summer evenings, and every one knows what that means; there is no need
to say more.

As to Yashka the Turk and the booth-keeper, there is no need to say much
about them. Yakov, called the Turk because he actually was descended
from a Turkish woman, a prisoner from the war, was by nature an artist
in every sense of the word, and by calling, a ladler in a paper factory
belonging to a merchant. As for the booth-keeper, his career, I must
own, I know nothing of; he struck me as being a smart townsman of the
tradesman class, ready to turn his hand to anything. But the Wild Master
calls for a more detailed account.

The first impression the sight of this man produced on you was a sense
of coarse, heavy, irresistible power. He was clumsily built, a
'shambler,' as they say about us, but there was an air of triumphant
vigour about him, and--strange to say--his bear-like figure was not
without a certain grace of its own, proceeding, perhaps, from his
absolutely placid confidence in his own strength. It was hard to decide
at first to what class this Hercules belonged: he did not look like a
house-serf, nor a tradesman, nor an impoverished clerk out of work, nor
a small ruined landowner, such as takes to being a huntsman or a
fighting man; he was, in fact, quite individual. No one knew where he
came from or what brought him into our district; it was said that he
came of free peasant-proprietor stock, and had once been in the
government service somewhere, but nothing positive was known about this;
and indeed there was no one from whom one could learn--certainly not
from him; he was the most silent and morose of men. So much so that no
one knew for certain what he lived on; he followed no trade, visited no
one, associated with scarcely anyone; yet he had money to spend; little
enough, it is true, still he had some. In his behaviour he was not