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The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
page 88 of 235 (37%)

'Why did they all give in to him?'

'Why! well, it is so....'

'He has frightened you all, and now he does as he likes with you.'

'Frightened, yes.... He'd frighten any one. And he's a wonderful hand
at contrivances, my goodness, yes! I once came upon him in the forest;
there was a heavy rain falling; I was for edging away.... But he looked
at me, and beckoned to me with his hand like this. "Come along," says
he, "Kondrat, don't be afraid. Let me show you how to live in the
forest, and to keep dry in the rain." I went up to him, and he was
sitting under a fir-tree, and he'd made a fire of damp twigs: the smoke
hung about in the fir-tree, and kept the rain from dripping through. I
was astonished at him then. And I'll tell you what he contrived one
time' (and Kondrat laughed); 'he really did do a funny thing. They'd
been thrashing the oats at the thrashing-floor, and they hadn't
finished; they hadn't time to rake up the last heap; well, they 'd set
two watch-men by it for the night, and they weren't the boldest-hearted
of the chaps either. Well, they were sitting and gossiping, and Efrem
takes and stuffs his shirt-sleeves full of straw, ties up the
wrist-bands, and puts the shirt up over his head. And so he steals up
in that shape to the thrashing-floor, and just pops out from behind the
corner and gives them a peep of his horns. One chap says to the other:
"Do you see?" "Yes," says the other, and didn't he give a screech all
of a sudden ... and then the fences creaked and nothing more was seen
of them. Efrem shovelled up the oats into a bag and dragged it off
home. He told the story himself afterwards. He put them to shame, he
did, the chaps.... He did really!'
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