the house, and returned with him. The little side gate creaked. The
miller appeared, a tall, fat-faced man with a bull-neck, round-bellied
and corpulent. He agreed to my proposal. A hundred paces from the mill
there was a little outhouse open to the air on all sides. They carried
straw and hay there for us; the workman set a samovar down on the grass
near the river, and, squatting on his heels, began to blow vigorously
into the pipe of it. The embers glowed, and threw a bright light on his
young face. The miller ran to wake his wife, and suggested at last that
I myself should sleep in the cottage; but I preferred to remain in the
open air. The miller's wife brought us milk, eggs, potatoes and bread.
Soon the samovar boiled, and we began drinking tea. A mist had risen
from the river; there was no wind; from all round came the cry of the
corn-crake, and faint sounds from the mill-wheels of drops that dripped
from the paddles and of water gurgling through the bars of the lock. We
built a small fire on the ground. While Yermolai was baking the
potatoes in the embers, I had time to fall into a doze. I was waked by
a discreetly-subdued whispering near me. I lifted my head; before the
fire, on a tub turned upside down, the miller's wife sat talking to my
huntsman. By her dress, her movements, and her manner of speaking, I
had already recognised that she had been in domestic service, and was
neither peasant nor city-bred; but now for the first time I got a clear
view of her features. She looked about thirty; her thin, pale face
still showed the traces of remarkable beauty; what particularly charmed
me was her eyes, large and mournful in expression. She was leaning her
elbows on her knees, and had her face in her hands. Yermolai was
sitting with his back to me, and thrusting sticks into the fire.

'They've the cattle-plague again at Zheltonhiny,' the miller's wife was
saying; 'father Ivan's two cows are dead--Lord have mercy on them!'