--the wood is rustling; one goes on
waiting, now there comes a crackling--a boar comes to rub himself; one
listens to hear the young eaglets screech and then the cocks give voice
in the village, or the geese. When you hear the geese you know it is
not yet midnight. And I know all about it! Or when a gun is fired
somewhere far away, thoughts come to me. One thinks, who is that
firing? Is it another Cossack like myself who has been watching for
some animal? And has he killed it? Or only wounded it so that now the
poor thing goes through the reeds smearing them with its blood all for
nothing? I don't like that! Oh, how I dislike it! Why injure a beast?
You fool, you fool! Or one thinks, "Maybe an abrek has killed some
silly little Cossack." All this passes through one's mind. And once as
I sat watching by the river I saw a cradle floating down. It was sound
except for one corner which was broken off. Thoughts did come that
time! I thought some of your soldiers, the devils, must have got into a
Tartar village and seized the Chechen women, and one of the devils has
killed the little one: taken it by its legs, and hit its head against a
wall. Don't they do such things? Ah! Men have no souls! And thoughts
came to me that filled me with pity. I thought: they've thrown away the
cradle and driven the wife out, and her brave has taken his gun and
come across to our side to rob us. One watches and thinks. And when one
hears a litter breaking through the thicket, something begins to knock
inside one. Dear one, come this way! "They'll scent me," one thinks;
and one sits and does not stir while one's heart goes dun! dun! dun!
and simply lifts you. Once this spring a fine litter came near me, I
saw something black. "In the name of the Father and of the Son," and I
was just about to fire when she grunts to her pigs: "Danger, children,"
she says, "there's a man here," and off they all ran, breaking through
the bushes. And she had been so close I could almost have bitten her.'

'How could a sow tell her brood that a man was there?' asked Olenin.

'What do you think? You think the beast's a fool? No, he is wiser than
a man though you do call him a pig! He knows everything. Take this for
instance. A man will pass along your track and not notice it; but a pig
as soon as it gets onto your track turns and runs at once: that shows
there is wisdom in him, since he scents your smell and you don't. And
there is this to be said too: you wish to kil