I

The sky had been silvery with stars all night long, the fields beyond the garden and the threshing floor was darkling evenly, and the windmill, with the two horns of its wings, showed sharply black against the clear horizon. But the stars gave out sparks, trembling, frequently cutting the sky with narrow green streaks; the garden was fitfully murmurous, and already chill autumn could be heard in its murmurings. From the direction of the mill, from the sloping plain, from the desolated stubble-field, a strong wind was blowing.

The farm hands had sated themselves at supper⁠—it was the holiday of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin⁠—and had avidly smoked their fill on their way through the garden to the threshing barn. Having thrown on their long great coats, tight at the waist, and falling in folds over their short sheepskin coats, they were going there to sleep, to guard the heaps of grain. Following behind the farm hands, dragging a pillow, walked the master’s son, a tall high school student, with three white borzoi hounds running at his heels. Upon the threshing floor, in the fresh wind, there was a pleasant smell of chaff, of new rye straw. They all lay down comfortably in it, in the very biggest stack of all, as near as possible to the piles of grain and the corn kiln. The dogs fussed about, rustled for a while at the feet of the workers, and also quieted down.

Over the heads of the recumbent men the broad Milky Way, dividing into two smokily-translucent branches, glimmered whitely and faintly, filled with the fine star dust suspended within them. It was quiet and warm in the straw. But a northeast wind, again and again, ran disquietingly through the brushwood that was darkling along the ditch to the left, with its rampart of earth; and increasing, it neared with an inimical noise. Then a cool breath would reach the face, the hands, together with a bad odour from the lanes between the heaps of grain. And over the horizon, beyond the irregular black blotches of the brushwood, icy diamonds vividly flared up; the Capella was bursting into varicoloured fires.

Having settled down, they all shut their eyes, after a yawning spell. The wind was dreamily rustling the prickling straws that stuck out above their heads. But its coolness reached their faces, and they all felt that they did not want to sleep as yet⁠—they had slept their fill after dinner. The high school student alone was languishing from a sweet longing for sleep. But the fleas would not let him sleep. He started scratching, let his thoughts run on wenches, on the widow through whom he, with the help of the farm hand Pashka, had lost his innocence that very summer, and he also became broad awake.

This student was a thin, awkward stripling with an unusually soft colouring⁠—his face was so white that even sunburn had no effect upon it; he was blue-eyed, with outrageously big hands and feet, with a big Adam’s apple. He had not parted company with the farm hands all summer⁠—at first he had carted manure, then the sheaves; he put in order the piles of grain, he smoked an atrocious cheap tobacco, he imitated the muzhiks in speech and in his roughness with wenches, who always started laughing at him in chorus, greeting him with catcalls and cries of “Veretenkin! Veretenkin!”4⁠—a stupid nickname invented by Ivan, who was a helper at the threshing machine. He passed his nights now at the threshing floor, now in the horse stable; he did not change his linen and his canvas clothes for weeks at a time, nor would he take off his tarred boots; he raised blood-blisters on his feet, unaccustomed to coarse foot-cloths; he lost all the buttons on his summer uniform overcoat, which had been soiled by wheels and manure, had broken the letters and the little silver leaves on his uniform cap.

“He has broken away from the house entirely!” his mother would say of him, with a caressing, kindly regret, enraptured even by his defects. “Of course, he’ll pick up, become stronger⁠—but just look what a matted choate he is⁠—he doesn’t even wash his neck!” she would say, smiling to her guests and pulling his soft, chestnut locks, trying to get at the soft little spiral, curling like a girl’s, at the nape of his neck⁠—dark, contrasting with the childishly white flesh visible under the blouse that buttoned at the side, contrasting with the large vertebrae under the fine, smooth skin. But he would sulkily turn his head away from under her caressing hand, frowning and blushing. He grew not by the day but by the hour, and as he walked he stooped, whistling meditatively, angularly lumbering from side to side. He still ate linden blossoms and the gum of cherry trees; he carried, although by now secretly, a slingshot to shoot sparrows with, but he would have been consumed with shame had this been revealed, and he constantly kept his hands in his pockets. Only last winter he had played Redskins with his little sister Lily. But in the spring, when through all the streets of the town streams were running and shimmering with a blinding dazzle; when the white windowsills in the classrooms were aflame with the sun; when the teacher’s room was shot through and through with the sun, and the principal’s cat was lying in ambush for the first finches in the high school garden, still filled with silvery snow⁠—in the spring he had gotten the notion that he had fallen in love with the slender little Youshkova, a bookish, serious-minded high school girl; he had struck up a close friendship with Simashko, a spectacled six-termer, and had determined to dedicate his entire summer vacation to self-culture. But in the summer his dreams about self-culture were already forgotten; a new resolve was taken⁠—to study the common people; which resolve had soon passed into a passionate infatuation with the muzhiks.

On the evening before the Assumption, the high school boy was heavy with sleep while still at supper. Toward the end of every day, when his head would grow heavy and fall down on his chest⁠—from fatigue, from talking with the farm hands, from his role of a grownup⁠—his boyishness returned: he wanted to play a bit with Lily, to have a brief reverie, before falling asleep, of some distant and unknown lands, of extraordinary manifestations of passion and self-sacrifice, of the lives of Livingston and Baker, and not of the muzhiks written about by Naumov and Nephedov, whom he had given his word of honour to Simashko to read; he wanted to sleep, for at least one night, at home, instead of getting up before the sun, in the cold morning light, when even dogs yawn and stretch so languorously.⁠ ⁠… But the maid entered, saying that the farm hands had already gone to the threshing floor. Without listening to his mother’s calls, the high school lad threw his uniform overcoat with its bobbing belt over his shoulders, and put on his cap; grabbing the pillow out of the maid’s hands, he caught up with the farm hands in the lane. He staggered from drowsiness as he walked, dragging the pillow by a corner, and, as soon as he had stumbled up to the heap of straw and had crawled under an old raccoon overcoat lying there, he sailed off into some sweet, black darkness. But the tiny dog-fleas began to burn him as with fire; the farm hands began talking among themselves.⁠ ⁠…

There were five of them: Khomut,5 a kindly, shaggy old man; Kiriushka, a lame, white-eyed, irresponsible lad, who gave himself up to a childish vice, which fact everybody knew and which made Kiriushka still more irresponsible, making him bear in silence all sorts of jeers about his short leg, twisted at the knee; Pashka, a good-looking muzhik of twenty-four and recently married; Theodot, an elderly muzhik, from another region, somewhere near Liebedyana, nicknamed Postnii;6 and Ivan⁠—a very stupid fellow, but one who deemed himself an amazingly clever, cunning, and mercilessly-scoffing man. This last held in contempt all work, save work with agricultural machines; he wore a blue blouse and had impressed everybody with the idea that he was a born machinist, although everybody knew that he did not know a blamed thing about the construction of even a simple winnowing machine. He was always narrowing his morosely-ironic little eyes and pursing up his thin lips, never letting a pipe out of his teeth. He generally kept a portentous silence; but whenever he did speak, it was only to annihilate somebody or something with a comment or a nickname. He scoffed at absolutely everything: at sense and folly, at simplicity and slyness, at despondency and laughter; at God and his own mother, at the gentry and the muzhiks. The nicknames he bestowed were absurd and incomprehensible, but he uttered them with such an enigmatic air that it seemed to everybody that they had both a meaning and a caustic aptness. He had not spared even himself, and had given himself a nickname: “Rogojkin,”7 he had said once in reference to himself, hinting at something so weightily, so maliciously, that everybody rolled from laughter, and afterwards he was never known as anything but Rogojkin. He had christened the high school student as well, had said something nonsensical about him as well: “Veretenkin.”

The schoolboy⁠—so he thought⁠—had come to know these people well during the summer, had become attached to all of them in different ways⁠—even to Ivan, who unmercifully made fun of him. He was learning one thing or another from them, was adapting their pronounciation⁠—absolutely, as it proved, unlike the speech of the muzhiks in books; adopting their unexpected, absurd, but unshakable conclusions, the uniformity of their ready wisdom, their coarseness and indifference, their capacity for work and their dislike of it. And, had he gone to the city after the vacation, without reverting to his infatuation for the life of the muzhiks during the next summer, he would all his life have thought that he had observed the common people of Russia very well⁠—if, by accident, a lengthy, frank conversation had not sprung up among the farm hands on this night.

It was started by the old man who was lying alongside of the schoolboy and who was scratching more than anybody else.

“Pestering the life out of you, young master, hey? They’re nothing but a misery, Khomut!” said he⁠—the word “Khomut” he used to characterize not only his entire existence, but also all its weariness, all its unpleasantness.

“Can’t stand it,” replied the schoolboy. “The women and wenches now, the devil take them, they won’t touch. But who would you think they ought to be biting if not them?”

“Main thing is, whether a body wear drawers or no, it makes no difference to them fleas,” indifferently agreed the old man, giving off, as he tossed about, a strong odour⁠—of a body long unwashed, and of a worn peasant’s coat that had become permeated with the smoke of a chimneyless hut.

The others kept silence. Usually, they were jocose before falling asleep, questioning Pashka about his conjugal life, while he answered them with such unperturbed and gay shamelessness that even the schoolboy, who was constantly entranced by him, never taking his eyes off his intelligent and animated face, was vexed over anyone’s being able to speak so of one’s own young wife. Now no one seemed about to begin questioning, and the student wanted to do so himself, in order to excite his imagination, forever empoisoned by the widow, and to hear the self-assured voice of Pashka⁠—when the latter stretched himself, sat up, and began rolling a crude cigarette. The old man raised up his head, covered with a cap, and shook it.

“Eh, but you’ll burn this place down some day, young fellow!” said he. “Watch out. It don’t take much to bring on trouble.”

“Well, I’ll get out of it by blamin’ the young master,” answered Pashka, a trifle hoarse from a cold; and, having cleared his throat, he started laughing. “He’s smoking all the time himself. Wonderful night tonight, young master,” said he, changing his tone to a serious one and turning around to the schoolboy. “What’s the only thing lacking on this night, you might say? Why, the moon.”

They all felt that he wanted to tell something. And, truly, having kept silent for a while, without eliciting any reply, he suddenly added:

“Are you asleep, young master? What hour might it be now?”

The schoolboy raised himself up, pulled his silver watch out of his trouser’s-pocket, and began inspecting it by the light of the stars.

“Half-past ten,” said he, bending over.

“Well, now, I just knew it was that,” concurred Pashka, gaily and self-assuredly, lighting his cigarette, which was rolled somewhat in the form of a pipe; it was gripped in one corner of his mouth between his teeth, and he lit it with a stinking sulphur match flaming within his cupped hands. “Just exactly at this time last year I killed a man.”

And the schoolboy at once straightened up, letting his hands drop⁠—and he seemed to be turned to stone during all the time that the others talked. At rare intervals he would put in a word, but it was as though it were not he, but some other who was talking in his stead. Then everything within him began to shiver in an icy ague fit inducive of senseless laughter, and his face began to burn, as though it were aflame.

II

Ivan, as always, maintained a portentous silence. Kiriushka was not at all interested in whatever they were talking about; he lay thinking his own thoughts⁠—mostly about an accordion, the purchase of which was his most cherished dream. Theodot, too, who lay leaning upon his elbow, was silent for a long while. He was a strong, flat-chested muzhik, who at the beginning of the summer had not been considered by the farm hands as one of them, because he wore a short sheepskin coat, without a waistline and without folds in its skirts⁠—which was the kind worn by the Tartars of Kazan. He had seemed a stranger to the schoolboy as well. Just as he liked the cheerful composure of Pashka, the smoothness of his mannerisms, his sunburned face, so he was not disposed to intimacy by the face of Theodot, also calm but devoid of any expression, large, ashen-gray, wrinkled, with sparse moustaches, always wet from the slavering caused by his pipe; his whitish, weather-beaten lips were turned considerably outward. Theodot was listening attentively, but did not put in a single word during Pashka’s narrative⁠—only now and then he would give a consumptive cough and spit into the straw. And at first the conversation was sustained only by the dumbfounded schoolboy and the old man.

“What are you lyin’ about nothin’ at all for?” said the old man indifferently, upon hearing the boastful declaration of Pashka. “What sort of a man could you have killed? Where?”

“Bust my eyes if I’m lyin’!” responded Pashka warmly, turning in the old man’s direction. “Last year, on Assumption. Not only was it wrote up in all the papers⁠—it was even in the order sent to the regiment.”

“Well, where was it you killed him?”

“Why, in the Caucasus, in the Zukhdens. Honest to God! Of course, I ain’t agoin’ to lie about it; I didn’t do it all single-handed⁠—Koslov also fired a shot; he’s also one of ours, from the Eletzkaya province. I wasn’t the only one that got the thanks for it; the division commander thanked him too, in front of all the men lined up, and rewarded us with a rouble each, right off; but then, I know without any mistake that it was me that winged him.”

“What him?” asked the high school student.

“Why, a convict; this Cheorchian, now.”

“Hold on,” the old man interrupted him. “You just tell the whole thing sensibly. Where was you stationed?”

“There he goes again!” said Pashka with assumed vexation. “There’s a queer fellow⁠—won’t believe nothing. We was stationed at these New Ceniyaks, now.⁠ ⁠…”

“I know the place,” said the old man. “We, too, was stationed there for eighteen days.”

“There, you see now⁠—that means I ain’t just making it up as I go along, for I can tell you how this happened, just about. We wasn’t stationed for no eighteen days then, brother, but for a whole year and seven months; as for these here convicts, we was in duty bound to escort them up to the very Zukhdens. These here convicts, now, was the most important criminals what could possibly be⁠—rebels, they was. So then, ten of them in all was caught in the mountains and put in our keeping.⁠ ⁠…

“Hold on,” interrupted the high school student, imitating the old man, and feeling his hands turning to ice; “but how was it you told me that you’d never get to shooting any rebels⁠—that you’d liefer shoot any officer who might order you to fire at them?”

“Well, I wouldn’t let my own father off, when need be,” answered Pashka, throwing a furtive glance at the student, and again turning to the old man. “Maybe I’d never have laid a finger on him, even, if he hadn’t taken it into his head to ruin us all; but no, he went in for foxiness and we might all have been sentenced to hard labour for a whole year. But as it turned out, it was all for the best; we got thanks and turned out to be a bit smarter than him. Just you listen, now,” he said, pretending that he was addressing the old man only. “We was leading them along, all fair and square. We didn’t have any of these carryings on, like beating them, now, for example, or urging them on with the butt-end of a gun.⁠ ⁠… But one of them⁠—a sort of a skinny fellow, short of stature⁠—was walking along and complaining about his stomach all the time, asking us all the while to let him do something.⁠ ⁠… He just barely managed to tinkle along in his leg-irons. Then, at last, he approaches the superior officer: ‘Let me lie down in the cart.’ Well, he was allowed to do so, like he was real sick. Only by now we come to the Zukhdens. And the night’s as black as pitch, and it’s raining cats and dogs. We made ’em sit down on the front entrance, and watched ’em; each one of the soldiers had a little lantern in his hands, of course, while the superior officer went off into the room, to try the bars at the windows to see if they was all right, now, and hadn’t been filed away by some hidden file.”

“Absolutely,” said the old man. “According to law he’s got to take over everything in good shape.”

“That’s just what I’m talkin’ about,” confirmed Pashka, again hastily hiding a lit sulphur match in his cupped hands. “You know all this business, now, and that makes it interestin’ to be telling you about it. Well, the superior officer had gone off,” he went on, squeezing out the match and letting the smoke out of his nostrils, “he’d gone off, inspecting things, while we stand around, nodding our heads⁠—we wanted to sleep something dreadful⁠—when this here Cheorchian suddenly jumps up, and off ’round the corner with him! That means, you understand, that he had all this business figured out, while he was still in the cart; he had cut the strap around his legs that held the shackles, with the first thing that had come to his hand; had loosened them upon him, then picked ’em up in his hand, so⁠—” Pashka bent over and, spreading his legs, demonstrated how the prisoner had grabbed up the shackles, “and then had taken to his heels! But me and Koslov was no fools; we dropped our lanterns and took after him: Koslov ran around the corner too, whilst I went straight ahead to cut him off. I keep on running, but all the time I’m trying to catch the clink⁠—where his chains might be clanking, that is. It ain’t even worthwhile to be shootin’ at haphazard, thinks I. At last, I catch the sound⁠—and bang! I feel it go past him. I fire another shot⁠—again I hear it go by him. But Koslov is popping away right and left; like as not to get me any minute.⁠ ⁠… Then I got riled: ‘Ah,’ thinks I, ‘may your eyes bust out!’ I put the gun to my shoulder and I let ’er go: glory be to the Lord, I got him⁠—I hear by the sound that he must have fallen down. I let out two more shots toward the same spot, and ran; and there he was sitting on his bottom on the ground. He’s sitting down, propped up with his hands in the dirt; his teeth are bared, and he’s rattlin’: ‘Quick,’ says he, ‘quick, Russ, stick your bayonet into me right here.⁠ ⁠…’ Meaning his chest, that is. I charged with my bayonet on a run⁠—straight through his heart.⁠ ⁠… Why, the bayonet went right out at his back!”

“Good work!” said the old man. “Let’s have just one good puff.⁠ ⁠… Well, and where was Koslov at now?”

Pashka inhaled some smoke, deeply and quickly, and thrust the fag-end into the old man’s hand.

“Why, Koslov,” he answered, hurriedly and gaily, flattered by the praise, “why, Koslov is running, yelling with all his might: ‘Did you do for him?’ ‘I’ve done for him’ says I, ‘let’s drag the carcass away.⁠ ⁠…’ We took him by the shackles at once and dragged him back, to the porch.⁠ ⁠… I cut him down like a weed,” said he, changing his tone to a calmer and more self-satisfied one.

The old man cogitated for a while.

“And you say the officer rewarded you with a rouble each?”

“That’s straight,” answered Pashka. “He gave it to us right out of his own hands, with all the battalion lined up on parade.”

The old man, shaking his cap-covered head, spat into his palm and extinguished the cigarette end in the spittle.

Ivan, leisurely, through his teeth, drawled out:

“Well, it’s plain to be seen there’s lots of fools among the soldiers too.”

“How do you make that out?”

“Why, here’s how,” said Ivan, “you durn fool! What should you have done? You oughtn’t to have dragged him, but should have sent your mate with a report, and stood guard with a gun over the dead body. D’you understand now, or don’t you?”

III

Theodot began speaking even more plainly, after a general silence and a muttering of: “Ye-es⁠ ⁠… well done.⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, now,” he began slowly, lying back on his elbow and casting an occasional glance at the dark figure of the student, motionlessly stuck before him against the background of the starry sky; “well, now, I sinned absolutely over nothing. I killed a man over a mere trifle, you might say; all on account of a she-goat I had.”

“What do you mean⁠—over a she-goat?” the old man, Pashka, and the schoolboy interrupted him in unison.

“Honest to God, that’s the truth,” answered Theodot. “But you just listen a while to what sort of bane this she-goat was.⁠ ⁠…”

The old man and Pashka again lighted cigarettes and began to stamp down the straw, in preparation to listening. The student, too, wanted to light up, but his icy hands would not stir, would not come out of his pockets. As for Theodot, he continued seriously and calmly:

“The whole trouble was just on account of her. I didn’t do the murder on purpose, of course.⁠ ⁠… He was the first to beat me up.⁠ ⁠… And there was quarrelling, going to court.⁠ ⁠… He came, drunk, whilst I jumped out, all heated up, and hit him with a whetstone.⁠ ⁠… But what’s the sense of talkin’ about it; as it was, I done penance for half a year at a monastery on account of him; but if there hadn’t been this here she-goat, nothing at all would have happened. Main thing was, none of us had ever kept these here goats; they ain’t in the muzhik’s line, and we can’t understand the handling of them; and then, to top it all, the goat turned out to be a bad one, and frisky. What carrion she was⁠—the Lord save me from such another! Just the same as a little borzoi bitch, she was. Maybe I wouldn’t have wanted to get her⁠—everybody was laughing, talking me out of it as it was; but I was downright forced to it by need. We ain’t got any large, well-managed farms, nor any sort of free land or forests.⁠ ⁠… We ain’t had a common pasture land, of our own from time out of mind, and as to what small livestock we might have, it simply has to find forage on the wastelands. As for large cattle⁠—we used to put the cows into the big owner’s grounds, and for all that sort of thing us little fellers was supposed to mow, and bind in sheaves, two acres of grain, and plough two acres of fallow-land; and put in three days with the old woman at mowing, and three days at threshing.⁠ ⁠… Count it up⁠—and what don’t it come to?”

“The Lord deliver us!” the old man supported him sympathetically.

“Whereas to buy a she-goat,” Theodot went on, “well, that meant scraping off seven, or say eight, roubles to give away for her; on the other hand, if she tried hard, she’d yield four bottles, no less, of milk, and the milk she’d give was thicker and sweeter nor cow milk. The hard part about her was, of course, that you couldn’t keep her together with the sheep; a she-goat fights with them a lot, when she’s carrying a kid, and once she starts in she gets fiercer’n a dog⁠—just can’t bear to look at them. And what a creature she was for climbing⁠—it didn’t mean nothin’ to her to get up on top of a hut, or a clump of willows. Wherever there was a willow, she was dead sure to strip it bare, would strip off all its tender bark⁠—there was nothing she liked better’n that!”

“But you wanted to tell us how you killed a man,” the schoolboy uttered with difficulty, looking all the while at Pashka, at Pashka’s face, indistinct in the light of the stars; he was incredulous that this very Pashka was a murderer, and he was picturing to himself a small, dead Georgian, whom two soldiers were dragging along by his chains, through the mud, surrounded by a dark rainy night.

“Well, and what else was I talking about?” answered Theodot, somewhat rudely, and began speaking a trifle livelier. “You can’t understand this business, you ain’t tried yet to live on your own; but to live at home with mamma is a thing anyone can do. That’s just what I was talking about⁠—that a sin like that came about through just nothing at all. I slaughtered three sheep all on account of her,” said he, addressing the old man. “I took in nine and a half for the sheep, and paid eight for her. She didn’t cost me cheap, at that.⁠ ⁠… And for another thing, I started having rows with my old woman almost every day. Well, as I was saying, I got a triflin’ sum, gave away eight for the she-goat; then, too, I bought a thing or two for the household, a matter here and there, got some little whistles for the youngsters, and started off for home. I pegged along and pegged along, and came home toward morning. I look⁠—and I am shy a half; that meant that I must have shoved it in my pocket and sown it as I went. The old woman started counting the money. ‘Where,’ says she, ‘is the half? Did you swallow it? I told you, you fool, to sell the sheep as carcasses, and to keep the skins for yourself.⁠ ⁠…’ One word led to another, and then a row began⁠—may the Lord save me from such another! My old woman, to tell the truth, is such a dog as you’d have to look through all the county to find the like of.⁠ ⁠…”

“That goes without saying,” Pashka put it in a businesslike manner. “The more you beat ’em, the better they be.”

“That’s understood,” said Theodot. “Well, she came to her senses and gave in. And when she had milked the she-goat, she became downright glad: the goat turned out to be a good milker, and the milk was fine. So we started in rejoicing. We drove it into the flock. I gave the little shepherd boys something for tobacco, treated them to a cup of vodka each.⁠ ⁠… Otherwise they would train her to butt the sheep in the belly, the sons of bitches.⁠ ⁠… Only when the flock comes back at evening⁠—I look, and my goat ain’t there. I ask the shepherd: ‘How is it our she-goat ain’t here?’ ‘Why,’ says he, ‘we drove the herd to the wasteland near the woods; your goat started playing with the cows, and tackled the bull; she’d back away from him, get one good running start, and then let herself fly straight between his eyes! He got so petered out on account of her that he began hiding from her behind the cows, and when we’d go for her to chase her off, she’d scoot into the oats.⁠ ⁠… She just knocked us off our feet! And then she ran away: the helper ran after her; he ran all through the forest, couldn’t find her nowhere⁠—just like she’d fallen through the earth.

“Well, right you were ’bout that goat being poison!” remarked the old man.

“A-a!” said Theodot, malignantly. “Why this ain’t nothin’ at all⁠—you just listen to what’s coming! When this same she-goat had disappeared, me and the old woman plumb lost our heads. Well, now, thinks we, it’s bye-bye; there goes our good money; she sure will make a mouthful for some wolf. But, of course, we don’t reckon at all on the fact that it would be far better if she was to go to all the devils. Soon as day came we ran for the forest; we left nary a likely place untouched, I don’t think; we beat up the entire forest to the last twig⁠—she wasn’t nowheres, and that’s all there was to it! Gawd knows how I grieved; however I went to ploughing⁠—it was just ploughing time then. I took a bit of bread with me, wrapped up in a kerchief, laying it down near the edge of the field where I was working. Now, on another mound, there was one of our village lads ploughing⁠—suddenly, I hear him shouting something, pointing with his hand. I look around and just gasp: there was the she-goat! She had dragged out the little bundle, seizing it in her teeth; she had shaken it loose and was standing, jerking her beard, and eating the bread.⁠ ⁠… I dropped my plough as fast as I could and went for her. I go after her, and she goes away from me. I go after her, and she goes away from me⁠—she’d run a little ways, and stop, and munch the bread⁠—a lot she cared! And such a happy and a clever carcass she was⁠—she watched every move I made. I had my heart set on her, I sure wanted to catch her. I just could have smashed her to bits, it seems! She gobbled down the bread and went off; she’d turn around and give me a look, shaking her tail⁠—well, just making fun of me!”

“No use talking⁠—it’s a carefree creature!” said the old man.

“That’s just what I’m saying!” exclaimed Theodot, encouraged by the sympathy. “That’s just what I’m talking about⁠—that she downright ruined us! There hadn’t even a week passed, when everybody had it in for me: ‘Your goat,’ says they, ‘as good as lives amongst our grain.’ She trampled down a whole eighth of an acre of my own, tearing down all the ears of oats. Then one day a thunderstorm came up; the lightning started in flashing, and the rain poured down⁠—I looked and I see my white she-goat sailing along with all her might straight toward our place, bleating like she was scared out of her own voice⁠—and then she pops straight into our doorway. I started off as fast as my legs would carry me after her; I got her into a tight corner, drew a cord that I used for a belt over her horns, and began letting her have it.⁠ ⁠… The thunder rumbles, the lightning flashes, but I keep on lambasting her, I keep on lambasting her! I must have beat her for more than an hour, without lying. Then I put her up on the brewing vat, tied her up with the rope girdle⁠ ⁠… but who knows whether the girdle was rotted, or whether it was something else⁠—only when we look in the morning, the goat’s gone again! Then⁠—would you believe it?⁠—I was so vexed, that I just burst into tears!”

IV

Theodot’s tone had become so simple, so sincere, so filled with the tones of husbandry aggrieved, that it would never have entered anybody’s head that here was a murderer, confessing his sin. Then, too, he was listened to in a spirit of simplicity. Kiriushka was lying flat on his belly, his head covered with his great coat; his feet, in big bast sandals and thickly wrapped in foot cloths, were sticking out. Ivan, with his cap shoved down over his forehead, his hands tucked into his sleeves, was lying on his side, also without moving; as for his stern and serious silence, he maintained it because he deemed it beneath his dignity to be interested in fools. He was so little concerned whether those before him were murderers or not, that he had even called out once:

“Time to sleep! Finish that gabbing tomorrow!”

As for Pashka and the old man, both half-reclining and biting little straws, they merely shook their heads and grinned occasionally, as if to say: “Well, Theodot sure has known his fill of trouble with that she-goat!” And Theodot, evidently deeming himself already vindicated by this sympathy for his ridiculous and hard situation, lost entirely his diffidence about digressions. And the high school boy, gritting his teeth both from the wind and from the inner cold, would at times look about him wildly: Where was he, and what queer night was this? But it was still the same simple, familiar country night, of which there had been many. The field was dark, the corn-kiln stood out in a sharp triangle against the starry sky; through the underbrush, beyond which the stars flared up and fell, a wind was blowing; its cool breath, with the pleasant scent of the chaff, reached the face and hands, rustled in the straw, and again grew still, dying away.⁠ ⁠… The hounds⁠—white balls sunk in the straw⁠—were fast asleep.⁠ ⁠… And all the horror lay only in that it was late, that a small cluster of silver stars had risen high in the northeast, that the dark mass of the slumbrous garden was murmuring in the distance, dully, autumn-wise; that the eyes in the faces of those conversing were sparkling in the starlight.

“Yes, little brother of mine,” Theodot was saying, laughing over his own ridiculous and sad predicament, “nobody can’t say it weren’t a misfortune! At last they tell me, now, that a muzhik in the Prilepakh had driven my she-goat to his place. I start out to get her back; no help for it⁠—such seemed to be my lot. I come to the village; there’s nobody around, wherever I look⁠—everybody’s out in the fields. A lad is riding off for water; I ask him⁠—‘Where’s Bockhov’s house?’ ‘Why,’ says he ‘right there, where the old woman in the red petticoat is sitting under a bush.’ I walk up: ‘Is this Bochkov’s place?’ The old woman waves her hand at me, pointing to a little yard in the blazing sun.⁠ ⁠…”

“Must have gone daft from old age,” put in Pashka, starting to laugh so pleasantly that the student looked around at him with amazement and fear, reflecting: “Why no⁠—it can’t be true; he must have told lies about himself!”

“She was gone daft,” confirmed Theodot. “Just kept on waving her hand. But I had already been hearing a hog grunting in the little yard. I open the door to a sty, a corner fenced off with plaited willow, where this same pig was kept. I see a big sow pulling a woman around; the woman’s thrown her weight upon it, holding it with both hands, pouring out of a pail upon it with the other. And the sow is all black from mud, lugging the woman, dragging her along⁠—the woman can’t manage her nohow, and her clothes is pulled up to her belly. It was both to sin and to grin! Soon as she saw me, she pulls down her skirt⁠—her legs, her hands was all in manure.⁠ ⁠… ‘What d’you want?’ ‘What do I want? I’m here on business. You drove my she-goat up here; you’re keeping strayed cattle, but ain’t giving out no notice of it.’ ‘We ain’t keeping any she-goat of yours,’ says she. ‘We let her go. We drove her into the owner’s place.’ And she laughs at something. ‘So-o,’ thinks I, ‘that means I’m in hot water again: well, just you wait!’ I went out and kept on; I had just gone past the next farm, had turned up a path through some flax, when a red-haired little fellow bobs up from somewheres right in my way. ‘Did you come for the goat?’ ‘For the goat⁠—but why?’ Suddenly I hear a woman yelling beyond the hut: ‘Where you gone to, Kuzka, damn your eyes!’ ‘Run quick,’ I says, ‘here’s your mother comin’ with some stinging nettles.’ And there she was, right on the spot; she sees him and runs: ‘Didn’t I tell you to look after the little one? But where did you go off to, you so-and-so?’ And then she pounces on me! ‘Where you from?’ ‘And what business of yours may that be now?’ ‘Oh, no, you tell me where you’re from!’ ‘I’m the man in the moon. What are you yelling about? I’m looking for my she-goat.’ ‘Oh, so it’s you, is it, damn your eyes, that don’t give any peace to the village with your goat!’ And suddenly I see a tall muzhik rushing toward me from the corn kiln⁠—without a cap, beltless, in boots. He ran on me at full speed. ‘Your goat?’ ‘Mine.⁠ ⁠…’ He unwraps himself, swings back, and lets fly one in my ear.”

“Good work!” exclaimed the old man and Pashka in the same breath; as for the schoolboy, he even let out a little squeal: this, then, was the most horrible part of all! But Theodot calmly pulled out the skirt of his short coat from under him, and calmly continued:

“Oh, yes, he warmed me up so that my head just begun to hum. I grab him by his hands, and ask him, what that was for? And by now people was running up.⁠ ⁠… Right in front of everybody, I ask them to be witnesses of this here matter; again I ask what it was my goat had gone and done? It turns out that she had knocked a child off its feet, had broken its head, making it bleed; had chewn up a shirt, and had trampled some rye. Very well⁠—complain to the court about it; there I’ll be called to account and you won’t be let off either. ‘Now,’ says I, ‘you ain’t a-goin’ to get a durn thing off me!’ I put on my cap and went as fast as I could to the owner’s yard. I grew a trifle cheerier: the goat, thinks I, won’t get away from me now; and you can’t sue me now⁠—you should have waited before you started in fighting with me. I draw near and I see, on a pony with a clipped tail, a lad in a satin cap, his legs and arms bare⁠—a jockey, they calls it. The horse is playful, and he flicks it with a little whip. ‘How do you do, now; allow me to ask⁠—has your grace got my she-goat?’ ‘And who may you be?’ ‘I’m the owner of that there goat.’ ‘Well, now, my daddy ordered it to be driven in.’ Things are going along fine; I go on farther and meet a beggar, from whom I lay in some bread⁠—for the hounds in the owner’s yard are pretty big. I enter the yard and see a four-horse carriage standing on the gravelled drive near the house⁠—the horses are well-fed, spirited. There’s a flunky at the grand entrance, his beard parted in two. A grownup young lady walks out in a hat trimmed with ribbons, her face all covered up with muslin. ‘Dasha!’ she yells to the maid in the house, ‘ask the master to come as soon as possible. He’s at the riding-ground.’ I start for the riding-ground. There I see the owner himself standing, in a uniform frock with a green collar; he wears a medal and carries his cap in his hand; his bald head simply blazes in the sun, his belly is all in creases, and he’s all red himself. And there’s a little lad perched up on the roof, his arm plunged in under the roofing, looking for something⁠—must be for starlings, thinks I to myself. But no⁠—he was taken up with sparrows. The owner looks on, yelling: ‘Catch them, catch, them, the sons of bitches!’ And the little boy catches the young sparrows, pulls them out, and knocks them against the ground. The owner catches sight of me: ‘What do you want?’ ‘Why, now,’ says I, ‘your gardener caught my she-goat at the strawberries. Allow me to take her away, so’s I may kill her.’ ‘This isn’t the first time, now,’ says he, ‘I shall fine you two roubles.’ ‘I agree with you,’ I says, ‘I’m at fault, and I admit it. What hard luck!’ I says, ‘I always have two wenches watching it; but yesterday, as though for spite⁠—the deuce knows whether they ate too many raw mushrooms, or what it was⁠—they was rolling around, spewing up; and as for my wife, she also didn’t watch out, to tell the truth⁠—she was lying in the barn, yelling with all her might⁠—her hand had all swollen up.⁠ ⁠…’ A man’s got to excuse himself somehow. I tell him all about what a baneful creature my she-goat is, how I was given one in the ear for her⁠—he laughs and grows good-natured. ‘No matter how I chase her,’ says I, ‘I can’t catch her nohow; and I so wanted to ask your grace for a little gunpowder and to borrow a gun from the truck gardener, so’s to shoot her with it. Well, of course, he softened a lot, allowed me to take her, and I done for her on the spot.”

“You done for her?” asked the old man.

“Absolutely,” said Theodot. “ ‘Well, take it,’ says he, ‘only watch out, don’t mix it up with mine.’ ‘That won’t happen, nohow,’ says I, ‘I’d know her amongst a thousand.’ We went out to the fold, taking Pakhomka the shepherd along with us. I give one look⁠—and at once notice her behind the sheep; she was standing, looking at me sharply for some reason, eyeing me askance. Me and Pakhomka got the sheep into a corner as tight as we could, and I began to walk up to her. I make two steps⁠—she gives one jump over a ram! And again she stands, looking. Again I start for her.⁠ ⁠… And then, she points her head with its horns toward the ground and makes one dash for the sheep, and they all just rush away from her⁠—they parted like water! Then I got mad. Says I to Pakhomka: ‘You just drive her up as easy as you can, the whilst I climb up on the shed, where it’s darker, and grab her by the horns.’ And it’s awful how much manure there was in that yard, right up to the very sheds in some places. I climbed up on the shed, laid down, grabbed a beam as hard as I could, whilst Pakhomka kept on scaring her on toward me. I waited and waited, until finally she came under the very shed⁠—and then I made a grab for her horns! And then she starts in bleating. I even got scared! I fall off the shed; I dig my feet in, holding on to the horns, while she dashes with me all over the yard, drags me up to a pit; then she squirms out, scraping me with her horn over the beard, over the nose⁠—till everything turned black.⁠ ⁠… When I look up, she’s already up on the roof: she’d jumped up on the pile of manure, from the manure on to the roof, from the roof into the tall grass.⁠ ⁠… We could hear the dogs getting noisy in the yard; the other dogs picked it up, raising a racket in the village. We, of course, jumped out after her. But she’s flying along with all her might, and straight for the last hut: there was a new hut being built there; the windows was still boarded up and there was no entry yet, while there was just bare poles laid aslant for the roof. So she clambered up them up to the very ridge⁠—a power like a whirlwind must have carried her up there! We ran up as fast as we could; as for her, she must have felt her death coming⁠—she was bleating for all she was worth, all scared. I picked up a hefty brick, took aim⁠—and caught her so neat that she just jumped up in the air, and then started with a swish down the roof! We ran up, but she was just lying there, her tongue jerking in the dust.⁠ ⁠… She’d take a breath and then rattle, take a breath and rattle again⁠—till the dust rose up near her nose. And her tongue was long, just like a snake.⁠ ⁠… Well, of course, after half an hour or so, she had croaked.”

V

There was a silence. Theodot raised himself up to a sitting posture, and, bending down, spreading his hands, began slowly to unwind the cords with which his old, constantly falling foot-cloths were tied up. And a minute later the schoolboy with horror and repulsion saw that which he had seen so many times before with perfect calmness: a muzhik’s bare foot, dead-white, enormous, flat, with a monstrously grown great toe lying crookedly on top of the others, and the thin, hairy skin, which Theodot, having unwound and dropped the footcloth, began to scratch hard in a delectable fury, tearing it with his nails, as strong as those of a beast. Having scratched his fill and wriggled his toes, he took the foot-cloth with both hands⁠—it was hardened, bent, and blackened at the heel and sole, just as though it had been rubbed with black wax⁠—and shook it out, spreading an unbearable stench upon the fresh breeze. “Yes, murder means nothing to him!” reflected the student, shivering. “That is the foot of a real murderer! How horribly he killed this beautiful she-goat! And the man that he killed with a whetstone⁠ ⁠… he must have been sharpening a scythe⁠ ⁠… and must have struck him straight in the temple, killing him on the stop.⁠ ⁠… But Pashka!⁠ ⁠… Pashka!⁠ ⁠… How could he tell about it so gaily and with such enjoyment, too! ‘It came right out at his back!’ ”

Suddenly, without raising his head, Ivan began speaking morosely:

“Fools are beaten even at the altar. Why, Postnii, it wouldn’t be half-enough to beat you to death for this here she-goat. What did you go and kill her for? You should have sold it. What sort of a husbandman do you call yourself after that, you durn ninny, when you don’t understand that a muzhik can’t get along without livestock? It should be valued. If I only had a she-goat, now.⁠ ⁠…”

He didn’t finish his sentence, was silent for a while, then suddenly grinned.

“There was an affair in Stanova, now; well that really was something.⁠ ⁠… It wasn’t worse than your goat, now; a landowner by the name of Mussin was keeping a wild bull. This bull just wouldn’t let anybody pass; he gored two young cowherds to death. They’d fasten him up with a chain, but still he’d tear loose and go off. Just the very same way, too, like your goat, he’d trample the peasants’ grain; but no one dared to chase him off: they were afraid, and would walk a mile around him. Well, of course, they sawed off his horns, gelded him.⁠ ⁠… He quieted down a bit. Only the muzhiks scored up everything against him. When these here riots began, here’s what they did: they caught him in the field, tied him up with ropes, threw him off his feet.⁠ ⁠… They didn’t beat him at all, but just took and stripped him to the last hair. So, all bare, he dashed into the owner’s yard⁠—he ran in at full speed, fell all in a heap, and died right on the spot⁠—losing all his blood.”

“How?” asked the schoolboy; “they took his hide off? While he was alive?”

“No, while he was cooked,” mumbled Ivan. “Oh you Moscow city feller!”

Everybody started laughing; while Pashka, laughing more than all of them, quickly picked up the conversation.

“Well, there’s a lot of murderers for you! And you was saying, just like that, that we ought to be treated kindly. No brother, guess you can’t get along here without us marching soldiers! When after the Seniyaks we was stationed at Kursk, now, we was also restoring order in a certain settlement. The muzhiks had gotten it into their head to ruinate an owner.⁠ ⁠… And the owner, they do say, was a good sort, at that.⁠ ⁠… Well, the whole settlement went for him, and, naturally, the women tagged along. The watchmen came out to meet the villagers. The peasants went for them with stakes and scythes. The guards fired one volley, and then, of course, took to their heels: what the devil sort of strength can you expect from those dunderheads!⁠—but one bullet did get a baby in a woman’s arms. The woman was left alive, but he, of course, didn’t even let out a squeak⁠—just gave one jerk with his little legs. So, good Lord!” said Pashka, tossing his head from laughter and seating himself more comfortably, “what only didn’t the muzhiks do! They broke everything to smash and smithereens; chased this same owner into a corner, trampling him down, while this muzhik, the father of this here child, ran up to that very spot with this same baby; he was all gasping and crazed from grief, and he starts in to beat the owner over his head with this dead baby! Grabbed him by the little legs and starts in lambasting the owner. And then the others fall upon him, and, of course, all for one and one for all, they finished him. We were rushed up, but he was already beginning to rot when we got there.”

“Well, what are you laughing about, you fool!” the schoolboy wanted to cry out, suddenly feeling a ferocious hatred for Pashka’s laughter, for Pashka’s voice. But here Kiriushka suddenly stirred, and, raising his head, said with childish naiveness:

“But that which took place when Kochergin the landowner was bein’ wrecked⁠—that was something awful! I was then living with him as one of his shepherds.⁠ ⁠… So all their mirrors was thrown into the pond.⁠ ⁠… Afterwards, people from the village would come over for a swim, and would always be pulling them out of the slime.⁠ ⁠… You’d dive, stand up⁠—and then your foot would just slide over a mirror.⁠ ⁠… And this, now⁠ ⁠… how do you call it⁠ ⁠… fortopianner was dragged into the rye.⁠ ⁠… We used to come.⁠ ⁠…” Kiriushka raised himself up, and, laughing, leant back on his elbows; “we would come and there it would be standing.⁠ ⁠… You’d take a club, and start banging upon it⁠—upon its keys, that is.⁠ ⁠… From one end to the other.⁠ ⁠… Why, it would play better nor any accordion!”

Everybody laughed once more. Theodot had adjusted his footgear, had again crisscrossed his foot-cloths accurately with the cords, and, having set himself to rights, had resumed his former position. And, having waited for a moment of silence, he began to finish his story in measured tones:

“Yes, he gave me one on the ear, and yet put in a suit as well.⁠ ⁠… For all these, now, losses and damages, for the forage, that is. He was called Andrei Bogdanov⁠—Andrei Ivannov Bogdanov. A tall muzhik, he was⁠—red-faced, thin, always evil-tempered, always drunk. Well, now, so he started a suit. It was he that had warmed my ear, and he it was that was suing me to boot. Here the busiest time of the year came along, with nary a breathing space; but I’ve got to be hiking off fifteen miles away.⁠ ⁠… I guess that’s just what the Lord must have punished him for.⁠ ⁠…”

As he gazed at the straw, stifling his cough and wiping his flat lips with the palm of his hand, Theodot’s speech was becoming more and more sombre, more and more expressive. Having said “The Lord must have punished him,” he was silent for a while, and then went on:

“The suit, of course, came to nothing. A peace was patched up between us. We was both at fault, that is. But only he wasn’t content with that. He made up with me, but right after he walked away, drank till he was blind-drunk, started threatening to kill me. He yells before everybody: ‘Wait,’ says he, ‘wait, I ain’t drunk yet, now; but when I’ve drunk enough I’ll settle your hash.’ I wanted to get away from the mixup⁠—it made me feel sick in the stomach.⁠ ⁠… Then he took to coming to our village: he’d come under my windows, drunk as drunk could be, and would start in to curse me out, saying things about my mother. And I have a grownup daughter.⁠ ⁠…”

“That weren’t right,” sympathetically grunted out the old man, and yawned.

“Oh, it was a grand story!” said Theodot. “Well, now, so he comes on an evening before the Kiriki. I hear him making a hubbub in the street. I got up, without saying a word, went out into the yard, sat down on a harrow, and started sharpening a scythe. But I was taken with such a rage that I saw red before my eyes. Then I hear him walking up to the hut, raising a rumpus. Must be wanting to break the panes, thinks I to myself. But no; he just made a lot of noise and was already going somewhere else. That would have been the end of it perhaps⁠—if only Ollka, my daughter, hadn’t jumped out⁠ ⁠… And then she starts in yelling, with a voice not her own: ‘Help, father, Andrushka is beating me!’ I dashed out with the scythe whetstone in my hand⁠—and, all in a passion, hit him once right over his head! He just hit the ground. Folks ran up, started dousing him with water⁠ ⁠… but he lies there, and by now he’s only hiccuping.⁠ ⁠… Maybe something might have been done then.⁠ ⁠… Like putting a cold pack on him, or something like that.⁠ ⁠… He ought to have been carried off to a hospital as fast as possible, and a tenner should have been handed to the doctor.⁠ ⁠… But where was a tenner to be gotten? Well, so he hiccuped and he hiccuped, and he passed away toward night. He threshed about and threshed about; then turned over on his back, stretched himself out, and there he was, all ready. And the folks were standing around, looking, all silent. And the lights was already lit by that time.”

All atremble with a quick shivering, his face flaming, the high school student got up, and, sinking in the straw up to his waist, started climbing down the stack. A borzoi bitch, frightened by him, suddenly jumped up and gave a jerky bark. The student drew back sharply, falling into the straw, and stood stock still. The chill wind was rustling; a cluster of chill autumn stars showed white above his very head, while from beyond the hillock of rustling straw came the measured, low-pitched voice of Theodot.

“I sat in the barn for two days under guard, and saw the whole thing through a little window.⁠ ⁠… How they cut him up, that is. The people flocked in from all the villages, to have a look at this murdered man⁠—and me too, for that matter. They used to shove their way right up to the very barn. Two benches was carried out on the common, placed right near the barn, and the murdered man put upon them. A log of wood was put under his head; chairs and a table were brought out for the coroner and the sawbones. The sawbones walks up to him; he tears off his shirt, tears off his drawers⁠—and I see a corpse lying all naked, already stiff; yellow here and green there, while his face was all like wax; the red beard had become thin, and simply stood out. The sawbones put a burdock over you know what place. Right at hand, as usual, there was a box with all sorts of contraptions. The sawbones walks up, parts his hair from ear to ear, makes a cut, and begins to take off the scalp together with the hair, in halves. Where it was thin, he scraped with a little knife. He tore away a half to either side⁠—soon as he gets one piece off, he pulls it down over the eye. The whole skull became visible⁠—like some kind of a little pot, it was.⁠ ⁠… And there’s a black spot on it, near the right ear⁠—black clotted blood; where the blow had come, that is. The sawbones says something to the coroner, and the coroner writes: ‘Three cracks on such and such parts.’ Then the sawbones starts in sawing through the skull all around. The saw don’t work, so he takes a little hammer and a small chisel, see, and goes over the marks that he’d made with the saw, breaking through with the little chisel. And the top of the skull just fell away, like a cup⁠—the brain was all plain to be seen.⁠ ⁠…”

“What don’t they do, the murdering cutthroats!” hoarsely remarked the old man, who had just dozed off.

But Theodot was firmly finishing his say:

“Then he took out a heavy knife, and starts cutting the chest, right through the gristle. He hacks out a three cornered piece, and starts pulling it away⁠—it even started cracking.⁠ ⁠… All the stomach came to view, and the blue lungs, and all the innards.⁠ ⁠…”

Deafened by the beating of his own heart, the student got up on his feet, standing up to the full of his great height⁠—in his cap, shoved back on the nape of his neck, in his light uniform overcoat, which was already too short for him. Gray, huge, dreadful in his Mongolian calmness, Theodot was speaking in measured tones, his pipe gripped between his teeth; but the student was no longer listening to him. With all his eyes he was looking at all these men⁠—so familiar and yet so unknown, so incomprehensible⁠—who had made his whole soul so sick on this night. Pitiful in his vice and his meekness, in all his pastoral primitiveness, Kiriushka was sleeping, covered with his great coat, one thick leg, swathed in white foot-cloths, and twisted at the knee, sticking out from underneath it. Ivan, too, was sleeping; Ivan of the morose, disdainful face, whose mother, a horrible, black old woman, had been dying for three years now, in his black mud hut, standing near the ditches at the edge of the bare village, in the darkness and the dirt, underneath the low ceiling, underneath the low roof of sods, and yet cannot in anyway die, to her grief; while his buck-toothed thin wife feeds at her dark-yellow, hanging dry breast a bare-bellied, clear-eyed child, with its nose running, and its lips bitten into blood by the countless flies in the hut. The happy Pashka was sleeping his heavy, healthy sleep in the fresh wind, in his soldier’s cap, heavy boots, and his new short coat. As for Khomut, the old man, who has not got even a short coat (he has only a long coat, frayed and with a large hole through the shoulder), whose drawers always hung so low upon his flabby thighs⁠—he was sitting with his back to the wind, bareheaded, stripped to the waist. He, senilely emaciated, yellow of body, with his shoulders elevated at a slant, with his twisted prominent backbone glistening in the light of the stars, was sitting with his big tousled head, ruffled by the fresh wind, bowed down, bending his neck which was already scrawny and all in coarse wrinkles. He was intently examining the shirt he had taken off, and, as he listened to Theodot, he would at times squeeze its collar band between his thumbnails.

The student jumped down upon the hard and smooth autumnal earth, and, stooping, quickly walked toward the dark, murmurous garden, toward home.

All three dogs also arose, and, showing dimly white, started running sideways after him, with their tails curled tightly.