the world's going to end I wish it would make haste about it.
There's no need to drag it out and make folks miserable for nothing...."

The old man took the pipe from his lips and, screwing up one eye, looked
into its little opening. His face was sad and covered with thick drops
like tears. He smiled and said:

"It's a pity, my friend! My goodness, what a pity! The earth, the
forest, the sky, the beasts of all sorts--all this has been created,
you know, adapted; they all have their intelligence. It is all going to
ruin. And most of all I am sorry for people."

There was the sound in the wood of heavy rain coming nearer. Meliton
looked in the direction of the sound, did up all his buttons, and said:

"I am going to the village. Good-bye, grandfather. What is your name?"

"Luka the Poor."

"Well, good-bye, Luka! Thank you for your good words. Damka, ici!"

After parting from the shepherd Meliton made his way along the edge of
the wood, and then down hill to a meadow which by degrees turned into a
marsh. There was a squelch of water under his feet, and the rusty marsh
sedge, still green and juicy, drooped down to the earth as though
afraid of being trampled underfoot. Beyond the marsh, on the bank of the
Pestchanka, of which the old man had spoken, stood a row of willows, and
beyond the willows a barn looked dark blue in the mist. One could feel
the approach of that miserable, utterly inevitable season, when the
fields grow dark and the earth is muddy and cold, when the weeping
willow seems still more mournful and tears trickle down its stem, and
only the cranes fly away from the general misery, and even they, as
though afraid of insulting dispirited nature by the expression of their
happiness, fill the air with their mournful, dreary notes.

Meliton plodded along to the river, and heard the sounds of the pipe
gradually dying away behind him. He still wanted to complain. He looked
dejectedly about him, and he felt insufferably sorry for the sky and
the earth and the sun and the woods and his Damka, and when the highest
drawn-out note of the pipe floated quivering in the air, like a voice
weeping, he felt extremely bitter and resentful of the impropriety in
the conduct of nature.

The high note quivered, broke off, and the pipe was silent.

AGAFYA

DURING my stay in the district of S. I often used to go to see the
watchman Savva Stukatch, or simply Savka, in the kitchen gardens of
Dubovo. These kitchen gar