beast? You fool, you fool! Or one thinks, "Maybe an abrek has
killed some silly little Cossack." All this passes through one's
mind. And once as I sat watching by the river I saw a cradle
floating down. It was sound except for one corner which was broken
off. Thoughts did come that time! I thought some of your soldiers,
the devils, must have got into a Tartar village and seized the
Chechen women, and one of the devils has killed the little one:
taken it by its legs, and hit its head against a wall. Don't they
do such things? Ah! Men have no souls! And thoughts came to me
that filled me with pity. I thought: they've thrown away the
cradle and driven the wife out, and her brave has taken his gun
and come across to our side to rob us. One watches and thinks. And
when one hears a litter breaking through the thicket, something
begins to knock inside one. Dear one, come this way! "They'll
scent me," one thinks; and one sits and does not stir while one's
heart goes dun! dun! dun! and simply lifts you. Once this spring a
fine litter came near me, I saw something black. "In the name of
the Father and of the Son," and I was just about to fire when she
grunts to her pigs: "Danger, children," she says, "there's a man
here," and off they all ran, breaking through the bushes. And she
had been so close I could almost have bitten her.'

'How could a sow tell her brood that a man was there?' asked
Olenin.

'What do you think? You think the beast's a fool? No, he is wiser
than a man though you do call him a pig! He knows everything. Take
this for instance. A man will pass along your track and not notice
it; but a pig as soon as it gets onto your track turns and runs at
once: that shows there is wisdom in him, since he scents your