grouse-shooting together. He agreed. 'Only let's go,' he said, 'to my
underwoods at Zusha; I can seize the opportunity to have a look at
Tchapligino; you know my oakwood; they're felling timber there.' 'By all
means.' He ordered his horse to be saddled, put on a green coat with
bronze buttons, stamped with a boar's head, a game-bag embroidered in
crewels, and a silver flask, slung a new-fangled French gun over his
shoulder, turned himself about with some satisfaction before the
looking-glass, and called his dog, Hope, a gift from his cousin, an old
maid with an excellent heart, but no hair on her head. We started. My
neighbour took with him the village constable, Arhip, a stout, squat
peasant with a square face and jaws of antediluvian proportions, and an
overseer he had recently hired from the Baltic provinces, a youth of
nineteen, thin, flaxen-haired, and short-sighted, with sloping shoulders
and a long neck, Herr Gottlieb von der Kock. My neighbour had himself
only recently come into the property. It had come to him by inheritance
from an aunt, the widow of a councillor of state, Madame Kardon-Kataev,
an excessively stout woman, who did nothing but lie in her bed, sighing
and groaning. We reached the underwoods. 'You wait for me here at the
clearing,' said Ardalion Mihalitch (my neighbour) addressing his
companions. The German bowed, got off his horse, pulled a book out of
his pocket--a novel of Johanna Schopenhauer's, I fancy--and sat down
under a bush; Arhip remained in the sun without stirring a muscle for an
hour. We beat about among the bushes, but did not come on a single
covey. Ardalion Mihalitch announced his intention of going on to the
wood. I myself had no faith, somehow, in our luck that day; I, too,
sauntered after him. We got back to the clearing. The German noted the
page, got up, put the book in his pocket, and with some difficulty
mounted his bob-tailed, broken-winded mare, who neighed and kicked at
the slightest touch; Arhip shook himself, gave a tug at both reins at
once, swung his legs, and at last succeeded in starting his torpid and