deal in his time; many a score of petty landowners, who used to come to
him for spirits, he has seen pass away before him; he knows everything
that is done for eighty miles round, and never gossips, never gives a
sign of knowing what is unsuspected by the most keen-sighted
police-officer. He keeps his own counsel, laughs, and makes his glasses
ring. His neighbours respect him; the civilian general Shtcherpetenko,
the landowner highest in rank in the district, gives him a condescending
nod whenever he drives past his little house. Nikolai Ivanitch is a man
of influence; he made a notorious horse-stealer return a horse he had
taken from the stable of one of his friends; he brought the peasants of
a neighbouring village to their senses when they refused to accept a new
overseer, and so on. It must not be imagined, though, that he does this
from love of justice, from devotion to his neighbour--no! he simply
tries to prevent anything that might, in any way, interfere with his
ease and comfort. Nikolai Ivanitch is married, and has children. His
wife, a smart, sharp-nosed and keen-eyed woman of the tradesman class,
has grown somewhat stout of late years, like her husband. He relies on
her in everything, and she keeps the key of the cash-box. Drunken
brawlers are afraid of her; she does not like them; they bring little
profit and make a great deal of noise: those who are taciturn and surly
in their cups are more to her taste. Nikolai Ivanitch's children are
still small; the first four all died, but those that are left take after
their parents: it is a pleasure to look at their intelligent, healthy
little faces.

It was an insufferably hot day in July when, slowly dragging my feet
along, I went up alongside the Kolotovka ravine with my dog towards the
Welcome Resort. The sun blazed, as it were, fiercely in the sky, baking
the parched earth relentlessly; the air was thick with stifling dust.
Glossy crows and ravens with gaping beaks looked plaintively at the