night, through woods and water-courses, and the peasant Sophron very
likely did not let him into his place, and even, I am afraid, gave him
a blow to teach him 'not to disturb honest folks.' But none could
compare with Yermolai in skill in deep-water fishing in spring-time, in
catching crayfish with his hands, in tracking game by scent, in snaring
quails, in training hawks, in capturing the nightingales who had the
greatest variety of notes. ... One thing he could not do, train a dog;
he had not patience enough. He had a wife too. He went to see her once
a week. She lived in a wretched, tumble-down little hut, and led a
hand-to-mouth existence, never knowing overnight whether she would have
food to eat on the morrow; and in every way her lot was a pitiful one.
Yermolai, who seemed such a careless and easy-going fellow, treated his
wife with cruel harshness; in his own house he assumed a stern, and
menacing manner; and his poor wife did everything she could to please
him, trembled when he looked at her, and spent her last farthing to buy
him vodka; and when he stretched himself majestically on the stove and
fell into an heroic sleep, she obsequiously covered him with a
sheepskin. I happened myself more than once to catch an involuntary
look in him of a kind of savage ferocity; I did not like the expression
of his face when he finished off a wounded bird with his teeth. But
Yermolai never remained more than a day at home, and away from home he
was once more the same 'Yermolka' (i.e. the shooting-cap), as he was
called for a hundred miles round, and as he sometimes called himself.
The lowest house-serf was conscious of being superior to this vagabond
--and perhaps this was precisely why they treated him with
friendliness; the peasants at first amused themselves by chasing him
and driving him like a hare over the open country, but afterwards they
left him in God's hands, and when once they recognised him as 'queer,'
they no longer tormented him, and even gave him bread and entered into
talk with him.... This was the man I took as my huntsman, and with him