"Have you read the article in the "European Messenger" about the
latest impostors in the province of Orenburg? It happened in
1834, my dear! I don't like the journal, and the writer of the
article is a conservative, but the thing is interesting and
calculated to give one ideas. . .

IX

MAY had reached its second half; the first hot summer days had
already set in.

After his history lesson one day, Nejdanov wandered out into the
garden, and from thence into a birch wood adjoining it on one
side. Certain parts of this wood had been cleared by merchants
about fifteen years ago, but these clearings were already densely
overgrown by young birches, whose soft silver trunks encircled by
grey rings rose as straight as pillars, and whose bright green
leaves sparkled as if they had just been washed and polished. The
grass shot up in sharp tongues through the even layers of last
years' fallen leaves. Little narrow paths ran here and there,
from which yellow-beaked blackbirds rose with startled cries,
flying close to the earth into the wood as hard as they could go.

After wandering about for half an hour, Nejdanov sat down on the
stump of a tree, surrounded by old greyish splinters, lying in
heaps, exactly as they had fallen when cut down by the axe. Many
a time had these splinters been covered by the winter's snow and
been thawed by the spring sun, but nobody had touched them.