Deniska, who loved to tease and wield his whip, rejoiced at the opportunity, assumed an expression of malicious glee, leant over and lashed out at one of the dogs. This made them howl even more and the horses raced off. Yegorushka, who could barely hold on to the box, realized as he looked at the dogs’ eyes and teeth that he would be torn to pieces in a trice should he fall off. But he felt no fear, looked at them with the same malicious glee as Deniska and only regretted that he had no whip in his hands.

The carriage drew level with a flock of sheep.

‘Stop!’ cried Kuzmichov. ‘Whoa!’

Deniska flung his whole body backwards and reined in the horses. The carriage came to a halt.

‘Come here!’ Kuzmichov shouted at the drover. ‘Get those blasted dogs off will you!’

The old drover, ragged and barefoot, with a warm fur cap, a filthy bag on his thigh and a long crook in his hands – a regular Old Testament figure – called off the dogs, doffed his cap and went over to the carriage. An identical patriarchal figure was standing stock-still on the other side of the flock, impassively surveying the travellers.

‘Whose flock is this?’ asked Kuzmichov.

‘Why, it’s Varlamov’s!’ the old man replied in a loud voice.

‘It’s Varlamov’s!’ repeated the drover on the other side of the flock.

‘Tell me, did Varlamov pass this way yesterday or didn’t he?’

‘No, he didn’t. But his bailiff did… that’s a fact…’

‘Let’s go!’

The carriage rolled on, leaving the drovers and their vicious dogs behind. Yegorushka reluctantly peered at the lilac distance ahead and now he had the feeling that the turning windmill was getting nearer. It grew larger and larger until it loomed up in all its bulk and he could see its two sails quite clearly. One was old and patched, the other had been made from new wood only recently and was gleaming in the sun.

Although the carriage was travelling in a straight line, for some reason the windmill began to recede to the left. On and on they drove, but still it kept moving to the left, never disappearing from view.

‘That’s a fine windmill Boltva’s built for his son!’ remarked Deniska.

‘But I can’t see his farm.’

‘It’s over there, on the other side of the gully.’

Boltva’s farmstead soon appeared, but the windmill still did not recede and kept up with them, looking at Yegorushka and waving its shiny sail at him. What a sorcerer that windmill was!

II

Towards noon the carriage turned off the road to the right, continued for a short distance at walking pace and came to a stop. Yegorushka heard a most delicious, soft gurgling, and he felt as though some totally different kind of air had brushed his face like cool velvet. From a hill stuck together by nature from colossal unsightly rocks a thin stream of water was running through a pipe of hemlock wood put there by some unidentified philanthropist. Limpid, gaily sparkling in the sunlight and softly murmuring, as if it imagined itself a powerful raging torrent, it swiftly ran away somewhere to the left. Not far from the hill the little stream broadened out into a small pool. The sun’s scorching rays and the burning soil drained its strength as they thirstily drank from it, but a little further on it had most probably joined up with another similar small stream, since about a hundred steps from the hill there grew along its course lush green sedge, from which three snipe flew up crying when the carriage approached.

The travellers settled down by the stream for a rest and to feed the horses. Kuzmichov, Father Khristofor and Yegorushka sat down on a felt mat they had spread out in the sparse shade produced by the carriage and the unharnessed horses and started eating. That agreeable, cheerful thought which had congealed in Father Khristofor’s brain from the heat simply craved expression after he had slaked his thirst with water and eaten a hard-boiled egg. He glanced at Yegorushka affectionately, chewed for a while and began:

‘I was student too, my boy. From my earliest years God endowed me with intelligence and understanding, so that I wasn’t like the others when I was your age and I gladdened my parents’ and tutors’ hearts with my powers of comprehension. Before I was fifteen I already spoke Latin and composed verses in Latin as well as in Russian. As I remember, I was crosier-bearer to Bishop Khristofor. One day after Mass – as I recall it was the name-day of the most pious Tsar Alexander Pavlovich of Blessed Memory – as the bishop was unrobing in the chancel he looked kindly at me and asked, “Puer bone, quam appellaris?” And I replied, “Christophorus sum.”3 And he replied, “Ergo connominati sumus” – that is, we were namesakes, so to speak. Then he asked in Latin whose son I was and I replied – in Latin too – that I was the son of Deacon Siryisky, of Lebedinskoye village. Seeing how quick and lucid my replies were the bishop blessed me and said, “Write and tell your father that I shan’t forget him and that I’ll keep you in mind.” When the priests and holy fathers who were in the chancel heard this exchange in Latin they were not a little surprised either and each one showed his pleasure by praising me. I hadn’t grown whiskers yet, but I could read Latin, French and Greek, I knew philosophy, mathematics, secular history and all the sciences. The Lord gave me the most wondrous memory.