alking unceasingly, was seeing
his visitor off, continually running in front of him, while she
huddled up to the wall with a timid, guilty air, waiting for a
convenient minute to speak.

"Please come again another time," the old man kept repeating
incessantly; "what we have we are glad to offer, you know."

The visitor hurriedly got into the trap, evidently with relief, as
though he were afraid every minute that they would detain him. The
trap lurched about as it had the day before, squeaked, and furiously
rattled the pail that was tied on at the back. He glanced round at
Zhmuhin with a peculiar expression; it looked as though he wanted
to call him a Petchenyeg, as the surveyor had once done, or some
such name, but his gentleness got the upper hand. He controlled
himself and said nothing. But in the gateway he suddenly could not
restrain himself; he got up and shouted loudly and angrily:

"You have bored me to death."

And he disappeared through the gate.

Near the barn Zhmuhin's sons were standing; the elder held a gun,
while the younger had in his hands a grey cockerel with a bright
red comb. The younger flung up the cockerel with all his might; the
bird flew upwards higher than the house and turned over in the air
like a pigeon. The elder boy fired and the cockerel fell like a
stone.

The old man, overcome with confusion, not knowing how to explain
the visitor's strange, unexpected shout, went slowly back into the
house. And sitting down at the table he spent a long while meditating
on the intellectual tendencies of the day, on the universal immorality,
on the telegraph, on the telephone, on velocipedes, on how unnecessary
it all was; little by little he regained his composure, then slowly
had a meal, drank five glasses of tea, and lay down for a nap.

A DEAD BODY

A STILL August night. A mist is rising slowly from the fields and
casting an opaque veil over everything within eyesight. Lighted up
by the moon, the mist gives the impression at one moment of a calm,
boundless sea, at the next of an immense white wall. The air is
damp and chilly. Morning is still far off. A step from the bye-road
which runs along the edge of the forest a little fire is gleaming.
A dead body, covered from head to foot with new white linen, is
lying under a young oak-tree. A wooden ikon is lying on its breast.
Beside the corpse almost on the road sits the "watch"--two peasants
performing one of the most disagreeable and uninvit