egorooshka woke and opened his eyes. The vehicle was standing still. On the right of the road stretched a long train of waggons, alongside of which people were moving to and fro. All the waggons, owing to the fact that they were- piled up with large bales of wool, looked inflated and high, while the horses looked very small and short-legged.

"That being the case we will go on to Milkite!" said Kuz- mitchov in a loud voice. "The Jew said that Varlamov would spend the night at the Milkite's. So then, good-bye, mates! ^^ speed you 1"

"Good-bye, Ivan Ivanitch," answered several voices.

"Here, I'll tell you what, my lads," said Kuzmitchov briskly, "you'll take my little boy with you! What is the good of his bumping along with us? Panteli, seat him on your bales of wool and let him come along leisurely, we must hurry. Get down, Egor, go on, it's all right! . . ."

Egorooshka clambered off the box-seat. Several pairs oi hands caught hold of him, raised him somewhere in the air, and he sank on to something large and soft and slightly moist with dew. It seemed to him now, that the sky was quite close and the earth far off.

"Hie, take his coat!" Deniski shouted from somewhere far below.

The coat and his little bundle were thrown from below and fell close to Egorooshka. Not wishing to stop and ask him- self questions he quickly laid his head on his bundle, wrapped himself in his coat, and stretching himself at full length, with a little shudder at the dew, he smiled with satisfaction as he thought: "Sleep, sleep, sleep. . . ."

"See here, you fellows, don't you forget him!" Deniski was heard saying below.

"Good-bye, mates! God speed you!" shouted Kuzmitchov. "I trust to you."

"Don't worry, Ivan Ivanitch!"

Deniski shouted to his horses, the vehicle gave a piercing scream and moved on, but not by the road, somewhere away to one side. There was silence for two minutes, just as if the train of waggons had fallen asleep, the only sound being the gradually dying screech of the bucket fastened on at the back of the britchka, then suddenly someone in the fore- front of the waggons shouted:

"Kiruha! Move on!"

The first waggon creaked. Then another, then a third; Egorooshka felt the waggon on which he was lying rock, and heard it also creak : the train of waggons was on the move. Egorooshka held firmly on to the rope by which the bales were fastened, again smiled with satisfaction, adjusted the ginger in his pocket, and began to doze just as he usually dozed in his bed at home.

When he awoke the sun had risen. Concealed by a tumulus it was striving to shed its light on the earth, its beams were radiating on all sides and flooding a golden light on the horizon. It seemed to Egorooshka that the sun was not in its proper place, for yesterday it rose behind him whereas to-day it was very much to his left . . . but besides none of the surroundings were like yesterday's. There were no hillocks, and wherever you looked was a brown cheerless plain without .any end to it. Small tumuli rose here and there, and yester- day's rooks were flying about. Far ahead shone a steeple and the cottages of some village. It being a Sunday the "Top- knots" were sitting at home baking and boiling, as was evi- dent by the smoke issuing from all the chimneys and a grey- blue transparent cloud hanging over the village. In the space between the church and the cottages shimmered the blue line of a river, and beyond it was a hazy distance. But nothing bore so little resemblance to the things of yesterday as the road. Instead of a road, a kind of track very unusually wide, bold and imposing extended over the steppe. It was a grey Dtrip much driven over and covered with dust like all roads, but several tens of yards in width. Its width aroused Ego- rooshka's curiosity and turned his thoughts to legendary tales. Who drives along such roads? For whom is such width necessary? It is inconceivable and strange. One might really think that those enormous seven-league-stepping people, like Ilia Murometz and Solovia the Robber, had not yet disap- peared from Russia, and that the heroes' horses were not yet extinct. Egorooshka gazed at the road, and pictured to himself six large racing chariots in a row like those he had seen in drawings in Holy Scriptures; six wild and frenzied horses were harnessed to them; the wheels would raise a cloud of dust up to the skies, and the horses were being driven by people such as one might dream of, or who appear in legen- dary tales. And how these figures would correspond to the steppe and the road if only they existed!

On the right-hand side, the whole length of the road, were telegraph poles with two wires. They grew smaller and smaller, and disappeared altogether in the village behind the cottages, then came in view again in the lilac distance as small thin sticks similar to pencils popped into the ground. Hawks, merlins and crows sat on the wires, and looked calmly at the moving train of waggons.

Egorooshka was lying on the very last waggon, and there< fore had a view of the whole length of the train of them. There were about twenty waggons in all and there was one driver to each three waggons. By the last waggon where lay Egorooshka walked an old man with a grey beard. He was as thin and small as Father Christopher, but the expression on his sunburnt face was stern and thoughtful. It was more than likely that this old man was neither stern nor thoughtful, but his red eye-lashes and long pointed nose, lent his face a hard cold expression which is found among people who are accustomed to think very seriously, and in solitude. Like Father Christopher he wore a wide-brimmed black hat, and he was barefooted. Probably from a habit acquired in the winter months, when more than once it happened to him to freeze as he tramped along by the side of the waggon, he: slapped his thighs and stamped his feet as he walked. Having noticed that Egorooshka was awake, he looked at him for a bit, then with a shrug as if he were cold, said:

"Ah! you've woken up, laddie. Is it son you are to Ivan Jvanitch?"

"No, his nephew."

"To Ivan Ivanitch? You see I have taken off my boots and hop along barefooted. My feet hurt, pester me; without boots one walks freer . . . freer, laddie. . . . That is to say, without boots. . . . So then, you're his nephew? He is a good fellow, nitchevo . . . God give him health! Nitchevo.

. . . About Ivan Ivanitch . . . he ' went to Milkite's. . . .. Oh, Lord have mercy on us!"

The old man spoke as if it were very cold weather, pausing continually and hardly opening his mouth; he pronounced the lip consonants badly, stammering over them as if his lips were frost-bitten. His expression was stern and he never once smiled as he looked at Egorooshka.

Further on a man in a long rusty-brown coat, wearing a cap and high-boots, with very crumpled boot-legs, and a whip in his hand, came out from between two carts. He was not an old man,—about forty. When he turned round, Egorooshka saw he had a red face with a scanty goat's-beard, and a spungious lump beneath his right eye. Besides this very ugly lump he had another characteristic which struck one ; he held his whip in the left hand and waved his right hand about as if he were conducting some invisible choir; occasionally he held his whip under his arm and conducted with both hands, humming at the same time.

The driver next to him was a long rectilinear figure with very sloping shoulders and a back as flat as a board. He looked as if he were marching or had swallowed a poker, his arms did not swing but hung stiffly by his side, and he stepped along in as wooden a manner as a toy-soldier, scarcely bending his knees and striving to make his step as long as possible; whilst the old man or the owner of the spungious lump took two steps, he succeeded in taking only one, where- fore it seemed as if he were walking slower than anyone else and would be left behind. His face was bound round with a rag, and on his head was something in the shape of a monk's skull-cap; he wore a short Little Russian coat, all patched, blue loose trousers and bast shoes.

Egorooshka did not look to see what the other drivers were like. He lay on his stomach, picked a hole in the bale, and having nothing to do began to twine the threads of wool. The old man walking along below turned out to be less stern than one might guess from his face. Having once started the conversation he did not want to discontinue it.

"Where are you going to?" he asked as he stumped along.

"To school," answered Egorooshka.

"To study? Aha! . . . Well, the Queen of Heaven . help you! So. Two brains are better than one. To one man God gives one brain, to another two, to another three . . . to an- other three, that's quite true. . . . We are bom with one, the second comes with education, and the third with a good life. So you see, little mate, it is good if a man has three brains. It is not only easier to live, but to die—yes, to die. . . . But we die all the same."

The old man scratched his forehead, looked with red eyes up at Egorooshka, and continued:

"Maxim Nicolaitch, a gentleman from Slavianoserbska, also took his little boy last year to school. I can't say how he is with regard to the sciences, but the boy was all right, quite right. . . . God give him health! A fine gentleman . . . yes, also sent him away to study. In Slavianoserbska, there is no institution certainly, to teach you the sciences, there isn't . . . but the town is all right, quite all right. . . . There is the usual school for plain folk, but as regards deeper studies there isn't . . . there isn't, that's true. What's your name?"

"Egorooshka."

"Consequently, Egor. . . . The holy and great martyr, Egor the Victorious, whose date is twenty-third of April. My saint's name is Panteli . . . Panteli Zaharov Holodov. . . . We are Holodovs. I am a native of Tim Government of Koursk, maybe you've heard? l\Iy brothers worked them- selves up to be citizens and are in some trade in the town, but I am a moujik ... I remained a peasant. Seven years back I drove thither . . . that is to say, home. ... I have been in the country and in the town. ... I mean I have been to Tim. They were all alive and well then, thank God, but now, I don't know . . . maybe some have died. . • • It is time too they died, for they are all old, some of them are older than I am. Death is all right, quite all right, only of course, one must not die impenitent. There is nothing worse than a shameless death. A shameless death is the Devil's joy. And if you want to die penitent, that is, so that God's gates will not be shut against you, pray to Varvara, Greater Martyr. She is mediatrix. She is, that's true. . . . Because God appointed her such a task in Heaven, so that everyone therefore should have full right through her to pray for penitence."

Panteli mumbled on and apparently did not worry whethei Egorooshka listened to him or not. He spoke in a drowsy, droning voice, neither raising nor lowering his tone, yet managed to say a great deal in a short while. What he said was in fragments having very little connection with each other, and quite uninteresting to Egorooshka. It may be that he was only talking, because having spent the night in silence now that it was morning he wanted to articulate aloud his thought: whether they all were well at home? Having finished about penitence he again spoke of that certain Maxim Nicolaitch of Slavianoserbska.

"Yes, he took his little boy. . . . He took him, that's so. . . ."

One of the drivers who was walking far ahead left his place, ran to one side, and began thrashing the ground with his whip. He was a tall broad-shouldered man of about thirty, with flaxen curly hair, and evidently very strong and healthy; judging by his activity with the whip, and his eagerness characterised by his attitude, he was beating some live beast. Another driver, a short thick-set man with a bushy black beard, wearing a waistcoat and an embroidered shirt; ran towards him. He burst into a deep hoarse laugh and shouted:

"Mates, Dimov has killed a snake! As true as God!"

There are people whose minds can be ascertained by their voice and their laugh. The black-bearded man happened to belong to that fortunate class: one heard how insurmountable was his stupidity by his voice and his laugh. When he had finished thrashing, flaxen-haired Dimov raised his whip and laughingly hurled something resembling a rope at the wag- gons.

"It's not a snake, it's an adder," shouted someone.

The man of the wooden walk and bound-up face, walked quickly up to the dead snake, looked at it, and wrung his stick-like fingers.

"You galley-slave!" he called in a hollow whimpering voice. "What did you kill an adder for? What had it done to you, wretch? To kill an adder!"

"He ought not to have killed it, that's true . • ." calmly mumbled Panteli, "ought not. It is not venomous. Although it looks like a snake it is a gentle harmless beast. . . . Likes people . . . adders do. . . ."

Dimov and the black-bearded man evidently felt guilty, for they laughed loudly, and without heeding the grumblings lazily went back to their waggons. When the last waggon reached the place where lay the dead adder, he with the bound-up face standing by the adder, turned to Panteli and asked him in a whimpering voice:

"But, dad, what did he kill an adder for?"

His eyes, as Egorooshka now saw, were small and lustre- less, his face was grey, unhealthy, and also looked as it were lustreless, and h;s chin iooked very swollen and red.

"Dad, why did he kill it?" he repeated walking alongside of Panteli.

"A stupid fellow whose fingers itch, he must kill some- thing," answered the old man. "But he oughtn't to kill an adder, that's true. . . . Dimov is a devil-may-care, as every- one knows, and kills anything within his reach, and Kiruha did not prevent it. He ought to have stopped it, instead he went—'ha, ha, ha,' then 'ho, ho, ho. . . .' But you, Vassia, don't be angry. . . . Why be angry? It's dead, well, God have mercy on them . . . devil-may-care Dimov, and Kiruha the shallow-brained. . . • It's all right. . . . They arr stupid folk, dull of understanding, well, God have mercy on them! Emilian there, never harms anything he shouldn't . • . never. That's true. . . . He is educated, and they are fitupid. . . . Emilian there . . . he does no harm."

The driver in the rusty brown coat, with the spungious lump, and who conducted an invisible choir, hearing his name stopped, and waiting till Panteli and Vassia came along- side of him joined them.

"What's the talk about?" he asked in a hoarse strangled voice.

"Vassia here is angry," said Panteli. "I have told him some things so that he should not be angry, that is . . . oh! my feet hurt, they are a pest! Oh! Oh! Hurting extra for Sunday, God's holy day!"

"It's from walking," observed Vassia.

"No, boy, no . . . it's not from walking. When I walk it's really better, when I lie down they burn—it's death to me. Walking is easier."

Emilian in the rusty brown coat was between Panteli and Vassia, and waved his hand as if these others were preparing to sing. Having waved a while he dropped his hand and croaked hopelessly.

"I have no voice!" he said. "It's a real disaster! All night and all the morning I have tried to get that triad of the 'Lord have mercy on us,' which we sung at the nuptial benediction of the Marinovski. It's in my head and my throat so to speak, but I cannot sing it! I have no voice."

He was silent for a moment while he thought of something, then continued:

"I was in the choir for fifteen years, in all the Luganski works there was no one with such a voice. Then, like a fool three years ago I bathed in the Donets, and since then I cannot sing a true note. I took cold in my throat. And with- out a voice I am no better than a workman without hands."

"That's true," agreed Panteli.

"I reckon now that I am a ruined man and nothing more."

At this moment Vassia suddenly caught sight of Egor- ooshka. His eyes glittered and grew smaller.

"A little sir is driving with us!" he said, covering his nose with his sleeve as if he were blushing. "What an important driver! If he remain with us, he'll drive the waggons and trade in wool!"

The incongruity of the idea of one and the same person being gentleman and driver, evidently seemed to him very odd and witty for he laughed heartily and continued to de- velop the idea. Emilian also looked up at Egorooshka, cursorily and coldly. He was busy with his own thoughts, and had it not been for Vassia he would not have noticed the presence of Egorooshka. Five minutes had hardly gone by before he again waved his hand about, then again described to his fellow-travellers the beauty of the nuptial benediction of "Lord have mercy on us" which he had remembered during the night, placed his whip under his arm, and flourished both arms.

About a verst from the village the train of waggons stopped by a well with a crane. When he lowered his bucket into the well the black-bearded Kiruha lay belly-down on the frame- work, and thrust his woolly head, his shoulders, and part of his body into the dark hole, so that all Egorooshka could see of him were his short legs which could hardly touch the ground. When he saw the reflection of his head at the bottom of the well, he was so pleased that he gave vent to his deep foolish laugh, and the well's echo answered likewise; when he got up from the side of the well he was as red as a lobster. The first one to run and get a drink was Dimov. He drank and laughed, often interrupting to tell Kiruha something funny, then he turned round and loudly, so that the whole steppe could hear, he uttered five very bad words. Egorooshka did not understand what such words meant, but that they were bad he was very well aware. He knew the dislike which his relatives and friends silently maintained towards them, and he himself for some unknown reason shared that feeling and was accustomed to think that only drunkards and evil- doers indulged in the privilege of using these words o:Jt loud. He recollected the murder of the adder, listened to Dimov's laugh, and felt something like hatred for this man. As if by design Dimov at this juncture caught sight of Egorooshka. who having clambered down from his waggon was going towards the well; he laughed loudly and called out:

"Mates, the old man has given birth to a son in the night!"

Kipjha choked with laughter. Someone else also laughed, and Egorooshka, blushing all over, finally decided that Dimov was a very bad man.

Flaxen-haired and curly Dimov, hatless and with his shirt unfastened, looked handsome and of great strength; in all his movements one detected the athletic and devil-may-care very well aware of his merits. He had a swing of the shoul- ders, held his arms akimbo, spoke and laughed louder than anyone else, and looked as if he were on the point of perform- ing some feat whereby he would astonish the world. He threw a foolish mocking look on the road, on the train of waggons and on the sky, it settled nowhere and seemed to be seeking out of idleness something to kill and something to iaugh at. He evidently feared no one, was ashamed of noth- ing, and very likely was not at all interested in Egorooshka's opinion. But Egorooshka, already hating with his whole soul his flaxen-hair, clean face, and strength, listened to his laugh with disgust and horror and tried to think of some bad words to retort to him.

Panteli also approached the bucket. He pulled a green image-lamp from his pocket, wiped it with a rag, dipped it into the bucket, drank from it, dipped it in once more, then wrapping it in the rag placed it back in his pocket.

"Dad, why do you drink out of a little lamp?" asked Egorooshka in surprise.

"Some drink out of a bucket and some out of little lamps," answered the old man evasively. "Each to his taste . . . you drink mK of a bucket, well, drink, and be well.''

"My pet, fond mother mine!'' suddenly said Vassia in a wheedling, whimpering voice, "my little pet!"

His eyes were fixed on something in the distance, they glistened and smiled, and his face assumed the expression it had earlier when he espied Egorooshka.

"What's the matter with you?" asked Kiruha.

"A dear little fox . . . lying on its back and playing just like a dog. . . ."

They all looked into the distance and searched for the fox with their eyes, but could discover nothing. Vassia alone saw something with those troubled grey little eyes of his, and was in ecstasies. His sight, as Egorooshka afterwards learnt, was astonishingly penetrating. His sight was so good that the brown empty steppe for him was always full of life and matter. He had only to look into the distance to see a fox, or a hare, or a bustard, or some other living creature holding itself aloof from mankind. The wonder was, not to see the running hare or the flying bustard, for anyone driv- ing over the steppe can do that,—but it is not given to every- one to see these creatures in their free daily life when they are not running or hiding or looking about in alarm. Vassia saw foxes and hares playing, washing their faces with their paws, great-bustards smoothing their wings, or little-bustards sitting on their "points." Thanks to his keen-sightedness, be- sides the world which everyone could see Vassia had another world, his own, accessible to no one, and most likely a very pleasant one, for when he looked and grew enraptured it was difficult not to envy him.

When the train of waggons moved on the bells from the church were ringing for l\Iass.

v

The train of waggons set out from the village along the banks of the river. The sun was as scorching as on the previous day, the air was as stagnant and suffocating. There were several willows along the banks of the river, but their shade fell not on the road but over the water, where it was useless, and in the shade of the carts it was so stuffy and tiresome. The water was very blue as the sky was reflected in it, and it looked madly inviting.

The driver, Stepka, on whom Egorooshka's attention only now fell, an eighteen-year-old Little Russian youth, wearing a long shirt without a belt, and wide trousers fluttering about in his walk like a flag, quickly threw off his clothes, ran down the steep bank and flung himself into the water. He dived under the water three times, then swam on his back and blissfully closed his eyes. He smiled and knit his brows as if it tickled, hurt, and amused him. . On those hot days when there is no refuge from the sultry and stifling heat, the splash of water and loud breathing of a man bathing acts on the ear like wonderful music. As Dimov and Kiruha looked at Stepka they quickly threw off their clothes, and one after the other with a loud laugh, anticipat- ing enjoyment, fell into the water. And the quiet modest stream resounded with snuffiings and splashings and shouts. Kiruha choked and laughed and screamed as if they were trying to drown him, and Dimov chased him, trying to catch him by the foot.

"Eh, eh, eh!" he screamed, "catch him, stop him!"

Kiruha went "ho, ho, ho," and enjoyed himself, but the look on his face was the same as on dry land, stupid and stunned, just as if someone had crept up unnoticed to him from behind and dealt him a blow on the head with the butt- end of an axe. Egorooshka also undressed, but instead of slid- ing down the bank he took a run and a leap and dived into the water; he plunged pretty deep but did not reach the bottom for some cold pleasant power gropingly caught hold of him and brought him up to the surface. He spluttered and snuffled, blew bubbles and opened his eyes, and found the sun was shining on the river almost exactly in his face. At first there were blindin^ sparks, then t'ainbows and black spots dancing before his eyes; he hastened to dive once more, opened his eyes in the water, and saw something muddy- green similar to the sky on moonlit nights. Once again that power prevented him from touching the bottom and tarrying where it was cool, it brought him to the surface, where he spluttered and breathed so deeply that he felt refreshed and comfortable even down to his stomach. Then, so as to make the most of the water, he indulged in every luxury: he lay and floated on his back, splashed himself, turned somersaults, swam on his stomach, on one side, on his back and standing up, just as he felt inclined, and until he was tired. The further bank turning gold from the sun, was thickly overgrown with reeds whose flowers were bending over the water in lovely tufts. In one place the reeds shook, their flowers bowed low, there was a dry cracking sound. Stepka and Kiruha were in pursuit of cray-fish.

"A cray-fish—look, mates, a cray-fish!" triumphantly shouted Kiruha as he displayed one.

Egorooshka swam to the reeds, dived in and searched among the roots of the rushes. As he rummaged in the fluid mud he felt something sharp and nasty, maybe it was a cray-fish, but at this moment someone seized him by the leg and drew him to the surface. Coughing and choking Egor- ooshka opened his eyes, and saw before him the wet mocking face of the impudent Dimov. He was breathing heavily and judging by his expression he was inclined to continue his tricks. He held Egorooshka firmly by the leg and was al- ready raising his hand to take him by the neck, when Egorooshka with fear and loathing, as if he apprehended that the athlete might drown him, broke away from him saving:

"Fool! I'll hit you in the face!"

Feeling that this was insufficient to express his hatrea, !le thought a moment, and added:

"Villain! Son of a slut!"

But Dimov, as if nothing was the matter, took no further notice of Egorooshka and swam off towards Kiruha, shouting:

"Hie! Hie! Hie! Let us catch fish! Boys, let's have some fish!"

"Why not?" Kiruha agreed. "There must be a lot of fish about here."

"Stepka, run over to the village and ask the moujiks for a casting-net."

"They won't give it."

"They will. Ask them. Say, for the sake of Christ as we are travellers."

"That's true."

Stepka emerged from the water, quickly put on his clothes, and ran hatless towards the village. After his encounter with Dimov the water lost all its attraction for Egorooshka; he therefore came out of it and put his clothes on again. Panteli and Vassia were sitting on the steep bank dangling their legs and watching the bathers. Emilian was standing naked in water up to his knees close to the bank, he held the grass with one hand so as not to fall in and stroked his body with the other. He presented a very funny appearance with his long shoulder-blades, spungious lump under his eye, doubling himself up and evidently shrinking from the water. He was very seriously and resentfully looking at the water, as if making up his mind to chide it for having given him a cold that time in the Donets, and so deprived him of his voice.

"U^j' don't you bathe?" Egorooshka asked Vassia.

"Oh! . . . so . . . don't like it . . ." answered Vassia.

"Why is that swelling on your chin?"

"It hurts. • . . You see, little sir, I worked in a match- factory • . . the doctor said it was from that my jaw tumefied. The atmosphere is unwholesome. Besides myself t.hree children had swollen jaws, one of them rotted away altogether."

Soon Stepka returned with the rasting-net. Dimov and

Kiruha were getting quite violet and ochreous from staying so long in the water, but they set about catching fish with great zest. First they went to a deep place by the reeds. Dimov was up to his neck in the water and squat Kiruha up to his chin, he choked and blew bubbles, while Dimov stum- bling on the spinous roots fell and got mixed in the casting- net. They both floundered about and made so much noise that their fishing turned into a frolic.

"It's so deep," said Kiruha in a hoarse voice, "you can't catch anything."

"Don't pull, you devil!" shouted Dimov, striving to lay the casting-net. "Hold it with your hands!"

"You won't catch any there!" Panteli shouted to them from the bank. "Only bad ones— Try to the left. It is shal- lower."

Once a large fish appeared over the casting-net; everyone held their breath, but Dimov with a look of annoyance hit with his fist on the place where it had disappeared.

"Eh!" croaked Panteli, stamping his feet. "They have let him slip. It's gone!"

l\Ioving more leftwards, Dimov and Kiruha litth by little made a cast for small fish, and began to fish more seriously. They floundered on about three hundred feet farthe!"; one could see them choosing the deepest parts nearest the ;reeds, dragging the net after them, beating on the water with their hands, and shaking the reeds to drive the fish into the net. From the reeds they got on to the farther bank, and dragged up their net; then, with a very disenchanted look on their faces, they went back to the reeds. They were talking about something; what it was no one could hear. Meanwhile the sun was scorching their backs, the flies were stinging, and their flesh had now turned purple instead of violet. Behind them walked Stepka with a bucket in his lmnds, and with his shirt tucked up under his arms and held in his teeth. After each lucky haul, he raised in the air some kind of fisb which glittered in the sun, and shouted:

"Just look—what a catch! We have five like thati"

Each time they dragged up the net, Dimov, Kiruha, and Stepka rummaged a long time in the mud, put some things in the bucket, and threw away others. Occasionally some- thing found in the net was passed from hand to hand; they each looked at it with curiosity, then it also was thrown away.

"What have you got?" they shouted from the bank.

Stepka answered something, but it was difficult to hear what.

And now he emerged from the water holding the bucket in both hands, and, forgetting to let down his shirt, ran towards the waggons.

"It's already full!" he cried, panting. "Give us another!"

Egorooshka looked into the bucket; it was quite full. A young pike's ugly nose was sticking out of the water: there were also cray-fish and other small fish stirring about. Egorooshka put his hand to the bottom, and stirred up the water; the pike disappeared under the cray-fish, and in its place a perch and a tench swam to the surface. Vassia looked into the buc.ket. His eyes glistened, and his expression soft- ened as it did when he saw the fox. He picked something out of the bucket, carried it to his mouth, and there was a sound of crunching.

"Mates," said Stepka in surprise. "Vassia is eating live minnow! Ugh! "

"It is not a minnow, it's bean-pod," calmly answered Vassia, and he continued to crunch.

He pulled a fish's tail out of his mouth, looked sweetly at it, and put it back. As he chewed and crunched, it seemed to Egorooshka it was not a man he saw standing before him; Vassia's swollen chin, lustreless eyes, unusual keen-sighted- ness, the fish's tail in his mouth and the relish with which he ate the minnow. gave him more the resemblance to a wild mimal.

Egorooshka was bored in his company—besides the fish- ing was over, so he walked past the waggons, and, not feeling amused, wandered towards the village.

A few moments later he was standing in the church close to someone who smelt of hemp, and listening to the singing. Mass was nearly over. Egorooshka understood nothing about church-singing, and felt quite indifferent towards it. He listened for a little while, yawned, and began to examine the backs and napes of the people. He recognised one nape which was ruddy and wet from recent bathing—it was Emilian's. His hair was shaved so close that his ears stood out like lop^ ears on either side, and seemed to feel out of place. As he studied the back of his head and his ears, Egorooshka some- how realised what a very unhappy person Emilian was. He thought of his conducting, his hoarse voice, timid glances when he was bathing, and felt an immense pity for him. He- wanted to say something kind.

"I am here too," he said, gently pulling his sleeve.

People who have sung in the choir, either as bass or as tenor, and especially those who have conducted, even if only once in their lives, are accustomed to look at little boys in a severe and unfriendly manner. They do not give up this habit even after they have ceased to be in the choir. Emilian, half turning round and looking at Egorooshka over his shoul- der, said:

"Don't chatter in church!"

So then Egorooshka made his way up closer to the ikonstase. Here he saw some quite interesting people. Right in the fore- front, on a carpet to the right, he saw a gentleman and a lady. The gentleman, in a well-pressed blue suit, was standing stiffly, like a soldier saluting, and was holding his dark clean- shaven chin well in the air. By his stand-up collar, his well- poised chin, his slight baldness, and his walking-stick, you felt he was a person of great merit. From the excess of his merit did his neck and chin strain upwards with such vigour that his head seemed ready any minute to make away and fly aloft. The lady, who was plump and middle-aged, was wearlng a white silk shawl, and, holding her head on one side, she looked as if she had just conferred a favour on some- one, and was about to say, "Oh! don't bother to thank me, I don't like it." All around the carpet stood a thick wall of "top- knots."

Egorooshka went up to the ikonstase, and began kissing the ikons thereon. Before each image he slowly made a low bow to the ground, and without rising looked back at the people, then rose and kissed the image. The contact of the cold floor with his forehead was very pleasant. When the warden came from behind the altar with a long pair of snuffers to put out the candles, Egorooshka quickly rose from the ground and went towards him.

"Have they given the wafers?" he asked.

"Aren't any—aren't any," gruffly mumbled the old man; "no use looking. . . ."

The Mass was over. Egorooshka slowly left the church, and started to wander round the open squares. In his time he had seen not a few villages and squares and moujiks, and all the things which now came under his notice did not at all interest him. Having nothing to do, and so as to kill time somehow, he went up to a shop over the doors of which hung a broad red fustian stripe. The shop consisted of two spacious and badly lit halves; in the one half they sold red wares and grocery, and in the other half stood barrels of tar, and it was hung with horse-collars up to the roof. In both halves there was a good smell of leather and tar. The floor of the shop had been watered, and he who had watered it was evidently a great fantast and free-thinker, for it was all covered with patterns and cabalistic signs. Behind the counter, and leaning on it, was a fat si.lopman with a broad face and a rounded beard; he was probably a Great Russian. He was drinking tea and eating a bit of sugar with it, and after each gulp breathed a deep sigh. His expression was one of complete indifferencf' but every sigh seemed to say, "Just wait. I'll e;ive it you!" "Give me a kopeck's worth of dry sunflower seeds," Ego- rooshka said, addressing him.

The shopman raised his eyebrows, came from behind the counter, and poured a kopeck-worth of sunflower seeds into Egorooshka's pocket—the scales, by the way, were being used by an empty pot of pomade. Egorooshka had no wish to leave. He looked for a long time at the boxes with the ginger- bread, thought a bit, and asked as he pointed to some small gingers, which owing to the great lapse of time were thick with mildew:

"How much are those ginger-breads?"

"Two a kopeck."

Egorooshka fetched out of his pocket the ginger-bread given him by the Jewess, and asked:

"And these kind of ginger-breads, how much?"

The shopman took the ginger-bread in his hand, looked at it on every side, and raised an eyebrow.

"These?" he asked.

Then he raised the other eyebrow, thought a moment, and answered:

"Two for three kopecks."

There was a silence.

"Who are you?" asked the shopman, pouring himself out some tea from a red copper teapot.

"The nephew of Ivan Ivanitch."

"There are several Ivan Ivanitches," sighed the shopman; he looked past Egorooshka's head through the door, was silent a moment, then asked: "Don't you want any tea?"

"Please. . . ." Egorooshka assented somewhat unwill- ingly, although he felt a great longing for his morning tea.

The shopman poured him out a glass, and handed it him, together with a gnawed bit of sugar. Egorooshka sat on the folding-stool, and began to drink. He was about to inquire how much a pound of sugared almonds cost when a buyer entered, so the shopman, setting his glass on one side, attended to other business. He led the buyer into the half of the shop which ^^t of tar, and ^rake to ^m a long ti^ about s.ome afair or buyer was «^^tlv a v^¹ ^^^rate ^^

and a ^^^mg blade, foc he ^rnk his ^bead perpetuaUv in the ^sative ^^ ^^ went the ^mr. ^te as-

sured him of some^^^, and oats iato a large

sack.

"Such oats!" ruefuUv said the buyer. are only half

oats, they'd ^ke a chic^ra laugh. . . . Oh! weU, I^ go to Bondarenka! ''

"-nen EgorOO"..^^. retu^^ to the river-side he saw the smoke of a ^rall w^rf-pile. ^te were cooking their

Stepte ^^ ^^^ag in ^^ midst oi ^^Ae, and was s^^rng in a pot with a j^ged ^^ra. A few steps away, ^^ with eyes red^^^ by ^^ke. were sitting

d^^ng the In iront oi lay the casting-net covered tn mud ar:d wherein ^^ lay ^ad fuh and ^^ cray-

5::h crawled.

E^^^, woo had not long since ret^^^ from the church, siaing Panteli his ^rads, and, in a ^^celv

audible hoarse voice, was ĥumming: "To Thee we sing." Dimov was wandering ^^rng the oor-.es.

Ha,ing ^^hed clraning tile fuh. ^^hua and \'a.ssia gath- ered up the ^^ the live cray-fi5h iaw the bucket, ri^^ them, then poured them all inw the boiliag water.

' Did you put in any iat?'' Stepka asked, re^OTing the vtith his ^^ra.

'"■What ioc? Fish are fuU of it,"

Beiore remo,ing the pot fr^ the fire. St^^. strewed in three handfuls of milet-^^ ^^ a ^maful of salt; finally be ^^ it, s^cked his lips, licked the ^ron. and croaked in a very self-sa^^ed way—that ^^nt the gruel was ready. except Panteli sat ro^^ the pot, and set to ..ork witn

their

"Oh: Vou! Give the little sir a ^^n," r^^Aerl

Panteli. be not want to eat to?''

"O^ is r.10ujik's f^ri . . ." s^^

"And very good too, if he is hungry."

They gave Egorooshka a spoon. He ate his food without sitting down, standing by the pot and looking down into it as into a deep pit. The gruel smelt of raw fish, and in fact there were fishes' scales mixed with the millet. It was quite impossible to catch the cray-fish with the spoon, so the eaters had to take them out of the pot with their hands. Vassia, in particular, made very little ceremony about it—he even dipped his sieeves as well as his hands into the gruel. All the same, the gruel tasted excellent, and it reminded Egorooshka of the cray-fish soup which his mamma made at home on fast- days. Panteli sat apart from them, and munched bread.

"Dad, why aren't you eating with us?" Emilian asked him.

"I don't eat cray-fish. . . . The devil take them I" said the old man, turning away with disgust.

During the meal there was general conversation. From this conversation, Egorooshka gathered that all his new ac- quaintances, regardless of their differences in age and char- acter, were alike in one particular: they all of them had had a wonderful past, and the present was very bad. They all spoke of their past with ecstasy and treated the present almost with contempt. A Russian loves to reminisce but dislikes the act of living. Egorooshka did not yet know this, so before the gruel was all eaten, he profoundly believed that around the cauldron sat people who had been insulted and wronged by fate. Panteli told of days past when there were no railroads, when he walked with his waggons to :\Ioscow and to Nijni, when he worked such a lot he did not know where to put all his money. And what merchants there were in those days, what fish, how cheap everything was! Nowadays their routes were shorter, merchants were meaner, the people poorer, bread dearer, everything had diminished and dwindled to a mini- mum. Emilian told how formerly he had worked in the mill in Lougansk, and sung in the choir. He had had a remarkable voice, and could read music quite well, now he had relapsed into being a peasant, and living on the charitv of others who sent him their horses and so took half his earnings. V^^ had worked in a match-factory, Kiruha had been coachman with some very good ^^le, and been reckoned as the best driver of a troika in the neighbourhood. Dimov ^^ the son of a well-to-do moujik, lived in comfort and idleness, and had not a care. He had hardlv attained his twentieth year when his stem, cruel father, wishing to instruct him in busi- ^^ and fearing lest he should get spoiled at home, sent him off as driver, just like any landless ^^^rnt or worker. Stepka alone remained silent, but by his beardless face one could tell that he had sen much better days than the present ones.

Dimov, as he thought of his father. frowned and ceased to eat. He looked at his companions out of the corner of his eye, and his glance rested on Egorooshka.

•'•Vou heathen, take off your hatl" he said rudely. "Does anyone eat in a hat? Not even a baim!"

Egorooshka took off his hat without saying a word, but the gruel had lost its flavour, nor did he hear that Panteli and Vassia were taking his part. His bosom heaved with anger against that impudent fellow, and he made up his mind that come what might he would ha,e his revenge.

After their dinner they all wandered off to the waggons, and stretched themseh'es in the shade.

''Dad. are we ^n going on?" Egorooshka asked Panteli.

"When ^^ we shall go on. . . . We shan't go now, it's too hot. ... Oh! Lord, Thy will. . . . Holy Virgin. Lie down, little sir! "

Soon the sound of snoring was heard from beneath the was^ons. Egorooshka would ha\'e liked to have gone back to tbe village. but he thought it over, yawned, and laid himself near the old man.

VI

Al day the waggons remained by the river, and only left ''heir place when the sun went down.

Once more Egorooshka lay on the bale of wool while the waggon softly creaked and rocked; below walked Panteli, stamping his feet, slapping his thighs, and mumbling; and like on the previous day the air hummed with the steppe music.

Egorooshka Jay on his back with his hands behind his head, looking up at the sky. He saw it on fire with the redness of dusk, and then he saw the light go out; the guardian angels drew their golden wings over the horizon and disposed them- selves for their night's rest; the day had been successful, the soft blissful night was beginning, and they might sit quietly at home in heaven. . . . Egorooshka saw the sky grow dim, the mist descending over the ground, and the stars light up one after the other.

If you keep your eyes fixed for a long while on the vast sky, somehow your thoughts and your soul acquire the con- sciousness of solitude. You begin to feel yourself irrevocably lonely; all which you had considered previously as close to you and related to you becomes illimitably distant and of no value. The stars which have been looking from the skies for thousands of years, and the incomprehensible sky itself, and the mist, unconcerned as they all are with man's short life, oppress you by their silence when you stand face to face with them and strive to fathom their thoughts. The thought comes into one's mind of that loneliness which awaits each one of us by the grave, and the barrenness of life seems something despairing and dreadful. . . .

Egorooshka thought of his grandmother, now sleeping in the cemetery under the cherry trees: he remembered her lying in her coffm with the five-kopeck pieces on her eyes, how they afterwards closed her in and put her in the grave; he remembered the dull thuds of the clods of earth on the lid. • . . He represented to himself his grandmother in her dark narrow coffin, helpless and by all forsaken. His imagination drew his grandmother as suddenly awakening and not under- standing where she was, knocking on the lid, calling for help, and in the end fainting away with fright and dying over again. He pictured to himself as dead, his mother, Father Christo- pher, Countess Dranitska, Solomon. But, try as he would, he could not picture himself in a dark grave, far from home, abandoned, helpless, dead—it would not come; for himself personally he could not admit the possibility of death, and felt he would never die. . . . And Panteli, whose time it was to dit:!, walked below calling over the roll of his thoughts:

"Nitchevo . . . nice gentleman . . ." he mumbled—■ "took the little sir to study, and how he does there, never heard about that. . . . In Slavianoserbska, they say, there is no institution to lead to much learning. . . . There isn't, that's true. . . . The little sir was all right, nitchevo . . . when he grows up he will help his father. Egor, you are young .;till, but when you are a big man you'll support your father and mother. It is so ordained by God. . . . Honour your father and mother. ... I my own self had some children; they were burnt . . . my wife was burnt, and the children. . . . That's true . . . on Christmas night our cottage was burnt. It was not my house, I had gone to Orel. In Orel . . . Mary ran out into the street, then remembered that the chil- dren were asleep in the cottage, ran back, and was burnt with the children. . . . Yes. . . . The next day we found only the bones."

Towards midnight, the drivers and Egorooshka were again assembled around a fire. While the steppe-grass was kindling, Kiruha and Vassia went somewhere to a marsh for water; they disappeared in the darkness, but the clank of their buckets and their voices could be heard all the time, therefore the marsh could not be very far away. The light of the fire cast a large flickering halo on the ground; although the moon was shining, the things outside the red halo looked impene- trable and dark. The drivers were partly dazzled by this light, and they could only see a portion of the great road; the wag- gons with the bales, and the horses were hardly noticeable in the gloom except in the semblance of a mountain of undefined outline. Some twenty s^eps from the fire, by the edge of the road, stood a wooden grave-cross leaning over to one side. Egorooshka, before the fire was aflame and it was possible to see some distance away, had noticed that just another such a leaning cross stood on the other side of the great highway.

When Kiruha and Vassia returned with water, they filled up the cauldron and fixed it over the fire. Stepka, with the jagged spoon in his hand, took up his post in the smoke by the cauldron, and, looking thoughtfully into the water, waited for the first signs of scum bubbles. Panteli and Emilian sat side by side in silence, deep in thought; Dimov lay belly downwards, resting his head in his hands and looking into the fire; Stepka's shadow danced over him, and at times it hid and at times it revealed his handsome face. . . . Kiruha and Vassia wandered some little distance away gathering grass and birchbark for the fire. Egorooshka, with his hands in his pockets, stood by Panteli and watched how the flames devoured the grass.

Everyone was resting, thinking, looking casually at the grass over which danced the red light. There is something very melancholy, dreamy, and in the highest degree poetic in a lonely grave. . . . You hear its silence, and in this silence you feel the presence of the soul of the unknown being who lives beneath that cross. How do their souls like the steppe? Do they not feel sad on moonlit nights? And the steppe around a grave seems sorrowful, dismal, museful, the grass more afflicted, and it would seem as if even the grasshoppers' cry were in some measure subdued. There is no passer-by who would not mention that soul in his prayers, and look back at that grave until it remained far behind veiled in mist.

"Dad, why is that cross there?" asked Egorooshka.

Panteli looked at the cross, then at Dimov, and asked:

"l\Iike, this must be the place where the mowers murdered the traders?"

Dimov reluctantly turned over on his elbow, looked at the road, and answered:

"The very same. . . ."

There was a silence. Kiruha broke up and kneaded the dry grass, then shoved it under the cauldron; the fire flared up. Stepka was enveloped in the black smoke, and in the gloom on the road among the waggons flickered the shadow of the cross.

"Aye, murdered . • Dimov said reluctantly. "The traders, a father and son, were on their way to sell a picture. They stopped at a tavern not far from here, kept now by Ignatius Thomin. The old man drank to excess, and began to boast that he had a lot of money with him. Traders are a boastful lot if ever there were. . . • He could not refrain from showing off before our friend. At this time some mowers were spending the night at the tavern, whereupon, hearing how this merchant boasted, they took counsel together. . . ."

"Oh, Lord. . . • Holy Virgin!" sighed Panteli.

"The next day, when it was scarce light," Dimov continued, "the traders prepared to continue their journey, and the mowers attached themselves to them: 'Let us go, your Honour, together. It is merrier, and the peril will be lessened, as not far from here is a dark spot.' The traders drove at a foot's pace so as not to break the picture, and this quite suited the mowers. ..."

Dimov knelt up and stretched himself.

"Yes," he continued with a yawn. "It was no good; as soon as the traders reached that spot, they set on them with their scythes. The son, brave fellow, snatched a scythe from one of them and went for them. . . . But of course they were overpowered—there were eight of them. They hacked the traders so that thre was not a sound place left on their bodies. When they had finished, they dragged them off the road, the father to one side, the son to the other. . . . If it is whole, I don't know. . . . Can't see from here."

"It is whole," said Kiruha.

"They say there was very little money.''

"Very little," Panteli affirmed. "A hundred roubles.''

"Yes; and three of them died, for the young trader, had also hacked well with his scythe. . . . Died of loss of blood. He caught one on the arm, and he ran, so they say, four versts without his hand; they found him on a mound at Kurikovo; he was squatting with his head on his knees as if he were thinking, they looked—there was no breath in him —he was dead."

"They found him by the bkody trail," said Panteli.

Everyone looked at the cross in silence. Somewhere, prob- ably from the marsh, came the mournful note of a bird: "Splu, splu, splu. . . ."

"There are many wicked people in the world," remarked Emilian.

"Many, many!" affirmed Panteli, and drew nearer the fire, just as if he had grown apprehensive. "Many," he con- tinued in an undertone. "In my time I have seen life inside and out. . . . Ah, yes, wicked people. . . . Saintly and righteous have I seen many, and sinful more than I can count. . . . Save and have mercy, Heavenly Virgin! ... I re- member once, thirteen years ago, and maybe more, I wa? taking a merchant out of Morchanska, an estimable merchant both in himself and with his money, that merchant was . . . a good fellow, nitchevo. . . . So, therefore, we drove and stopped to spend the night at a tavern. In Greater Russia the taverns are not like what they are in these parts. There the yarsa are roofed like foundations, or let us say sheds, on the big farms—only the sheds are higher. Well, we stopped and all went well—my merchant to his room and I to the horses, all as it should be. And now, mates, with a prayer to God, so as consequentiy to sleep, I took a walk around the yard. The night was dark—couldn't see a thing however you tried. I walked on a bit, and when beyond the waggons I see the dim light of a fire. What is that? Methought the taverner had long ago gone to bed, and except myself and the merchant there were no other inmates. What was the meaning of tha' fire? A doubt seized me. I crept up closer . . . to that fire . . . Lord have mercy and save us! Holy Virgin! I look; a little window near the ground with iron bars . . . in the house. ... I lay on the ground to see in—as I look a shiver runs through my body. . . ."

Kiruha, trying not to make a noise, shoves a bundle of grass into the fire. Waiting till the steppe-grass has finished crackling and hissing, the old man then went on:

"I see there a cellar, not very large, and dark as pitch. . . . On a barrel burns a little lantern. In the centre of that cellar stand ten men in red shirts with turned-up sleeves and sharpening their long knives. . . . Ho—he! So then we have fallen among a gang of thieves! What was to be done? I ran to the merchant, gently woke him up, and said to him: 'Mer- chant, don't you be frightened, but this is a nasty business

. . we have fallen into a robber's nest.' His face dropped, and he asked: 'And what now, Panteli, shall we do? I have so much orphans' money with me. As for my soul, it is in the hands of God. I have no fear of death, but,' says he, 'it is very grievous that orphans' money should go astray.' . . . What could we do? The gates were locked, no possible means of escape. . . • If there had been a fence one could have climbed over it, but that yard was roofed! . . . 'Well,' says I, 'mer- chant, be not afraid, but pray to God. Maybe the Lord has no wish to wrong orphans. You remain here, and do not lose courage. I in the interval may think of something.' Agreed. ... I prayed, and God put a thought in my mind. . . • I climbed into our carriage, and gently, very gently, so that no one should hear, I began pulling the straw from the thatch- ing, made a hole and clambered out—yes, out. . . . Then I jumped down from the roof, and fled along the road as if there were an evil spirit after me. I ran and ran, exhausting myself to death. ... I must have run five versts without drawing breath, if not more. . . • Then, thank God, I saw a village. I ran to a cottage, and knocked at the window. 'Oh! Orthodox, if such you be, let not a Christian soul perish.'

• . They all awoke—the moujiks assembled and followed me . . . some with ropes . . . some with cudgels, some with pitchforks. . . . We beat down the gates of the tavern-yard and so into the cellar. . . . The robbers had just finished sharpening their knives, and were preparing to slay the merchant. The moujiks seized every one of them, bound them, and led them to the authorities. The merchant in his joy of- fered them three hundred roubles, and to me five golden coins and engraved my name in his memory. They say, that in the cellar were afterwards found untold numbers of human bones. . . . Those bones signified that folk were plundered, and afterwards buried so that no trace should remain. . . . Well, so then, the robbers were taken to Morchanska and handed over to the executioner."

Panteli, having finished his story, glanced at his listeners. They all were silent, with their eyes fixed on him. The water was boiling, and Stepka removed the scum.

"Is the fat ready?" Kiruha asked him in a whisper.

"\Vait another bit . . . soon."

Stepka without taking his eyes off Panteli, as if afraid he would begin some story without him, ran towards the waggons. and quickly returned from thence with a small wooden cup, in which he began to bray some pig's fat.

"I went another time also with a merchant," continued Panteli, as before in an undertone and without blinking. "He was called, as I remember, Peter Gregoritch. He was a goodly fellow . . . that merchant was. . . . We stopped in the same manner as before at a tavern. . . . He to his room, I to my horses. . . . The taverner and his wife seemed goodly, kindly folk, the workers seemed quite all right, but, mates, I could not sleep, my mind was not at ease—just not at ease. The gates were open, plenty of people around, but all the same there was something fearful—not as it should be. Everyone had long ago fallen asleep, it was altogether night, and ^n we should have to get up, and I alone, lying in the ^riage, had my eyes wide open, just as if I were a brown owl. But, mates, something I hear: 'Tup, tup, tup!' Someone is creeping up to the carriage. I raise my head, I look—a woman in noth. ing but a chemise, barelegged, stands there. . . . 'What is it, woman?' say I. She, all of a tremble and scared out of her wits, says, 'Good fellow, get up! Disaster. . . . The master and mistre^ have imagined evil . . . they intend to slay your merchant. I myself heard the master whispering to the mistress'. . . . So it was not for nothing my mind was un- easy! 'But you, who are you?' I ask. '1,' says she, 'am their cook. . . .' Agreed. ... I climb out of the carriage and go to the merchant; I awake him and say: 'There is, Peter Gregoritch, rather a dirty business. . . . May your Honour have had sleep enough, and now, while there is time, dress and with a whole skin escape from evil. . . .' He had no sooner started putting on his clothes when the door opened, and—God bless you, I see—Holy Mother! into the room walk the taverner and his wife and three labourers; that is, they had told the labourers: 'The merchant has a lot of ;

"Who was it rapped at the window?" asked Dimov.

"At the window? Must have been a saint or an angel, for there was no one about. . . . When we got outside there was not a human being anywhere . . . the work of God!"

Panteli told other stories, and in all of them alike the "long knives" played a role, and all alike had the same note of un- reality. Had he heard these tales from someone, or had he himself invented them in the far away past, and later, when his memory failed, mixed his experiences with fiction and ceased to be able to distinguish the one from the other? Any- thing may be true, but one thing was strange that this time and during the whole journey, when he happened to tell a story, he ostensibly gave the preference to fiction and never !>poke of what he had experienced. At the moment Egorooshka accepted this all as pure gold and believed every word; sub- sequently it seemed to him odd, that a man who in the course of his life had been all over Russia, who knew and who bad seen so much, a man whose wife and children had been burnt, should so undervalue the richness of his life as each time, sitting by the fire, or remaining silent or talking, to dwell on that which had never been.

They all ate their gruel in silence thinking over what they had heard. Life is so fearful and wonderful that, however fearful is the story you tell in Russia, and however you set it off with robbers' dens, long knives and wonders, it always evokes in the mind of the listener that which has been, and it is only he who is deeply tinctured with learning who looks askance and grows taciturn. The crosses by the road, the dark bales, the wide steppe, and the fates of the people gath- ered around the fire were in themselves so wonderful and fear- ful, that the fantastic unreal paled and mingled with the real.

They all ate out of the cauldron except Panteli, who sat a little apart and ate his gruel out of a wooden cup. His spoon was not like those of the others, but of cypress wood, with a little cross. Egorooshka looked at him, and, remembering the little lamp-glass, whispered to Stepka:

"Why does the old dad sit apart?"

"He belongs to the Old Faith," answered Stepka and Vassia in a whisper, and as they said it they conveyed the impression of having mentioned some failing or secret vice.

They all remained silently occupied with their own thoughts. After the terrible tales no one felt inclined to talk of the usual things. Suddenly, amid the stillness, Vassia sat bolt upright, pricked up his ears, and strained his eyes at some invisible object.

"What is it?" Dimov inquired of him.

"There is somebody walking," answered Vassia.

"Where do you see him?"

"Over there . . . you can hardly see him."

There. where Vassia was looking, was nothing to be seen except the darkness; they all listened, but they could hear no iootsteps.

"Is he coming down the road?" asked Dimov.

"Nay, over the grass . . . he is coming here."

A minute went by in silence.

"Maybe it is the merchant whom they buried here haunt- ing the steppe," said Dimov.

They all cast furtive glances at the cross, then looked at each other, and finally burst out laughing: they were ashamed of their timidity.

"Why should he walk?" said Panteli. "It is only those whom the ground will not keep who walk at night. But the mer- chant was all right . . . he received the crown of martyr- dom."

But now they heard footsteps; someone was approaching ir. haste.

"He is carrying something," said Vassia.

One could hear the rustle of the grass and the crackling of the steppe-grass, but beyond the light of the fire there was nothing to be seen. At last the footsteps sounded quite close, and someone coughed; the flickering light seemed to with- draw, and, as if a veil had fallen from their eyes, the drivers suddenly saw before them the figure of a man.

Either it was that the fire gleamed brightly, or that they were all so anxious primarily to see this man's face, that what they saw of him first of all was not his face nor his clothes but his smile. It was a most unusually kind, broad, gentle smile, like that of a waking child, one of those infectious smiles to which it is difficult not to respond with a smile. The stranger, when they had taken him in, appeared to be a man of about thirty, not good-looking or with anything very characteristic. He was a tall "Top-knot," long-legged, long-armed, and long-nosed; in fact everything about him was long except his neck, which was so short that he might have been con- sidered hump-backed. He wore a clean white shirt with an embroidered collar, wide white trousers and new boots, and in comparison to the drivers was quite a dandy. He was carry ing in his arms something large and white and queer; and over his shoulder peeped the barrel of a gun, which was also long.

A.s he entered the bright circle out of the darknesa, he stood as if rooted to the spot, and for a full half minute looked at the drivers as if he meant to say: "Just look what a smile I have!" Then he walked up to the fire, smiling even more radi- antly, and said:

"Good cheer, mates!"

"Be welcome!" Panteli answered for them all.

The stranger put down by the fire that which he bad been carrying—it was a great bustard—and again gave them a greeting.

They all went to have a look at the bustard.

"A fine bird! What did you get him with?" Dimov asked.

"A bullet . . . shot would be no good, wouldn't reach him . . . . Buy him, mates! I will give him up to you for twenty kopecks."

"And what should we do with it? Roasted it is all right, but boiled it would be tough and tasteless."

"Oh bother! If I take it to the people at the farm they will give me fifty kopecks, but it is a long way, fifteen versts!"

The new-comer sat down, and laid his gun by his side; he seemed sleepy and languid, smiled, blinked at the fire, and apparently was thinking of something pleasant. They gave him a spoon, and be began to eat.

"Who are you?" Dimov asked him.

The stranger did not hear the question; he returned no answer, and did not even look at Dimov. Apparently this smiling individual did not notice the taste of the gruel, for he munched as it were mechanically, lazily putting the spoon to his mouth—at one time very full, at another quite empty. He was not drunk, but there was something crazy at work in his brain.

"I am asking you who you are," repeated Dimov.

"Who, I?" said the unknown, with a start. "Constantine Zvonik of Rovno. Four versts from here."

Then, anxious to make it clear from the very first that he was not a peasant as were the others, but better than they, Constantine hastened to add:

"We keep bees and pigs."

"Do you live with your father or by yourself?"

"No, by myself. We parted. This month, after the St. Peter, >- was married. I am a husband now! . . . This is the eight, senth day since I was law-bound."

"Excellent business," said Panteli. "A good wife . . . God's blessing. . . ."

"The young woman is sleeping at home while he wanders over the steppe," Kiruha joked. "Queer fellow!"

Constantine gave a start as if he had been touched to the quick, laughed and flushed.

"But Lord, she is not at home!" he said quickly, withdraw- ing his spoon from his mouth, and giving them all a look of joy and surprise. "She is not! She has gone to her mother fot two days! God to witness she went. and I am as it were un- married . . . .''

Constantine flourished his hand and shook his head; he wanted to continue his thoughs, but his felicity was too great. Just as if he were uncomfortable sitting down, he changed his attitude, laughed, and again flourished his hand. He felt a certain compunction at yielding his pleasant thought to strangers, but at the same time he had an overwhelming de- sire to let them share his joy.

"She went to Demidovo to her mother!"' he said, blushing, and removing his gun from one place to another. "To-morrow she comes back. She said she would be back to dinner."

"Are you bored?" asked Dimov.

"But Lord, what do you think? Married such a little while, then for her to go away. . . . Eh? But it's the worst, spare me, God! She is so sweet, so precious, so mirthful, so full of song, it's all the purest enchantment. With her your head goes whirling round, and without her you are lost; see, here I tramp about the steppe like a fool. I have walked since dinner hardly heeding where I go."

Constantine rubbed his eyes, looked at the fire, and smiled.

"You are in love, that is," said Panteli.

"She is so sweet, so precious/' repeated Constantine, not listening, "such a little housewife, so sensible, so very sensible, there is no other like her in the entire district. She left; she finds it wearisome, I know! I know, little magpie! She said she would return for dinner to-morrow. . . . But then, what a muddle it is!" almost screamed Constantine, suddenly go- ing a tone higher and changing his position—"now she is in love and bored, and also she did not want to marry me!"

"Yes, but eat," said Kiruha.

"She did not want to marry me!" continued Constantine not listening. "I was at her for three years! I saw her at the fair at Kalatchika, I fell madly in love—hurtling head over heels. But I to Rovno, she to Demidovo, friend divided from friend by twenty-five versts, and nothing I coulrl do. I des- patched a marriage-promoter, and she answers: 'I will not!' Oh! you little magpie. So I try this and the other, earrings, ginger-breads, and honey: 'I will not!' Well, I must go my- self. She no doubt considers I am no match for her. She is young, pretty, all sunbeams, and I am old, shall soon be thirty, and so handsome, a bushy beard—all ends, a clean face—all over pimples! What comparison was there with her? If we had even lived very comfortably; but then they too, the Vahremenki, live in comfort—they have three pairs of oxen and two labourers. I fell in love, mates, and grew muddle- brained. . . . Could not sleep, could not eat, and in my head, the Lord have mercy, thoughts like a prickly bush! ... I want to see her, and she is in Demidovo. . . . So what do you think? Spare me, God, I am not raving. Three times in a week I went there on foot, just to have a look at her. I chucked my work. So eclipsed became my reason that I thought of hiring myself as a labourer in Demidovo, so as to be nearer to her. I was in torment! My mother spoke of a witch, my father took ten times to beating me. Well, I suf- fered three years, then I resolved: be thrice anathema, but I'll to the town and be a droshky-driver. . . • Yet I was not!

On a Saint's day, I went to Demidovo for one last look a» her. . . ."

Constantine threw back his head and broke into a soft merry laugh, as if he had that moment very cunningly taken someone in.

"I see her, she is by the stream with her washing," he con- tinued. "Malice spoke to me. . . .I called her to one side, and for the space of an hour I talked. . . . She fell in lave l Three years she had not loved me, and fell in love at my words! . . ."

"And what words?" inquired Dimov.

"Words? I don't remember. . . . Would you remember? Then, they flowed without respite like water from a spout and now I cannot utter a single one. . . . Well, she came to me. . . . And the little magpie has now gone to her mother, so I without her roam the steppe. I cannot stay at home—it is more than I can bear! "

Constantine clumsily freed his foot from underneath him, stretched himself out on the ground, rested his head on his hands, then raised himself again into a sitting posture. They all thoroughly understood that the man was very enamoured and happy—almost painfully so; his smile, his eyes, and every gesture expressed a languid bliss. He could not rest, did not know what pose to take or what to do not to succumb to the superabundance of pleasant thoughts. Having poured ou1 his soul to the others, he was able, at last, to sit quietly look- ing at the fire and think.

At the sight of this happy man they all felt ve.xed, each desiring happiness too. They became very thoughtful. Dimov rose from his place and walked around the fire; by his walk and the movement of his shoulders, it was evident that he felt languid and bored; he stood still, looked at Constantine, and sat down again.

The fire was going out; it no longer flared, and the red halo had shrunk and grown dim. . . . And the faster the fire went out, the clearer became the moonlit night. Already the road in all its great width was visible, the bales of wool, the waggon-thills, and the browsing horses. On the far side the dim outline of the other cross could be seen.

Dimov rested his cheek in his hand, and softly sang some plaintive ditty. Constantine sleepily smiled, and accompanied him in a faint voice; they sang for half a minute, then stopped. Emilian gave a start, his elbows began to move, and his fingers to become restless.

"Mates," said he in a supplicating voice, "let us sing some sacred song!"

The tears sprang to his eyes.

"Mates," he repeated, pressing his hand to his heart, "let us sing sacred music!"

"I don't know how to," said Constantine.

They all refused, so then Emilian sang alone. He began to wave both hands about, to nod his head; he opened his mouth, but from his throat only proceeded a hoarse hollow gasp. He sang with his hands, his head, his eyes, and even with the lump; he sang passionately and with longing, and the more he strained his chest to extract from it but one note, the more hollow grew his breathing. • . .

Egorooshka, as were they all, was overcome by weariness; he walked to his waggon, clambered up on to the bales, and lay down. He gazed up at the sky, and thought of happy Constantine and his wife. "Why do people marry? Why are there women in the world?" Egorooshka asked himself these obscure questions, and decided that men were surely always happy when a fond, cheerful, pretty woman lived beside them. For some reason he thought of the Countess Dranitska, and reflected that it was probably very pleasant to live with a woman like that; he would have been very glad, if you like, to marry her if it had not been so wicked. He remembered her eyebrows, her distended pupils, her carriage, the clock with the horseman. . . . The silent warm night came ilown to :him and whispered something in his ear, and it seemed to him that it was a lovely woman bending over him and smiling, and that she was about to kiss him. . . .

Two little red eyes, ever growing smaller and smaller, were all that remained of the fire; the drivers and Constantine, black and motionless figures, sat beside it, and it seemed as if their number had increased. Both crosses were likewise visible, and far, far away, somewhere by the highway, burned a little fire; very likely other people were cooking gruel.

"Our mother Russia is head of all the world!" suddenly sang Kiruha in a loud voice, then choked and was silent. The steppe-echo caught up the sound, and those senseless words rolled away, borne on heavy wheels over the steppe.

"It is time to move on," said Panteli. "Get up, boys!"

While they put the horses to, Constantine walked around the waggons talking in transports about his wife.

"Good-bye, mates!" he shouted when the waggons moved on. "Thank you for your good cheer! I shall walk on to that fire. I can't bear it!"

He soon vanished in the gloom, and for a long while his steps were heard receding in the direction of the fire, where he would disclose his happiness to other strangers.

When Egorooshka awoke the next morning it was very early, the sun had not risen. The \vaggons were standing still. Some man in a white foraging-cap and wearing a costume of cheap grey material, and riding a Cossack cob, \vas by th( foremost waggon talking with Dimov and Kiruha. About two versts ahead of the waggons was the outline of some long low store-houses, and cottages with tiled roofs; there were neither yards not trees around the cottages.

"Dad, what is that village?" asked Egorooshka.

"That, my lad, is an Armenian farm," answered Panteli. "Armenians live there. A goodly people. . . . Armenians are."

The man in grey, having finished speaking with Dimov and Kiruha, reined ba^ his horse and turned to look at the farm.

"What an affair, just think!" sighed Panteli, also looking at the farm, and hugging himself, chilled by the early morn- ing air. "He sent a man to the farm for some papers, and he has not come back. He ought to have sent Stepka."

"Who is that, dad?" inquired Egorooshka.

"Varlamov."

"My God!" Egorooshka sprang up on io his knees and looked at the white forage-cap. In that small grey-clad man, with high boots, sitting on a seedy little horse, conversing with moujiks at that hour, when all righteous people are asleep, it was hard to recognise the mysterious elusive Varlamov, whom everyone is looking for, who is always "circling," and has a great deal more money than the Countess Dranitska.

"Nitchevo, a goodly person . • ." said Panteli, gazing to- wards the farm. "God give him health, a fine gentleman . . • is Varlamov, Simon Alexandritch. The earth is supported by such people, mate, that's the truth. . . . The cocks have not yet crowed, and he is afoot. . . . Another would be sleeping, or sitting at home with guests tari-bari rasta-bari talking, but he the day-long circles about the steppe. . . . He does not let his affairs lie . . . he doesn't. He is a fine fellow."

Varlamov did not take his eyes off the farm, and continued to talk; the cob impatiently lifted one foot after the other.

"Simon Alexandritch," shouted Panteli taking his hat off, "allow us to send Stepka! Emilian, shout to him, that we will send Stepka I"

But at last a rider was seen coming from the farm. He slanted over to one side and the other, flourished his short Ieather whip above his head as if he were a Kiang, and wanted to astonish everyone with his dashing horsemanship, and -:arne towards the waggons with the swiftness of a bird.

"That must be his patrol," said Panteli. "He has them . . . those patrols, perhaps a hundred of them or more."

When he reached the first waggon the rider reined in his horse, took off his hat, and handed Varlamov some kind of little book. Varlamov took several sheets of paper out of the booklet, read them, and exclaimed: "But where is Ivanushka's entry?" The rider took the booklet, looked at the papers, and shrugged his shoulders; he began saying something, probably justifying himself, and asking to be allowed to return to the farm. The cob suddenly became restive as if Varlamov had grown heavier. Varlamov was also moving about.

"Begone!" he shouted angrily, swinging his whip over the rider.

He then turned his horse back, and, still studying the book- let, passed along the waggons at a foot's pace, and as he came alongside the last waggon Egorooshka strained forward to have the best look he could at him. Varlamov was no longer young: he had a small grey beard, an honest Russian sun- burnt face, which at the moment was red, wet with dew, and covered with little blue veins; his expression was just as stern and business-like as Ivan I vanitch's, just that same fanaticism for business. Still, one felt what a difference existed between him and Ivan Ivanitch! With uncle Kuzmitchov, be- sides his hard man-nf-business e"--pression, there was always mingled fuss and fear that he would not find Varlamov, would be late, lose some good bargain. Nothing similar—peculiar to inferior and dependent people—was noticeable either in Varlamov's expression or in his person. This man himself made the prices; he was searching for no one, nor was he dependent on anything else. Not only was there absence ol subordination in his exterior, but even in his way of holding his whip there was the consciousness of his strength and the exercise of power over the steppe.

As he went by he never even looked at Egorooshka. The cob alone honoured him with his attention, by looking at him with his large stupid eyes, and it did that much very uncon- cernedly. Panteli bowed low to Varlamov, which this latter noticed without taking hi<> eyes off the slips of paper, and said: "Good-day, old fellow."

Varlamov's dialogue with the rider and his swing of the whip evidently produced a depressing effect on all the wag- goners—they all looked very serious.

The rider, discouraged by the anger of his powerful master, sat in silence with his hat off and with loosened rein by the foremost waggon, finding it hard to believe that the day should have begun so badly for him.

"A harsh old man . . ." murmured Panteli. "It's said that he is so harsh, but he is all right, a goodly person. His anger is just . . . nitchevo. . . ."

Having studied the sheets of paper, Varlamov put them into his pocket; the cob, divining his intention, did not wait for a sign, but started off at a gallop down the road.

vii

On the following night the drivers were making a halt and boiling their gruel. This time from the very first they all felt a kind of indefinable melancholy. The air was heavy; they all drank a good deal, and could not succeed in quenching their thirst. The rising moon was a deep purple, looked gloomy and indisposed; the stars were also downcast, the mist was very dense, and the distance very hazy. Nature was appre- hensive and languid.

Yesterday's animation and conversation were absent around to-night's fire; everyone was weary, and spoke drowsily and unwillingly. Panteli only sighed, complained of his feet, and in fact brought the conversation round to impenitent death. Dimov lay belly-down munching bits of straw in silence; he had an expression of loathing on his face, rather as if the straw had a bad smell, looked weary and evilly-disposed. Vassia complained that his jaw was aching, and predicted bad weather; Emilian was not waving his arms, but sat in glum silence looking at the fire. Egorooshka was also de- pressed; walking tired him, and his head was aching from the day's heat.

When the gruel was cooked, Dimov, out of sheer boredom. sought to pick a quarrel with his companions.

"Lumpy sits the longest, and is always in first with his spoon," he said, looking spitefully at Emilian. "Such greed— always watches his chance and gets first to the gruel-pot! Was in the choir, so thinks he is—a barin! There are a lot of those choristers about the highvays asking for alms."

"Well, what are you so close for?" asked Emilian, alse looking spiteful.

"Just to see that you don't dip into the pot first. That's not difficult to understand."

"Fool, that's all you are!" hoarsely said Emilian.

Knowing by experience how such discourse usually ended, Panteli and Vassia intervened and tried to persuade Dimov not to quarrel about nothing.

"A chorister! . . ." not heeding them, continued the devil- may-care, smiling contemptuously. "Anyone can sing like that, seat themselves in the church by the porch, and whine: 'Give alms f'Jr the sake of Christ!' Ugh!"

Emilian remained silent. This exasperated Dimov to the utmost; he cast a look of hatred at the erstwhile singer, and said:

"He won't have anything to do with me, or I would show him what to think of himself!"

"Here now, what do you want with me, Mazeppa?" burst out Emilian. "What harm am I doing you?"

"What did you call me?" asked Dimov, straightening h'.m- self up and with blood-red eyes. "What? I, Mazeppa? Was that it? There's for you! go and look for it!"

Dimov seized the spoon out of Emilian's hand, and flung it away to one side. Kiruha, Vassia, and Stepb jumped up and went to search for it; Emilian stared pleadingly and questioningly at Panteli, then his face suddenly se.emed to grow smaller and wrinkled; he blinked severa' times, and finally the erstwhile chorister burst into te:>.rs like a child.

Egorooshka, whose hatred of Dimov was of long-standing, now felt that the atmosphere had become unendurably :;tifling and scorched his face like the flames of the grass fire; he thought of escaping to the waggons and tbe darkness, but that devil-may-care's angry tired eyes courted him instead. Passionately longing to say something in the highest degree offensive, he stepped up to Dimov and articulated breath- lessly:

"You are the worst of the lot i I can't bear you!"

After that it would have been advisable to have run for the waggons, but he could not move from where he was, and continued:

"In the next world you'll burn in Hell! I'll complain to Ivan Ivanitch! You are not to insult Emilianl"

"Also say, if you please," said Dimov, grinning at him,— "All little pigs before the milk is dry on their lips squeak ukases!"

Egorooshka felt he was choking, and—a thing which had never happened to him before—he shook all over, stamped his feet, and in a shrill voice screamed:

"Beat him! Beat him!"

The tears welled in his eyes, of which he was so ashamed that he turned and ran to the waggons. He did not see what impression his scream had made. He lay on a bale sobbing_: and thumping with his hands and feet, while he called:

"Mamma! Mamma!"

The ppople, the shadows around the fire, the black bales of wool, the distant lightning flashing every minute on the horizon, all now seemed to him unearthly and grim. He was frightened, and in his despair asked himself how and why he had arrived in these unknown parts in the company of dreadful moujiks? Where now were his uncle, Father Christo- pher, and Deniski? Why are they so long away? Have they forgotten him? At the idea that he was forgotten and aban- doned to the buffetings of fate he shuddered, and such dread [ell on him that several times he had almost resolved to jump off the bales, and run back along the road without once turn- ing round; but the thought of the dark gloomy crosses, which he would surely encounter on his way, and the distant flashes of lightning deterred him. It was only when he whispered "Mamma, Mamma," that he felt a little better.

Dread must also have fallen on the drivers, for after Egorooshka had escaped from the side of the fire, they re- mained a long while silent; then in undertones they alluded to something that was coming, and that they must make all haste to depart and go away from it. . . . They supped in a hurry, put out the fire, and put the horses to in silence. By the bustle and their discontented phrases, it was evident that they foresaw some misfortune.

Before they started on their way, Dimov went up to Pan- teli and asked softly:

"What is his name?"

"Egor . . ." answered Panteli.

Dimov placed one foot on the wheel, and raised himself by a rope which was bound round a bale, and Egorooshka caught sight of a face and a curly head. Dimov was pale, looked tired and grave, but no longer spiteful.

"Era!" he called softly. "Go on, beat me!"

Egorooshka looked at him in surprise; at that moment there was a flash of lightning.

"Nitchevo, beat me," repeated Dimov.

But, not waiting for Egorooshka either to beat him or speak to him, he jumped down, saying:

"Ugh! It's wearisome!"

Then rolling and swinging his shoulders, he lazily dragged himself along the line of waggons, repeating as he went, in a semi-wailing, semi-vexed voice:

"It's wearisome! Oh, Lord! But don't be offended, Emil- ian," he said as he passed Emilian. "Ours is a cruel damned life!"

There was a flash of lightning on the right, and exactly as if there had been a reflection in a mirror it was repeated in the far distance.

"Egor, here take this!" shouted Panteli, throwing him up something large and black.

"What is it?" asked Egorooshka.

"A mat to cover you when the rain comes."

Egorooshka raised himself and took a look round. The horizon was growing visibly blacker, and already a pale light blinked as frequently as if it had eyes. The blackness, j ust as if it were overweighted, was bending to the right.

"Dad, is there going to be thunder?" inquired Egorooshka.

"Oh! my poor feet—they pester meI" drawled Panteli, not listening to him and treading painfully along.

To the left someone seemed to strike a match in the sky— a pale phosphorescent streak gleamed and went out. There was a very distant sound as of someone walking over an iron roof; very likely that someone was barefooted, for the iron gave a hollow rumble.

"It's all around," cried Kiruha.

Betwixt the distance and the right of the horizon the light- ning flashed so brightly that it illumined part of the steppe, and the spot where the clear sky bordered on the dark. A tremendous cloud, with large black tatters hanging along its edge, slowly moved in one compact mass; similar tatters, pressing one over the other, were gathering on the right and the left horizon. This ragged and tatter-demalion condition of the clouds gave them a kind of drunken, devil-may-care appearance. Sharply, and no longer dully, sounded the thun- der. Egorooshka crossed himse!f, and quickly put on his coat.