lashes. He gave a deep sigh, and began to sing. The first sound of his voice was faint and unequal, and seemed not to come from his chest, but to be wafted from somewhere afar off, as though it had floated by chance into the room. A strange effect was produced on all of us by this trembling, resonant note we glanced at one another, and Nikolai Ivan'itch's wife seemed to draw herself up. This first note was followed by another, bolder and prolonged, but still obviously quivering-like a harpstring, when, suddenly struck by a stray finger, it throbs in a last swiftly dying tremble; the second was followed by a third; and gradually gaining fire and breadth, the strains swelled into a pathetic melody.

flowed.

"Not one little path ran into the field," he sang; and sweet and mournful it was in our ears. I have seldom, I must confess, heard a voice like it: it was slightly hoarse, and not per fectly true; there was even something morbid about it at first: but it had genuine depth of passion, and youth and sweetness, and a sort of fascinating, careless, pathetic melancholy. A spirit of truth and fire, a Russian spirit, was sounding and breathing in that voice; and it seemed to go straight to your heart,- to go straight to all that was Russian in it. The song swelled and Yakov was clearly carried away by enthusiasm: he was not timid now; he surrendered himself wholly to the rapture of his art: his voice no longer trembled; it quivered, but with the scarce perceptible inward quiver of passion, which pierces like an arrow to the very soul of the listeners: and he steadily gained strength and firmness and breadth. I remember I once saw at sunset on a flat sandy shore, when the tide was low and the sea's roar came weighty and menacing from the distance, a great white sea-gull; it sat motionless, its silky bosom facing the crimson glow of the setting sun, and only now and then opening wide its great wings to greet the well-known sea, to greet the sinking lurid sun: I recalled it, as I heard Yakov. He sang, utterly for getful of his rival and all of us; he seemed supported, as a bold swimmer by the waves, by our silent, passionate sympathy. He sang, and in every sound of his voice one seemed to feel some. thing dear and akin to us; something of breadth and space, as though the familiar steppes were unfolding before our eyes and stretching away into endless distance.

I felt the tears gathering in my bosom and rising to my eyes; suddenly I was struck by dull, smothered sobs. I looked round;

the innkeeper's wife was weeping, her bosom pressed close to the window. Yakov threw a quick glance at her, and he sang more sweetly, more melodiously than ever; Nikolai Ivan'itch looked down; the Blinkard turned away; the Gabbler, quite touched, stood, his gaping mouth stupidly open; the humble peas. ant was sobbing softly in the corner, and shaking his head with a plaintive murmur; on the iron visage of the Wild Master, from under his overhanging brows, there slowly rolled a heavy tear; the booth-keeper raised his clenched fist to his brow, and did not stir. I don't know how the general emotion would have ended, if Yakov had not come to a full stop on a high, excep tionally shrill note-as though his voice had broken. called out, or even stirred: every one seemed to be waiting to see whether he was not going to sing more; but he opened his eyes as though wondering at our silence, looked round at all of us with a face of inquiry, and saw that the victory was his.

No one

"Yasha," said the Wild Master, laying his hand on his shoulder- and he could say no more.

We all stood, as it were, petrified. The booth-keeper softly rose and went up to Yakov.

"You - yours-you've won," he articulated at last with an effort; and rushed out of the room. His rapid, decided action, as it were, broke the spell: we all suddenly fell into noisy, delighted talk. The Gabbler bounded up and down, stammered, and brandished his arms like mill sails; the Blinkard limped up to Yakov and began kissing him; Nikolai Ivan'itch got up and solemnly announced that he would add a second pot of beer from himself. The Wild Master laughed a sort of kind, simple laugh, which I should never have expected to see on his face; the humble peasant, as he wiped his eyes, cheeks, nose, and beard on his sleeves, kept repeating in his corner, "Ah, beautiful it was, by God! blast me for the son of a dog, but it was fine!" while Nikolai Ivan'itch's wife, her face red with weeping, got up quickly and went away. Yakov was enjoying his triumph like a child: his whole face was transformed, his eyes especially fairly glowed with happiness. They dragged him to the bar; he beckoned the weeping peasant up to it, and sent the innkeeper's little son to look after the booth-keeper, who was not found, however: and the festivities began. "You'll sing to us again; you're going to sing to us till evening," the Gabbler declared, flourishing his hands in the air.

I took one more look at Yakov, and went out. I did not want to stay-I was afraid of spoiling the impression I had received. But the heat was as insupportable as before. It seemed hanging in a thick, heavy layer right over the earth; over the dark-blue sky, tiny bright fires seemed whisking through the finest, almost black dust. Everything was still; and there was something hopeless and oppressive in this profound hush of exhausted nature. I made my way to a hay-loft, and lay down on the fresh-cut but already almost dry grass. For a long while

I could not go to sleep; for a long while Yakov's irresistible voice was ringing in my ears. At last the heat and fatigue regained their sway, however, and I fell into a dead sleep. When I waked up, everything was in darkness: the hay scattered around smelt strong and was slightly damp; through the slender rafters of the half-open roof, pale stars were faintly twinkling. I went out. The glow of sunset had long died away, and its last trace showed in a faint light on the horizon; but above the freshness of the night there was still a feeling of heat in the atmosphere, lately baked through by the sun, and the breast still craved a draught of cool air. There was no wind, nor were there any clouds; the sky all round was clear and transparently dark, softly glimmering with innumerable but scarcely visible.

stars.

There were lights twinkling about the village; from the flaring tavern close by rose a confused, discordant din, amid which I fancied I recognized the voice of Yakov. Violent laughter came from there in an outburst at times. I went up to the little window and pressed my face against the pane. I saw a cheerless, though varied and animated scene. All were drunk all from Yakov upwards. With breast bared, he sat on a bench, and singing in a thick voice a street song to a dance-tune, he lazily fingered and strummed on the strings of a guitar. His moist hair hung in tufts over his fearfully pale face. In the middle of the room, the Gabbler, completely "screwed" and without his coat, was hopping about in a dance before the peasant in the gray smock: the peasant, on his side, was with difficulty stamping and scraping with his feet, and grinning meaninglessly over his disheveled beard; he waved one hand from time to time, as much as to say, "Here goes!" Nothing could be more ludicrous than his face; however much he twitched up his eyebrows, his heavy lids would hardly rise, but seemed

lying upon his scarcely visible, dim, and mawkish eyes. He was in that amiable frame of mind of a perfectly intoxicated man, when every passer-by, directly he looks him in the face, is sure to say, "Bless you, brother, bless you!" The Blinkard, as red as a lobster, and his nostrils dilated wide, was laughing malignantly in a corner; only Nikolai Ivan'itch, as befits a good tavern-keeper, preserved his composure unchanged. The room was thronged with many new faces; but the Wild Master I did not see in it.

I turned away with rapid steps, and began descending the hill on which Kolotovka lies. At the foot of this hill stretches a wide plain; plunged in the misty waves of the evening haze, it seemed more immense, and was, as it were, merged in the darkening sky. I walked with long strides along the road by the ravine, when all at once from somewhere far away in the plain came a boy's clear voice: "Antropka! Antropka-a-a!" He shouted in obstinate and tearful desperation,, with long, long drawing out of the last syllable.

He was silent for a few instants, and started shouting again. His voice rang out clear in the still, lightly slumbering air. Thirty times at least he had called the name Antropka; when suddenly, from the farthest end of the plain, as though from another world, there floated a scarcely audible reply:

"Wha-a-t?"

The boy's voice shouted back at once with gleeful exaspera

tion:

"Come here, devil! woo-od imp!"

"What fo-or?" replied the other, after a long interval.

"Because dad wants to thrash you!" the first voice shouted back hurriedly.

The second voice did not call back again, and the boy fell to shouting "Antropka" once more. His cries, fainter and less and less frequent, still floated up to my ears, when it had grown completely dark, and I had turned the corner of the wood which skirts my village, and lies over three miles from Kolotovka. "Antropka-a-a!" was still audible in the air, filled with the shadows of night.

TH

A LIVING RELIC

From. A Sportsman's Sketches >

HE same day we made our way to my mother's peasant settlement, the existence of which, I must confess, I had not even suspected till then. At this settlement, it turned out, there was a little lodge. It was very old, but as it had not been inhabited, it was clean: I passed a fairly tranquil night in it.

The next day I woke up very early. The sun had only just risen; there was not a single cloud in the sky; everything around shone with a double brilliance, - the brightness of the fresh morning rays and of yesterday's downpour. While they were harnessing me a cart, I went for a stroll about a small orchard, now neglected and run wild, which inclosed the little lodge on all sides with its fragrant, sappy growth. Ah, how sweet it was in the open air, under the bright sky, where the larks were trilling, whence their bell-like notes rained down like silvery beads! On their wings, doubtless, they had carried off drops of dew, and their songs seemed steeped in dew. I took my cap off my head and drew a glad deep breath. On the slope of a shallow ravine, close to the hedge, could be seen a beehive; a narrow path led to it, winding like a snake between dense walls of high grass and nettles, above which struggled up, God knows whence brought, the pointed stalks of dark-green hemp.

I turned along this path; I reached the beehive. Beside it stood a little wattled shanty, where they put the beehives for the winter. I peeped into the half-open door: it was dark, still, dry, within; there was a scent of mint and balm. In the corner were some trestles fitted together, and on them, covered with a quilt, a little figure of some sort. I was walking away

"Master, master! Piotr Petrovitch!" I heard a voice, faint, slow, and hoarse, like the whispering of marsh rushes.

I stopped.

"Piotr Petrovitch! Come in, please!" the voice repeated. It came from the corner where were the trestles I had noticed.

I drew near, and was struck dumb with amazement. Before me lay a living human being; but what sort of a creature was it?

A head utterly withered, of a uniform coppery hue-like some very ancient holy picture, yellow with age; a sharp nose