lived so long in the world! I have seen heretics, to whom it would be
easier to lie in confession than it would to our brothers and equals to
take snuff, and those people would deny the existence of witches! But
let them just dream about something, and they won't even tell what it
was! There's no use in talking about them!

* * * *

ST. JOHN'S EVE.

No one could have recognized this village of ours a little over a
hundred years ago: a hamlet it was, the poorest kind of a hamlet. Half a
score of miserable izbas, unplastered, badly thatched, were scattered
here and there about the fields. There was not an inclosure or decent
shed to shelter animals or wagons. That was the way the wealthy lived;
and if you had looked for our brothers, the poor,--why, a hole in the
ground,--that was a cabin for you! Only by the smoke could you tell that
a God-created man lived there. You ask why they lived so? It was not
entirely through poverty: almost every one led a wandering, Cossack
life, and gathered not a little plunder in foreign lands; it was rather
because there was no reason for setting up a well-ordered khata (wooden
house). How many people were wandering all over the country,--Crimeans,
Poles, Lithuanians! It was quite possible that their own countrymen
might make a descent, and plunder everything. Anything was possible.

In this hamlet a man, or rather a devil in human form, often made his
appearance. Why he came, and whence, no one knew. He prowled about, got
drunk, and suddenly disappeared as if into the air, and there was not a
hint of his existence. Then, again, behold, he seemed to have dropped
from the sky, and went flying about the streets of the village, of which