Ivan Abramitch Zhmuhin, a retired Cossack officer, who had once served in the Caucasus, but now lived on his own farm, and who had once been young, strong, and vigorous, but now was old, dried up, and bent, with shaggy eyebrows and a greenish-grey moustache, was returning from the town to his farm one hot summer’s day.  In the town he had confessed and received absolution, and had made his will at the notary’s (a fortnight before he had had a slight stroke), and now all the while he was in the railway carriage he was haunted by melancholy, serious thoughts of approaching death, of the vanity of vanities, of the transitoriness of all things earthly.  At the station of Provalye—­there is such a one on the Donetz line—­a fair-haired, plump, middle-aged gentleman with a shabby portfolio stepped into the carriage and sat down opposite.  They got into conversation.

“Yes,” said Ivan Abramitch, looking pensively out of window, “it is never too late to marry.  I myself married when I was forty-eight; I was told it was late, but it has turned out that it was not late or early, but simply that it would have been better not to marry at all.  Everyone is soon tired of his wife, but not everyone tells the truth, because, you know, people are ashamed of an unhappy home life and conceal it.  It’s ‘Manya this’ and ‘Manya that’ with many a man by his wife’s side, but if he had his way he’d put that Manya in a sack and drop her in the water.  It’s dull with one’s wife, it’s mere foolishness.  And it’s no better with one’s children, I make bold to assure you.  I have two of them, the rascals.  There’s nowhere for them to be taught out here in the steppe; I haven’t the money to send them to school in Novo Tcherkask, and they live here like young wolves.  Next thing they will be murdering someone on the highroad.”

The fair-haired gentleman listened attentively, answered questions briefly in a low voice, and was apparently a gentleman of gentle and modest disposition.  He mentioned that he was a lawyer, and that he was going to the village Dyuevka on business.

“Why, merciful heavens, that is six miles from me!” said Zhmuhin in a tone of voice as though someone were disputing with him.  “But excuse me, you won’t find horses at the station now.  To my mind, the very best thing you can do, you know, is to come straight to me, stay the night, you know, and in the morning drive over with my horses.”

The lawyer thought a moment and accepted the invitation.

When they reached the station the sun was already low over the steppe.  They said nothing all the way from the station to the farm:  the jolting prevented conversation.  The trap bounded up and down, squeaked, and seemed to be sobbing, and the lawyer, who was sitting very uncomfortably, stared before him, miserably hoping to see the farm.  After they had driven five or six miles there came into view in the distance a low-pitched house and a yard enclosed by a fence made of dark, flat stones