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he was respected.

His whole family consisted of one little son, whom he idolized, and who, brought up by such a father, is likely to get on in the world. "Little Blinkard 'll be his father over again," is said of him already, in undertones, by the old men, as they sit on their mud walls gossiping on summer evenings; and every one knows what that means,-there is no need to say more.

As to Yashka the Turk, and the booth-keeper, there is no need to say much about them. Yakov-called the Turk because he actually was descended from a Turkish woman, a prisoner from the war- was by nature an artist in every sense of the word; and by calling, a ladler in a paper factory belonging to a merchant. As for the booth-keeper, his career, I must own, I know nothing of; he struck me as being a smart townsman of the tradesman class, ready to turn his hand to anything. But the Wild Master calls for a more detailed account.

The first impression the sight of this man produced on you was a sense of coarse, heavy, irresistible power. He was clumsily built, a "shambler," as they say about us: but there was an air of triumphant vigor about him; and strange to say, his bear-like figure was not without a certain grace of its own, proceeding perhaps from his absolutely placid confidence in his own strength. It was hard to decide at first to what class this Hercules belonged: he did not look like a house-serf, nor a tradesman, nor an impoverished clerk out of work, nor a small ruined land-owner such as takes to being a huntsman or a fighting man: he was, in fact, quite individual. No one knew where he came from, or what brought him into our district: it was said that he came of free peasant-proprietor stock, and had once been in the government service somewhere, but nothing positive was known about this; and indeed there was no one from whom one could learn,- certainly not from him: he was the most silent and morose of men. So much so that no one knew for certain what he lived on: he followed no trade, visited no one, associated with scarcely any one; yet he had money to spend; little enough, it is true, still he had some. In his behavior he was not exactly retiring retiring was not a word that could be applied to him: he lived as though he noticed no one about him, and cared for no one. The Wild Master (that was the nickname they had given him; his real name was Perevlyesov) enjoyed an immense influence in the whole district: he was obeyed with eager promptitude,

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though he had no kind of right to give orders to any one, and did not himself evince the slightest pretension to authority over the people with whom he came into casual contact. He spokethey obeyed: strength always has an influence of its own. He scarcely drank at all, had nothing to do with women, and was passionately fond of singing. There was much that was mysterious about this man: it seemed as though vast forces sullenly reposed within him, knowing as it were, that once roused, once bursting free, they were bound to crush him and everything they came in contact with. And I am greatly mistaken if in this man's life there had not been some such outbreak; if it was not owing to the lessons of experience, to a narrow escape from ruin, that he now kept himself so tightly in hand. What especially struck me in him was the combination of a sort of inborn natural ferocity with an equally inborn generosity,- a combination I have never met in any other man.

And so the booth-keeper stepped forward; and half shutting his eyes, began singing in high falsetto. He had a fairly sweet and pleasant voice, though rather hoarse; he played with his voice like a woodlark, twisting and turning it in incessant roulades and trills up and down the scale,- continually returning to the highest notes, which he held and prolonged with special care. Then he would break off, and again suddenly take up the first motive with a sort of go-ahead daring. His modulations were at times rather bold, at times rather comical: they would have given a connoisseur great satisfaction, and have made a German furiously indignant. He was a Russian tenore di grazia, ténor léger. He sang a song to a lively dance-tune; the words of which-all that I could catch through the endless maze of variations, ejaculations, and repetitions- were as follows:

"A tiny patch of land, young lass,

I'll plow for thee,

And tiny crimson flowers, young lass,

I'll sow for thee."

He seemed

He sang: all listened to him with great attention. to feel that he had to do with really musical people, and therefore was exerting himself to do his best. And they really are musical in our part of the country: the village of Sergievskoe on the Orel high-road is deservedly noted throughout Russia for its harmonious chorus singing. The booth-keeper sang for a long

15113 while without evoking much enthusiasm in his audience,- he lacked the support of a chorus; but at last, after one particularly bold flourish, which set even the Wild Master smiling, the Gabbler could not refrain from a shout of delight. Every one was roused. The Gabbler and the Blinkard began joining in in an undertone, and exclaiming, "Bravely done! Take it, you rogue! Sing it out, you serpent! Hold it! That shake again, you dog you! May Herod confound your soul!" and so on. Nikolai ́Ivan'itch behind the bar was nodding his head from side to side approvingly. The Gabbler at last was swinging his legs, tapping with his feet and twitching his shoulder; while Yashka's eyes fairly glowed like coals, and he trembled all over like a leaf, and smiled nervously. The Wild Master alone did not change countenance, and stood motionless as before; but his eyes, fastened on the booth-keeper, looked somewhat softened, though the expression. of his lips was still scornful. Emboldened by the signs of general approbation, the booth-keeper went off in a whirl of flourishes; and began to round off such trills, to turn such shakes off his tongue, and to make such furious play with his throat, that when at last, pale, exhausted, and bathed in hot perspiration, he uttered the last dying note, his whole body flung back, a general united shout greeted him in a violent outburst. The Gabbler threw himself on his neck, and began strangling him in his long bony arms; a flush came out on Nikolai Ivan'itch's oily face, and he seemed to have grown younger; Yashka shouted like mad, “Capital, capital!" Even my neighbor, the peasant in the torn smock, could not restrain himself; and with a blow of his fist on the table he cried, "Aha! well done, damn my soul, well done!" And he spat on one side with an air of decision.

"Well, brother, you've given us a treat!" bawled the Gabbler, not releasing the exhausted booth-keeper from his embraces; "you've given us a treat, there's no denying! You've won, brother, you've won! I congratulate you- the quart's yours! Yashka's miles behind you, I tell you; miles- take my word for it.” And again he hugged the booth-keeper to his breast.

"There, let him alone, let him alone; there's no being rid of you," said the Blinkard with vexation; "let him sit down on the bench; he's tired, see. You're a ninny, brother, a perfect ninny! What are you sticking to him like a wet leaf for?"

"Well, then, let him sit down, and I'll drink to his health," said the Gabbler, and he went up to the bar. "At your expense, brother," he added, addressing the booth-keeper.

The latter nodded, sat down on the bench, pulled a piece of cloth out of his cap, and began wiping his face; while the Gabbler, with greedy haste, emptied his glass, and with a grunt, assumed, after the manner of confirmed drinkers, an expression of careworn melancholy.

"You sing beautifully, brother, beautifully," Nikolai Ivan'itch observed caressingly. "And now it's your turn, Yashka; mind, now, don't be afraid. We shall see who's who; we shall see. The booth-keeper sings beautifully, though; 'pon my soul, he does."

"Very beautifully," observed Nikolai Ivan'itch's wife, and she looked with a smile at Yakov.

"Beautifully, ha!" repeated my neighbor in an undertone. "Ah, a wild man of the woods!" the Gabbler vociferated suddenly; and going up to the peasant with the rent on his shoulder, he pointed at him with his finger, while he pranced about and went off into an insulting guffaw. "Ha! ha! get along! wild man of the woods! Here's a ragamuffin from Woodland village! What brought you here?" he bawled amidst laughter.

The poor peasant was abashed, and was just about to get up and make off as fast as he could, when suddenly the Wild Master's iron voice was heard:

"What does the insufferable brute mean?" he articulated, grinding his teeth.

"I wasn't doing nothing," muttered the Gabbler. "I didn't— I only - "

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There, all right, shut up!" retorted the Wild Master. "Yakov, begin!"

Yakov took himself by his throat:

"Well, really, brothers- Something- H'm, I don't know, on my word, what — »

"Come, that's enough; don't be timid.

For shame! why go

back? Sing the best you can, by God's gift.

And the Wild Master looked down expectant. Yakov was silent for a minute; he glanced round, and covered his face with his hand. All had their eyes simply fastened upon him; especially the booth-keeper, on whose face a faint, involuntary uneasiness could be seen through his habitual expression of self-confidence and the triumph of his success. He leant back against the wall, and again put both hands under him, but did not swing his legs. as before. When at last Yakov uncovered his face, it was pale as a dead man's: his eyes gleamed faintly under their drooping

15115 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.

"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 perfectly 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 flowed. 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 forgetful 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 something 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;