The song ceased.  Yegorushka sauntered back to the chaise, and to while away the time went again to the trickle of water.

And again there was the sound of the dreary song.  It was the same long-legged peasant woman in the hamlet over the hill.  Yegorushka’s boredom came back again.  He left the pipe and looked upwards.  What he saw was so unexpected that he was a little frightened.  Just above his head on one of the big clumsy stones stood a chubby little boy, wearing nothing but a shirt, with a prominent stomach and thin legs, the same boy who had been standing before by the peasant woman.  He was gazing with open mouth and unblinking eyes at Yegorushka’s crimson shirt and at the chaise, with a look of blank astonishment and even fear, as though he saw before him creatures of another world.  The red colour of the shirt charmed and allured him.  But the chaise and the men sleeping under it excited his curiosity; perhaps he had not noticed how the agreeable red colour and curiosity had attracted him down from the hamlet, and now probably he was surprised at his own boldness.  For a long while Yegorushka stared at him, and he at Yegorushka.  Both were silent and conscious of some awkwardness.  After a long silence Yegorushka asked: 

“What’s your name?”

The stranger’s cheeks puffed out more than ever; he pressed his back against the rock, opened his eyes wide, moved his lips, and answered in a husky bass:  “Tit!”

The boys said not another word to each other; after a brief silence, still keeping his eyes fixed on Yegorushka, the mysterious Tit kicked up one leg, felt with his heel for a niche and clambered up the rock; from that point he ascended to the next rock, staggering backwards and looking intently at Yegorushka, as though afraid he might hit him from behind, and so made his way upwards till he disappeared altogether behind the crest of the hill.

After watching him out of sight, Yegorushka put his arms round his knees and leaned his head on them. . . .  The burning sun scorched the back of his head, his neck, and his spine.  The melancholy song died away, then floated again on the stagnant stifling air.  The rivulet gurgled monotonously, the horses munched, and time dragged on endlessly, as though it, too, were stagnant and had come to a standstill.  It seemed as though a hundred years had passed since the morning.  Could it be that God’s world, the chaise and the horses would come to a standstill in that air, and, like the hills, turn to stone and remain for ever in one spot?  Yegorushka raised his head, and with smarting eyes looked before him; the lilac distance, which till then had been motionless, began heaving, and with the sky floated away into the distance. . . .  It drew after it the brown grass, the sedge, and with extraordinary swiftness Yegorushka floated after the flying distance.  Some force noiselessly drew him onwards, and the heat and the wearisome song flew after in pursuit.  Yegorushka bent his head and shut his eyes. . . .