go off into the dark night, through woods and water-courses, and the peasant Sophron very likely did not let him into his place, and even, I am afraid, gave him a blow to teach him 'not to disturb honest folks.' But none could compare with Yermolai in skill in deep-water fishing in spring-time, in catching crayfish with his hands, in tracking game by scent, in snaring quails, in training hawks, in capturing the nightingales who had the greatest variety of notes. … One thing he could not do, train a dog; he had not patience enough. He had a wife too. He went to see her once a week. She lived in a wretched, tumble-down little hut, and led a hand-to-mouth existence, never knowing overnight whether she would have food to eat on the morrow; and in every way her lot was a pitiful one. Yermolai, who seemed such a careless and easy-going fellow, treated his wife with cruel harshness; in his own house he assumed a stern, and menacing manner; and his poor wife did everything she could to please him, trembled when he looked at her, and spent her last farthing to buy him vodka; and when he stretched himself majestically on the stove and fell into an heroic sleep, she obsequiously covered him with a sheepskin. I happened myself more than once to catch an involuntary look in him of a kind of savage ferocity; I did not like the expression of his face when he finished off a wounded bird with his teeth. But Yermolai never remained more than a day at home, and away from home he was once more the same 'Yermolka' (i.e. the shooting-cap), as he was called for a hundred miles round, and as he sometimes called himself. The lowest house-serf was conscious of being superior to this vagabond —and perhaps this was precisely why they treated him with friendliness; the peasants at first amused themselves by chasing him and driving him like a hare over the open country, but afterwards they left him in God's hands, and when once they recognised him as 'queer,' they no longer tormented him, and even gave him bread and entered into talk with him…. This was the man I took as my huntsman, and with him I went stand-shooting to a great birch-wood on the banks of the Ista.
Many Russian rivers, like the Volga, have one bank rugged and precipitous, the other bounded by level meadows; and so it is with the Ista. This small river winds extremely capriciously, coils like a snake, and does not keep a straight course for half-a-mile together; in some places, from the top of a sharp declivity, one can see the river for ten miles, with its dykes, its pools and mills, and the gardens on its banks, shut in with willows and thick flower-gardens. There are fish in the Ista in endless numbers, especially roaches (the peasants take them in hot weather from under the bushes with their hands); little sand-pipers flutter whistling along the stony banks, which are streaked with cold clear streams; wild ducks dive in the middle of the pools, and look round warily; in the coves under the overhanging cliffs herons stand out in the shade…. We stood in ambush nearly an hour, killed two brace of wood snipe, and, as we wanted to try our luck again at sunrise (stand-shooting can be done as well in the early morning), we resolved to spend the night at the nearest mill. We came out of the wood, and went down the slope. The dark-blue waters of the river ran below; the air was thick with the mists of night. We knocked at the gate. The dogs began barking in the yard.
'Who is there?' asked a hoarse and sleepy voice.
'We are sportsmen; let us stay the night.' There was no reply. 'We will pay.'
'I will go and tell the master—Sh! Curse the dogs! Go to the devil with you!'
We listened as the workman went into the cottage; he soon came back to the gate. 'No,' he said; 'the master tells me not to let you in.'
'Why not?'
'He is afraid; you are sportsmen; you might set the mill on fire; you've firearms with you, to be sure.'
'But what nonsense!'
'We had our mill on fire like that last year; some fish-dealers stayed the night, and they managed to set it on fire somehow.'
'But, my good friend, we can't sleep in the open air!'
'That's your business.' He went away, his boots clacking as he walked.
Yermolai promised him various unpleasant things in the future. 'Let us go to the village,' he brought out at last, with a sigh. But it was two miles to the village.
'Let us stay the night here,' I said, 'in the open air—the night is warm; the miller will let us have some straw if we pay for it.'
Yermolai agreed without discussion. We began again to knock.
'Well, what do you want?' the workman's voice was heard again; 'I've told you we can't.'
We explained to him what we wanted. He went to consult the master of the house, and returned with him. The little side gate creaked. The miller appeared, a tall, fat-faced man with a bull-neck, round-bellied and corpulent. He agreed to my proposal. A hundred paces from the mill there was a little outhouse open to the air on all sides. They carried straw and hay there for us; the workman set a samovar down on the grass near the river, and, squatting on his heels, began to blow vigorously into the pipe of it. The embers glowed, and threw a bright light on his young face. The miller ran to wake his wife, and suggested at last that I myself should sleep in the cottage; but I preferred to remain in the open air. The miller's wife brought us milk, eggs, potatoes and bread. Soon the samovar boiled, and we began drinking tea. A mist had risen from the river; there was no wind; from all round came the cry of the corn-crake, and faint sounds from the mill-wheels of drops that dripped from the paddles and of water gurgling through the bars of the lock. We built a small fire on the ground. While Yermolai was baking the potatoes in the embers, I had time to fall into a doze. I was waked by a discreetly-subdued whispering near me. I lifted my head; before the fire, on a tub turned upside down, the miller's wife sat talking to my huntsman. By her dress, her movements, and her manner of speaking, I had already recognised that she had been in domestic service, and was neither peasant nor city-bred; but now for the first time I got a clear view of her features. She looked about thirty; her thin, pale face still showed the traces of remarkable beauty; what particularly charmed me was her eyes, large and mournful in expression. She was leaning her elbows on her knees, and had her face in her hands. Yermolai was sitting with his back to me, and thrusting sticks into the fire.
'They've the cattle-plague again at Zheltonhiny,' the miller's wife was saying; 'father Ivan's two cows are dead—Lord have mercy on them!'
'And how are your pigs doing?' asked Yermolai, after a brief pause.
'They're alive.'
'You ought to make me a present of a sucking pig.'
The miller's wife was silent for a while, then she sighed.
'Who is it you're with?' she asked.
'A gentleman from Kostomarovo.'
Yermolai threw a few pine twigs on the fire; they all caught fire at once, and a thick white smoke came puffing into his face.
'Why didn't your husband let us into the cottage?'
'He's afraid.'
'Afraid! the fat old tub! Arina Timofyevna, my darling, bring me a little glass of spirits.'
The miller's wife rose and vanished into the darkness. Yermolai began to sing in an undertone—
'When I went to see my sweetheart,
I wore out all my shoes.'
Arina returned with a small flask and a glass. Yermolai got up, crossed himself, and drank it off at a draught. 'Good!' was his comment.
The miller's wife sat down again on the tub.
'Well, Arina Timofyevna, are you still ill?'
'Yes.'
'What is it?'
'My cough troubles me at night.'
'The gentleman's asleep, it seems,' observed Yermolai after a short silence. 'Don't go to a doctor, Arina; it will be worse if you do.'
'Well, I am not going.'
'But come and pay me a visit.'
Arina hung down her head dejectedly.
'I will drive my wife out for the occasion,' continued Yermolai 'Upon my word, I will.'
