XI. THE COUNTING-HOUSE
XII. BIRYUK
XIII. TWO COUNTRY GENTLEMEN
XIV. LEBEDYAN




I

HOR AND KALINITCH


Anyone who has chanced to pass from the Bolhovsky district into the
Zhizdrinsky district, must have been impressed by the striking
difference between the race of people in the province of Orel and the
population of the province of Kaluga. The peasant of Orel is not tall,
is bent in figure, sullen and suspicious in his looks; he lives in
wretched little hovels of aspen-wood, labours as a serf in the fields,
and engages in no kind of trading, is miserably fed, and wears slippers
of bast: the rent-paying peasant of Kaluga lives in roomy cottages of
pine-wood; he is tall, bold, and cheerful in his looks, neat and clean
of countenance; he carries on a trade in butter and tar, and on
holidays he wears boots. The village of the Orel province (we are
speaking now of the eastern part of the province) is usually situated
in the midst of ploughed fields, near a water-course which has been
converted into a filthy pool. Except for a few of the ever-
accommodating willows, and two or three gaunt birch-trees, you do not
see a tree for a mile round; hut is huddled up against hut, their roofs
covered with rotting thatch.... The villages of Kaluga, on the