in the corner … the rain pattered on the roof and streamed down the windows; we were all silent.

‘Foma Kuzmitch,’ said the peasant suddenly in a thick, broken voice;

‘Foma Kuzmitch!’

‘What is it?’

‘Let me go.’

Biryuk made no answer.

‘Let me go … hunger drove me to it; let me go.’

‘I know you,’ retorted the forester severely; ‘your set’s all alike— all thieves.’

‘Let me go,’ repeated the peasant. ‘Our manager … we ‘re ruined, that’s what it is—let me go!’

‘Ruined, indeed!… Nobody need steal.’

‘Let me go, Foma Kuzmitch…. Don’t destroy me. Your manager, you know yourself, will have no mercy on me; that’s what it is.’

Biryuk turned away. The peasant was shivering as though he were in the throes of fever. His head was shaking, and his breathing came in broken gasps.

‘Let me go,’ he repeated with mournful desperation. ‘Let me go; by God, let me go! I’ll pay; see, by God, I will! By God, it was through hunger!… the little ones are crying, you know yourself. It’s hard for us, see.’

‘You needn’t go stealing, for all that.’

‘My little horse,’ the peasant went on, ‘my poor little horse, at least … our only beast … let it go.’

‘I tell you I can’t. I’m not a free man; I’m made responsible. You oughtn’t to be spoilt, either.’

‘Let me go! It’s through want, Foma Kuzmitch, want—and nothing else— let me go!’

‘I know you!’

‘Oh, let me go!’

‘Ugh, what’s the use of talking to you! sit quiet, or else you’ll catch it. Don’t you see the gentleman, hey?’

The poor wretch hung his head…. Biryuk yawned and laid his head on the table. The rain still persisted. I was waiting to see what would happen.

Suddenly the peasant stood erect. His eyes were glittering, and his face flushed dark red. ‘Come, then, here; strike yourself, here,’ he began, his eyes puckering up and the corners of his mouth dropping; ‘come, cursed destroyer of men’s souls! drink Christian blood, drink.’

The forester turned round.

‘I’m speaking to you, Asiatic, blood-sucker, you!’

‘Are you drunk or what, to set to being abusive?’ began the forester, puzzled. ‘Are you out of your senses, hey?’

‘Drunk! not at your expense, cursed destroyer of souls—brute, brute, brute!’

‘Ah, you——I’ll show you!’

‘What’s that to me? It’s all one; I’m done for; what can I do without a home? Kill me—it’s the same in the end; whether it’s through hunger or like this—it’s all one. Ruin us all—wife, children … kill us all at once. But, wait a bit, we’ll get at you!’

Biryuk got up.

‘Kill me, kill me,’ the peasant went on in savage tones; ‘kill me; come, come, kill me….’ (The little girl jumped up hastily from the ground and stared at him.) ‘Kill me, kill me!’

‘Silence!’ thundered the forester, and he took two steps forward.

‘Stop, Foma, stop,’ I shouted; ‘let him go…. Peace be with him.’

‘I won’t be silent,’ the luckless wretch went on. ‘It’s all the same— ruin anyway—you destroyer of souls, you brute; you’ve not come to ruin yet…. But wait a bit; you won’t have long to boast of; they’ll wring your neck; wait a bit!’

Biryuk clutched him by the shoulder. I rushed to help the peasant….

‘Don’t touch him, master!’ the forester shouted to me.

I should not have feared his threats, and already had my fist in the air; but to my intense amazement, with one pull he tugged the kerchief off the peasant’s elbows, took him by the scruff of the neck, thrust his cap over his eyes, opened the door, and shoved him out.

‘Go to the devil with your horse!’ he shouted after him; ‘but mind, next time….’

He came back into the hut and began rummaging in the corner.

‘Well, Biryuk,’ I said at last, ‘you’ve astonished me; I see you’re a splendid fellow.’

‘Oh, stop that, master,’ he cut me short with an air of vexation; ‘please don’t speak of it. But I’d better see you on your way now,’ he added; ‘I suppose you won’t wait for this little rain….’

In the yard there was the rattle of the wheels of the peasant’s cart.

‘He’s off, then!’ he muttered; ‘but next time!’

Half-an-hour later he parted from me at the edge of the wood.

XIII

TWO COUNTRY GENTLEMEN

I have already had the honour, kind readers, of introducing to you several of my neighbours; let me now seize a favourable opportunity (it is always a favourable opportunity with us writers) to make known to you two more gentlemen, on whose lands I often used to go shooting— very worthy, well-intentioned persons, who enjoy universal esteem in several districts.

First I will describe to you the retired General-major Vyatcheslav Ilarionovitch Hvalinsky. Picture to yourselves a tall and once slender man, now inclined to corpulence, but not in the least decrepit or even elderly, a man of ripe age; in his very prime, as they say. It is true the once regular and even now rather pleasing features of his face have undergone some change; his cheeks are flabby; there are close wrinkles like rays about his eyes; a few teeth are not, as Saadi, according to Pushkin, used to say; his light brown hair—at least, all that is left of it—has assumed a purplish hue, thanks to a composition bought at the Romyon horse-fair of a Jew who gave himself out as an Armenian; but Vyatcheslav Ilarionovitch has a smart walk and a ringing laugh, jingles his spurs and curls his moustaches, and finally speaks of himself as an old cavalry man, whereas we all know that really old men never talk of being old. He usually wears a frock-coat buttoned up to the top, a high cravat, starched collars, and grey sprigged trousers of a military cut; he wears his hat tilted over his forehead, leaving all the back of his head exposed. He is a good-natured man, but of rather curious notions and principles. For instance, he can never treat noblemen of no wealth or standing as equals. When he talks to them, he usually looks sideways at them, his cheek pressed hard against his stiff white collar, and suddenly he turns and silently fixes them with a clear stony stare, while he moves the whole skin of his head under his hair; he even has a way of his own in pronouncing many words; he never says, for instance: ‘Thank you, Pavel Vasilyitch,’ or ‘This way, if you please, Mihalo Ivanitch,’ but always ‘Fanks, Pa’l ‘Asilitch,’ or »Is wy, please, Mil’ ‘Vanitch.’ With persons of the lower grades of society, his behaviour is still more quaint; he never looks at them at all, and before making known his desires to them, or giving an order, he repeats several times in succession, with a puzzled, far-away air: ‘What’s your name?… what, what’s your name?’ with extraordinary sharp emphasis on the first word, which gives the phrase a rather close resemblance to the call of a quail. He is very fussy and terribly close-fisted, but manages his land badly; he had chosen as overseer on his estate a retired quartermaster, a Little Russian, and a man of really exceptional stupidity. None of us, though, in the management of land, has ever surpassed a certain great Petersburg dignitary, who, having perceived from the reports of his steward that the cornkilns in which the corn was dried on his estate were often liable to catch fire, whereby he lost a great deal of grain, gave the strictest orders that for the future they should not put the sheaves in till the fire had been completely put out! This same great personage conceived the brilliant idea of sowing his fields with poppies, as the result of an apparently simple calculation; poppy being dearer than rye, he argued, it is consequently more profitable to sow poppy. He it was, too, who ordered his women serfs to wear tiaras after a pattern bespoken from Moscow; and to this day the peasant women on his lands do actually wear the tiaras, only they wear them over their skull-caps…. But let us return to Vyatcheslav Ilarionovitch. Vyatcheslav Ilarionovitch is a devoted admirer of the fair sex, and directly he catches sight of a pretty woman in the promenade of his district town, he is promptly off in pursuit, but falls at once into a sort of limping gait—that is the remarkable feature of the case. He is fond of playing cards, but only with people of a lower standing; they toady him with ‘Your Excellency’ in every sentence, while he can scold them and find fault to his heart’s content. When he chances to play with the governor or any official personage, a marvellous change comes over him; he is all nods and smiles; he looks them in the face; he seems positively flowing with honey…. He even loses without grumbling. Vyatcheslav Ilarionovitch does not read much; when he is reading he incessantly works his moustaches and eyebrows up and down, as if a wave were passing from below upwards over his face. This undulatory motion in Vyatcheslav Ilarionovitch’s face is especially marked when (before company, of course) he happens to be reading the columns of the Journal des Débats. In the assemblies of nobility he plays a rather important part, but on grounds of economy he declines the honourable dignity of marshal. ‘Gentlemen,’ he usually says to the noblemen who press that office upon him, and he speaks in a voice filled with condescension and self-sufficiency: ‘much indebted for the honour; but I have made up my mind to consecrate my leisure to solitude.’ And, as he utters these words, he turns his head several times to right and to left, and then, with a dignified