e wood.
The rain has trickled off them, and a drop has fallen on your neck
--that's what has made the swelling."

The sun appears from behind the clouds and floods the wood, the
fields, and the three friends with its warm light. The dark menacing
cloud has gone far away and taken the storm with it. The air is
warm and fragrant. There is a scent of bird-cherry, meadowsweet,
and lilies-of-the-valley.

"That herb is given when your nose bleeds," says Terenty, pointing
to a woolly-looking flower. "It does good."

They hear a whistle and a rumble, but not such a rumble as the
storm-clouds carried away. A goods train races by before the eyes
of Terenty, Danilka, and Fyokla. The engine, panting and puffing
out black smoke, drags more than twenty vans after it. Its power
is tremendous. The children are interested to know how an engine,
not alive and without the help of horses, can move and drag such
weights, and Terenty undertakes to explain it to them:

"It's all the steam's doing, children. . . . The steam does the
work. . . . You see, it shoves under that thing near the wheels,
and it . . . you see . . . it works. . . ."

They cross the railway line, and, going down from the embankment,
walk towards the river. They walk not with any object, but just at
random, and talk all the way. . . . Danilka asks questions, Terenty
answers them. . . .

Terenty answers all his questions, and there is no secret in Nature
which baffles him. He knows everything. Thus, for example, he knows
the names of all the wild flowers, animals, and stones. He knows
what herbs cure diseases, he has no difficulty in telling the age
of a horse or a cow. Looking at the sunset, at the moon, or the
birds, he can tell what sort of weather it will be next day. And
indeed, it is not only Terenty who is so wise. Silanty Silitch, the
innkeeper, the market-gardener, the shepherd, and all the villagers,
generally speaking, know as much as he does. These people have
learned not from books, but in the fields, in the wood, on the river
bank. Their teachers have been the birds themselves, when they sang
to them, the sun when it left a glow of crimson behind it at setting,
the very trees, and wild herbs.

Danilka looks at Terenty and greedily drinks in every word. In
spring, before one is weary of the warmth and the monotonous green
of the fields, when everything is fresh and full of fragrance, who
would not want to hear about the golden may-beetles, about the