CHAPTER IV


Boris's aunt had only just begun to give him an idea of her methods of
conducting the estate when he began to yawn.

"Listen, these are all your affairs; I am only your Starost," she said.
But he could not suppress a yawn, watched the birds, the dragon-flies,
picked the cornflowers, looked curiously at the peasants, and gazed up
at the sky over-arching the wide horizon. Then his aunt began to talk to
one of the peasants, and he hurried off to the garden, ran down to the
edge of the precipice, and made his way through the undergrowth to the
steep bank of the Volga.

"He is still too young, only a child, does not understand serious
matters," thought his aunt, as she followed him with her eyes. "What
will become of him?"

The Volga glided quietly between its overgrown banks, with here and
there a sandbank or an island thickly covered with bushes. In the
distance lay the sandhills and the darkening forest. Here and there
shimmered a sail; gulls, with an even balancing of their wings, skimmed
the water, and then rose with a more strenuous movement, while over the
gardens, high in the air, the goshawks hovered.

Boris stood still for a long time, recalling his childhood. He
remembered that he had sat on this spot with his mother, looking
thoughtfully out at this same landscape. Then he went slowly back to the