Karpushka is a fountain of tall tales, jingles, and yarns, and an expert at not being able to hold his tongue. He is always relating this or that, and only falls silent when something interesting catches his ear. On this particular morning he was walking behind his master, telling him a long tale about how two schoolboys wearing white caps had ridden past the orchard with hunting rifles, and begged him to let them in so they could take a few shots at some birds. They had tried to sway him with a fifty-kopeck coin, but he, knowing full well where his allegiance lay, had indignantly refused the coin and even set Kashtan and Serka loose on the boys. Having ended this story, Karpushka began portraying in vivid colors the shameful behavior of the village medical orderly, but before he could add the finishing touches to this portrayal his ears suddenly caught a suspicious rustle coming from behind some apple and pear trees. Karpushka held his tongue, pricked up his ears, and listened. Certain that this rustle was indeed suspicious, he tugged at his master’s jacket, and then shot off toward the trees like an arrow. Trifon Semyonovich, sensing a brouhaha, shuddered with excitement, shuffled his elderly legs, and ran after Karpushka. It was worth the effort.

At the edge of the orchard, beneath an old, gnarled apple tree, stood a young peasant girl, chewing something. A broad-shouldered young man was crawling on his hands and knees nearby, gathering up apples the wind had knocked off the branches. The unripe ones he threw into the bushes, but the ripe apples he lovingly held out to his Dulcinea in his large, dirty hands. It was clear that Dulcinea had no fear for her stomach; she was devouring one apple after another with gusto, while the young man crawled and gathered more and only had eyes for his Dulcinea.

“Get me one from off the tree,” the girl urged him in a whisper.

“It’s too dangerous.”

“Too dangerous? Don’t worry about the Oprichnik, he’ll be down at the tavern.”

The boy got up, jumped in the air, tore an apple off the tree, and handed it to the girl. But the boy and the girl, like Adam and Eve in days of old, did not fare well with this apple. No sooner had she bitten off a little piece and handed it to the boy, and they felt its cruel tartness on their tongues, than their faces blanched, puckered up, and then fell. Not because the apple was sour, but because they saw before them the grim countenance of Trifon Semyonovich, and beside it the gloating face of Karpushka.

“Well hello,” Trifon Semyonovich said, walking up to them. “Eating apples, are we? I do hope that I am not disturbing you.”

The boy took off his cap and hung his head. The girl began eyeing her apron.

“And how have you been keeping, Grigory?” Trifon Semyonovich said to the boy. “Is everything going well?”

“I only took one,” the boy mumbled. “And it was lying on the ground.”

“And how have you been keeping, my dear?” Trifon Semyonovich asked the girl.

The girl studied her apron more intensely.

“The two of you not married yet?”

“Not yet, Your Lordship . . . but I swear, we only took one, and it was . . . um . . . lying—”

“I see, I see. Good fellow. Do you know how to read?”

“No . . .