face, obliging and talkative. He drove the horses. Yegor sat by my
side. I want to say a few words about him.

He was considered the cleverest sportsman in the whole district. Every
step of the ground for fifty miles round he had been over again and
again. He seldom fired at a bird, for lack of powder and shot; but it
was enough for him to decoy a moorhen or to detect the track of a
grouse. Yegor had the character of being a straightforward fellow and
'no talker.' He did not care for talking and never exaggerated the
number of birds he had taken--a trait rare in a sportsman. He was of
medium height, thin, and had a pale, long face, and big, honest eyes.
All his features, especially his straight and never-moving lips, were
expressive of untroubled serenity. He gave a slight, as it were inward
smile, whenever he uttered a word--very sweet was that quiet smile. He
never drank spirits, and worked industriously; but nothing prospered
with him. His wife was always ailing, his children didn't live; he got
poorer and poorer and could never pick up again. And there is no
denying that a passion for the chase is no good for a peasant, and any
one who 'plays with a gun' is sure to be a poor manager of his land.
Either from constantly being in the forest, face to face with the stern
and melancholy scenery of that inhuman country, or from the peculiar
cast and formation of his character, there was noticeable in every
action of Yegor's a sort of modest dignity and stateliness--stateliness
it was, and not melancholy--the stateliness of a majestic stag. He had
in his time killed seven bears, lying in wait for them in the oats. The
last he had only succeeded in killing on the fourth night of his
ambush; the bear persisted in not turning sideways to him, and he had
only one bullet. Yegor had killed him the day before my arrival. When
Kondrat brought me to him, I found him in his back yard; squatting on
his heels before the huge beast, he was cutting the fat out with a