One was a man not old, but not in his first youth, with a face pitted with smallpox, and with crooked eyes, ugly, repulsive, with a cruel, ferocious expression of face; the other, a stripling, was idiotic. This was to be seen at the first glance, by his stupid smile and wandering look.
Both threw down their bundles of twigs at sight of the armed horseman, and seemed to be greatly alarmed. But the meeting was so sudden, and they were so near, that they could not flee.
“Glory be to God!” said Basia.
“For the ages of ages.”
“What is the name of this farm?”
“What should its name be? There is the cabin.”
“Is it far to Mohiloff?”
“We know not.”
Here the man began to scrutinize Basia’s face carefully. Since she wore man’s apparel he took her for a youth; insolence and cruelty came at once to his face instead of the recent timidity.
“But why are you so young, Pan Knight?”
“What is that to you?”
“And are you travelling alone?” asked the peasant, advancing a step.
“Troops are following me.”
He halted, looked over the immense plain, and answered—
“Not true. There is no one.”
He advanced two steps; his crooked eyes gave out a sullen gleam, and arranging his mouth he began to imitate the call of a quail, evidently wishing to summon someone in that way.
All this seemed to Basia very hostile, and she aimed a pistol at his breast without hesitation—
“Silence, or thou’lt die!”
The man stopped, and, what is more, threw himself flat on the ground. The idiot did the same, but began to howl like a wolf from terror; perhaps he had lost his mind on a time from the same feeling, for now his howling recalled the most ghastly terror.
Basia urged forward her horses, and shot on like an arrow. Fortunately there was no undergrowth in the forest, and trees were far apart. Soon a new plain appeared, narrow, but very long. The horses had gained fresh strength from eating at the stack, and rushed like the wind.
“They will run home, mount their horses, and pursue me,” thought Basia.
Her only solace was that the horses travelled well, and that the place where she met the men was rather far from the house.
“Before they can reach the house and bring out the horses, I, riding in this way, shall be five miles or more ahead.”
That was the case; but when some hours had passed, and Basia, convinced that she was not followed, slackened speed, great fear, great depression, seized her heart, and tears came perforce to her eyes.
This meeting showed her what people in those regions were, and what might be looked for from them. It is true that this knowledge was not unexpected. From her own experience, and from the narratives at Hreptyoff, she knew that the former peaceful settlers had gone from those wilds, or that war had devoured them; those who remained were living in continual alarm, amid terrible civil disturbance and Tartar attacks, in conditions in which one man is a wolf toward another; they were living without churches or faith, without other principles than those of bloodshed and burning, without knowing any right but that of the strong hand; they had lost all human feelings, and grown wild, like the beasts of the forest. Basia knew this well; still, a human being, astray in the wilderness, harassed by cold and hunger, turns involuntarily for aid first of all to kindred beings. So did Basia when she saw that smoke indicating a habitation of people; following involuntarily the first impulse of her heart, she wished to rush to it, greet the inhabitants with God’s name, and rest her wearied head under their roof. But cruel reality bared its teeth at her quickly, like a fierce dog. Hence her heart was filled with bitterness; tears of sorrow and disappointment came to her eyes.
“Help from no one but God,” thought she; “may I meet no person again.” Then she fell to thinking why that man had begun to imitate a quail. “There must be others there surely, and he wanted to call them.” It came to her head that there were robbers in that tract, who, driven out of the ravines near the river, had betaken themselves to the wilds farther off in the country, where the nearness of broad steppes gave them more safety and easier escape in case of need.
“But what will happen,” inquired Basia, “if I meet a number of men, or more than a dozen? The musket—that is one; two pistols—two; a sabre—let us suppose two more; but if the number is greater than this, I shall die a dreadful death.”
And as in the previous night with its alarms she had wished day to come as quickly as possible, so now she looked with yearning for darkness to hide her more easily from evil eyes.
Twice more, during persistent riding, did it seem to her that she was passing near people. Once she saw on the edge of a high plain a number of cabins. Maybe robbers by vocation were not living in them, but she preferred to pass at a gallop, knowing that even villagers are not much better than robbers; another time she heard the sound of axes cutting wood.
The wished-for night covered the earth at last. Basia was so wearied that when she came to a naked steppe, free from forest, she said to herself—
“Here I shall not be crushed against a tree; I will sleep right away, even if I freeze.”
When she was closing her eyes it seemed to her that far off in the distance, in the white snow, she saw a number of black points which were moving in various directions. For a while longer she overcame her sleep. “Those are surely wolves,” muttered she, quietly.
Before she had gone many yards, those points disappeared; then she fell asleep so soundly that she woke only when Azya’s horse, on which she was sitting, neighed
