a bold leap to clear the rocks and strike the smooth
ice. They hesitated,--and no wonder.

Prince Alexis howled with rage and disappointment.

"The Devil take you, for a pack of whimpering hounds!" he cried. "Holy
Saints! they are afraid to make a reisak!"

Ivan crossed himself and sprang. He cleared the rocks, but, instead of
bursting through the ice with his head, fell at full length upon his
back.

"O knave!" yelled the Prince,--"not to know where his head is! Thinks
it's his back! Give him fifteen stripes."

Which was instantly done.

The second attempt was partially successful. One of the hunters broke
through the ice, head foremost, going down, but he failed to come up
again; so the feat was only half performed.

The Prince became more furiously excited.

"This is the way I'm treated!" he cried. "He forgets all about finishing
the reisak, and goes to chasing sterlet! May the carps eat him up for
an ungrateful vagabond! Here, you beggars!" (addressing the poor
relations,) "take your turn, and let me see whether you are men."

Only one of the frightened parasites had the courage to obey. On
reaching the brink, he shut his eyes in mortal fear, and made a leap
at random. The next moment he lay on the edge of the ice with one leg
broken against a fragment of rock.

This capped the climax of the Prince's wrath. He fell into a state
bordering on despair, tore his hair, gnashed his teeth, and wept
bitterly.

"They will be the death of me!" was his lament. "Not a man among them!
It wasn't so in the old times. Such beautiful reisaks as I have seen!
But the people are becoming women,--hares,--chickens,--skunks! Villains,
will you force me to kill you? You have dishonored and disgraced me; I
am ashamed to look my neighbors in the face. Was ever a man so treated?"

The serfs hung down their heads, feeling somehow responsible for their
master's misery. Some of them wept, out of a stupid sympathy with his
tears.

All at once he sprang down from the cask, crying in a gay, triumphant
tone,--

"I have it! Bring me Crop-Ear. He's the fellow for a reisak,--he can
make three, one after another."

One of the boldest ventured to suggest that Crop-Ear had been sent away
in disgrace to another of the Prince's estates.

"Bring him here, I say? Take horses, and don't draw rein going or
coming. I will not stir from this spot until Crop-Ear comes."

With these words, he mounted the barrel, and recommenced ladling out the