And so, as I was telling you, father was taking the money to the master, Anyutka was going with him, and at that time Anyutka was seven or maybe eight—­a silly chit, not that high.  He got as far as Kalantchiko successfully, he was sober, but when he reached Kalantchiko and went into Moiseika’s tavern, this same weakness of his came upon him.  He drank three glasses and set to bragging before people: 

“I am a plain humble man,” he says, “but I have five hundred roubles in my pocket; if I like,” says he, “I could buy up the tavern and all the crockery and Moiseika and his Jewess and his little Jews.  I can buy it all out and out,” he said.  That was his way of joking, to be sure, but then he began complaining:  “It’s a worry, good Christian people,” said he, “to be a rich man, a merchant, or anything of that kind.  If you have no money you have no care, if you have money you must watch over your pocket the whole time that wicked men may not rob you.  It’s a terror to live in the world for a man who has a lot of money.”

The drunken people listened of course, took it in, and made a note of it.  And in those days they were making a railway line at Kalantchiko, and there were swarms and swarms of tramps and vagabonds of all sorts like locusts.  Father pulled himself up afterwards, but it was too late.  A word is not a sparrow, if it flies out you can’t catch it.  They drove, sir, by the wood, and all at once there was someone galloping on horseback behind them.  Father was not of the chicken-hearted brigade—­that I couldn’t say—­but he felt uneasy; there was no regular road through the wood, nothing went that way but hay and timber, and there was no cause for anyone to be galloping there, particularly in working hours.  One wouldn’t be galloping after any good.

“It seems as though they are after someone,” said father to Anyutka, “they are galloping so furiously.  I ought to have kept quiet in the tavern, a plague on my tongue.  Oy, little daughter, my heart misgives me, there is something wrong!”

He did not spend long in hesitation about his dangerous position, and he said to my sister Anyutka: 

“Things don’t look very bright, they really are in pursuit.  Anyway, Anyutka dear, you take the money, put it away in your skirts, and go and hide behind a bush.  If by ill-luck they attack me, you run back to mother, and give her the money.  Let her take it to the village elder.  Only mind you don’t let anyone see you; keep to the wood and by the creek, that no one may see you.  Run your best and call on the merciful God.  Christ be with you!”

Father thrust the parcel of notes on Anyutka, and she looked out the thickest of the bushes and hid herself.  Soon after, three men on horseback galloped up to father.  One a stalwart, big-jawed fellow, in a crimson shirt and high boots, and the other two, ragged, shabby fellows, navvies from the line.  As my father feared, so it really turned out, sir.  The one in the crimson shirt, the sturdy, strong fellow, a man above the ordinary, left his horse, and all three made for my father.