“You are driving over folks, fatty!” cried Deniska.  “What a swollen lump of a face, as though a bumble-bee had stung it!”

The girl smiled drowsily, and moving her lips lay down again; then a solitary poplar came into sight on the low hill.  Someone had planted it, and God only knows why it was there.  It was hard to tear the eyes away from its graceful figure and green drapery.  Was that lovely creature happy?  Sultry heat in summer, in winter frost and snowstorms, terrible nights in autumn when nothing is to be seen but darkness and nothing is to be heard but the senseless angry howling wind, and, worst of all, alone, alone for the whole of life . . . .  Beyond the poplar stretches of wheat extended like a bright yellow carpet from the road to the top of the hills.  On the hills the corn was already cut and laid up in sheaves, while at the bottom they were still cutting. . . .  Six mowers were standing in a row swinging their scythes, and the scythes gleamed gaily and uttered in unison together “Vzhee, vzhee!” From the movements of the peasant women binding the sheaves, from the faces of the mowers, from the glitter of the scythes, it could be seen that the sultry heat was baking and stifling.  A black dog with its tongue hanging out ran from the mowers to meet the chaise, probably with the intention of barking, but stopped halfway and stared indifferently at Deniska, who shook his whip at him; it was too hot to bark!  One peasant woman got up and, putting both hands to her aching back, followed Yegorushka’s red shirt with her eyes.  Whether it was that the colour pleased her or that he reminded her of her children, she stood a long time motionless staring after him.

But now the wheat, too, had flashed by; again the parched plain, the sunburnt hills, the sultry sky stretched before them; again a hawk hovered over the earth.  In the distance, as before, a windmill whirled its sails, and still it looked like a little man waving his arms.  It was wearisome to watch, and it seemed as though one would never reach it, as though it were running away from the chaise.

Father Christopher and Kuzmitchov were silent.  Deniska lashed the horses and kept shouting to them, while Yegorushka had left off crying, and gazed about him listlessly.  The heat and the tedium of the steppes overpowered him.  He felt as though he had been travelling and jolting up and down for a very long time, that the sun had been baking his back a long time.  Before they had gone eight miles he began to feel “It must be time to rest.”  The geniality gradually faded out of his uncle’s face and nothing else was left but the air of business reserve; and to a gaunt shaven face, especially when it is adorned with spectacles and the nose and temples are covered with dust, this reserve gives a relentless, inquisitorial appearance.  Father Christopher never left off gazing with wonder at God’s world, and smiling.  Without speaking, he brooded over something pleasant and nice, and a kindly, genial smile remained imprinted on his face.  It seemed as though some nice and pleasant thought were imprinted on his brain by the heat.