or. Well then, this!" and he tore up the note, and by so doing caused
the old countess to weep tears of joy. After that, young Rostov took
no further part in any business affairs, but devoted himself with
passionate enthusiasm to what was to him a new pursuit--the chase--for
which his father kept a large establishment.

CHAPTER III

The weather was already growing wintry and morning frosts congealed
an earth saturated by autumn rains. The verdure had thickened and its
bright green stood out sharply against the brownish strips of winter rye
trodden down by the cattle, and against the pale-yellow stubble of the
spring buckwheat. The wooded ravines and the copses, which at the end of
August had still been green islands amid black fields and stubble, had
become golden and bright-red islands amid the green winter rye. The
hares had already half changed their summer coats, the fox cubs were
beginning to scatter, and the young wolves were bigger than dogs. It was
the best time of the year for the chase. The hounds of that ardent young
sportsman Rostov had not merely reached hard winter condition, but were
so jaded that at a meeting of the huntsmen it was decided to give them
a three days' rest and then, on the sixteenth of September, to go on
a distant expedition, starting from the oak grove where there was an
undisturbed litter of wolf cubs.

All that day the hounds remained at home. It was frosty and the air was
sharp, but toward evening the sky became overcast and it began to thaw.
On the fifteenth, when young Rostov, in his dressing gown, looked out of
the window, he saw it was an unsurpassable morning for hunting: it was
as if the sky were melting and sinking to the earth without any wind.
The only motion in the air was that of the dripping, microscopic
particles of drizzling mist. The bare twigs in the garden were hung with
transparent drops which fell on the freshly fallen leaves. The earth in
the kitchen garden looked wet and black and glistened like poppy seed
and at a short distance merged into the dull, moist veil of mist.
Nicholas went out into the wet and muddy porch. There was a smell of
decaying leaves and of dog. Milka, a black-spotted, broad-haunched bitch
with prominent black eyes, got up on seeing her master, stretched her
hind legs, lay down like a hare, and then suddenly jumped up and licked
him right on his nose and mustache. Another borzoi, a dog, catching
sight of his master from the garden