olas' triumphant cry. It looked as if Milka
would immediately pounce on the hare, but she overtook him and flew
past. The hare had squatted. Again the beautiful Erza reached him, but
when close to the hare's scut paused as if measuring the distance, so as
not to make a mistake this time but seize his hind leg.

"Erza, darling!" Ilagin wailed in a voice unlike his own. Erza did not
hearken to his appeal. At the very moment when she would have seized her
prey, the hare moved and darted along the balk between the winter rye
and the stubble. Again Erza and Milka were abreast, running like a pair
of carriage horses, and began to overtake the hare, but it was easier
for the hare to run on the balk and the borzois did not overtake him so
quickly.

"Rugay, Rugayushka! That's it, come on!" came a third voice just then,
and "Uncle's" red borzoi, straining and curving its back, caught up
with the two foremost borzois, pushed ahead of them regardless of the
terrible strain, put on speed close to the hare, knocked it off the balk
onto the ryefield, again put on speed still more viciously, sinking to
his knees in the muddy field, and all one could see was how, muddying
his back, he rolled over with the hare. A ring of borzois surrounded
him. A moment later everyone had drawn up round the crowd of dogs. Only
the delighted "Uncle" dismounted, and cut off a pad, shaking the hare
for the blood to drip off, and anxiously glancing round with restless
eyes while his arms and legs twitched. He spoke without himself knowing
whom to or what about. "That's it, come on! That's a dog!... There,
it has beaten them all, the thousand-ruble as well as the one-ruble
borzois. That's it, come on!" said he, panting and looking wrathfully
around as if he were abusing someone, as if they were all his enemies
and had insulted him, and only now had he at last succeeded in
justifying himself. "There are your thousand-ruble ones.... That's it,
come on!..."

"Rugay, here's a pad for you!" he said, throwing down the hare's muddy
pad. "You've deserved it, that's it, come on!"

"She'd tired herself out, she'd run it down three times by herself,"
said Nicholas, also not listening to anyone and regardless of whether he
were heard or not.

"But what is there in running across it like that?" said Ilagin's groom.

"Once she had missed it and turned it away, any mongrel could take it,"
Ilagin was saying at the same time, breathless from his gallop and his
excitem