d a hunter in profile, galloping at full speed on
a bay horse, also in profile, over a snow plain. The hunter was clad in
a tall white sheepskin hat with a pale blue point, a tunic of
camel's hair edged with velvet, and a girdle wrought in gold. A glove
embroidered in silk was gracefully tucked into the girdle, and a dagger
chased in black and silver hung at the side. In one hand the plump,
youthful hunter carried an enormous horn, ornamented with red tassels,
and the reins and whip in the other. The horse's four legs were all
suspended in the air, and on every one of them the artist had carefully
painted a horseshoe and even indicated the nails. "Look," Fomishka
observed, pointing with the same fat little finger to four semi-circular
spots on the white ground, close to the horse's legs, "he has even put
the snow prints in!" Why there were only four of these prints and not
any to be seen further back, on this point Fomishka was silent.

"This was I!" he added after a pause, with a modest smile.

"Really!" Nejdanov exclaimed, "were you ever a hunting man?"

"Yes. I was for a time. Once the horse threw me at full gallop and I
injured my kurpey. Fimishka got frightened and forbade me; so I have
given it up since then."

"What did you injure?" Nejdanov asked.

"My kurpey," Fomishka repeated, lowering his voice.

The visitors looked at one another. No one knew what kurpey meant; at
least, Markelov knew that the tassel on a Cossack or Circassian cap was
called a kurpey, but then how could Fomishka have injured that? But no
one dared to question him further.

"Well, now that you have shown off," Fimishka remarked suddenly, "I will
show off too." And going up to a small bonheur du jour, as they used to
call an old-fashioned bureau, on tiny, crooked legs, with a round lid
which fitted into the back of it somewhere when opened, she took out a
miniature in water colour, in an oval bronze frame, of a perfectly naked
little child of four years old with a quiver over her shoulders fastened
across the chest with pale blue ribbons, trying the points of the arrows
with the tip of her little finger. The child was all smiles and curls
and had a slight squint.

"And that was I," she said.

"Really?

"Yes, as a child. When my father was alive a Frenchman used to come
and see him, such a nice Frenchman too! He painted that for my father's
birthday. Such a nice man! He used to come and see us often. He would
come in, make such a p