notes, dragged them out languidly
with no attempt at forming a tune, and yet there was something harsh and
extremely dreary in the sound of the piping.

As the copse became sparser, and the pines were interspersed with young
birch-trees, Meliton saw a herd. Hobbled horses, cows, and sheep were
wandering among the bushes and, snapping the dry branches, sniffed at
the herbage of the copse. A lean old shepherd, bareheaded, in a torn
grey smock, stood leaning against the wet trunk of a birch-tree. He
stared at the ground, pondering something, and played his pipe, it
seemed, mechanically.

"Good-day, grandfather! God help you!" Meliton greeted him in a thin,
husky voice which seemed incongruous with his huge stature and big,
fleshy face. "How cleverly you are playing your pipe! Whose herd are you
minding?"

"The Artamonovs'," the shepherd answered reluctantly, and he thrust the
pipe into his bosom.

"So I suppose the wood is the Artamonovs' too?" Meliton inquired,
looking about him. "Yes, it is the Artamonovs'; only fancy... I
had completely lost myself. I got my face scratched all over in the
thicket."

He sat down on the wet earth and began rolling up a bit of newspaper
into a cigarette.

Like his voice, everything about the man was small and out of keeping
with his height, his breadth, and his fleshy face: his smiles, his
eyes, his buttons, his tiny cap, which would hardly keep on his big,
closely-cropped head. When he talked and smiled there was something
womanish, timid, and meek about his puffy, shaven face and his whole
figure.

"What weather! God help us!" he said, and he turned his head from side
to side. "Folk have not carried the oats yet, and the rain seems as
though it had been taken on for good, God bless it."

The shepherd looked at the sky, from which a drizzling rain was falling,
at the wood, at the bailif's wet clothes, pondered, and said nothing.

"The whole summer has been the same," sighed Meliton. "A bad business
for the peasants and no pleasure for the gentry."

The shepherd looked at the sky again, thought a moment, and said
deliberately, as though chewing each word:

"It's all going the same way.... There is nothing good to be looked
for."

"How are things with you here?" Meliton inquired, lighting his
cigarette. "Haven't you seen any coveys of grouse in the Artamonovs'
clearing?"

The shepherd did not answer at once. He looked again at the sky and to
right and left, thought a litt