remature senility he did not object
to it. This position, quiet and convenient for motionless contemplation,
exactly fitted his temperament.

It happened I was with this Savka one fine May evening. I remember I was
lying on a torn and dirty sackcloth cover close to the shanty from which
came a heavy, fragrant scent of hay. Clasping my hands under my head I
looked before me. At my feet was lying a wooden fork. Behind it Savka's
dog Kutka stood out like a black patch, and not a dozen feet from Kutka
the ground ended abruptly in the steep bank of the little river. Lying
down I could not see the river; I could only see the tops of the young
willows growing thickly on the nearer bank, and the twisting, as it were
gnawed away, edges of the opposite bank. At a distance beyond the bank
on the dark hillside the huts of the village in which Savka lived lay
huddling together like frightened young partridges. Beyond the hill the
afterglow of sunset still lingered in the sky. One pale crimson streak
was all that was left, and even that began to be covered by little
clouds as a fire with ash.

A copse with alder-trees, softly whispering, and from time to time
shuddering in the fitful breeze, lay, a dark blur, on the right of
the kitchen gardens; on the left stretched the immense plain. In the
distance, where the eye could not distinguish between the sky and the
plain, there was a bright gleam of light. A little way off from me sat
Savka. With his legs tucked under him like a Turk and his head hanging,
he looked pensively at Kutka. Our hooks with live bait on them had
long been in the river, and we had nothing left to do but to abandon
ourselves to repose, which Savka, who was never exhausted and always
rested, loved so much. The glow had not yet quite died away, but the
summer night was already enfolding nature in its caressing, soothing
embrace.

Everything was sinking into its first deep sleep except some night bird
unfamiliar to me, which indolently uttered a long, protracted cry in
several distinct notes like the phrase, "Have you seen Ni-ki-ta?" and
immediately answered itself, "Seen him, seen him, seen him!"

"Why is it the nightingales aren't singing tonight?" I asked Savka.

He turned slowly towards me. His features were large, but his face was
open, soft, and expressive as a woman's. Then he gazed with his mild,
dreamy eyes at the copse, at the willows, slowly pulled a whistle out
of his pocket, put it in his mouth and