“I have not seen you for a long time, Yegor Vlassitch...” said Pelagea looking tenderly at the huntsman’s moving shoulders.  “I have not seen you since you came into our hut at Easter for a drink of water... you came in at Easter for a minute and then God knows how... drunk... you scolded and beat me and went away...  I have been waiting and waiting...  I’ve tired my eyes out looking for you.  Ah, Yegor Vlassitch, Yegor Vlassitch! you might look in just once!”

“What is there for me to do there?”

“Of course there is nothing for you to do... though to be sure... there is the place to look after....  To see how things are going....  You are the master....  I say, you have shot a blackcock, Yegor Vlassitch!  You ought to sit down and rest!”

As she said all this Pelagea laughed like a silly girl and looked up at Yegor’s face.  Her face was simply radiant with happiness.

“Sit down?  If you like...” said Yegor in a tone of indifference, and he chose a spot between two fir-trees.  “Why are you standing?  You sit down too.”

Pelagea sat a little way off in the sun and, ashamed of her joy, put her hand over her smiling mouth.  Two minutes passed in silence.

“You might come for once,” said Pelagea.

“What for?” sighed Yegor, taking off his cap and wiping his red forehead with his hand.  “There is no object in my coming.  To go for an hour or two is only waste of time, it’s simply upsetting you, and to live continually in the village my soul could not endure....  You know yourself I am a pampered man....  I want a bed to sleep in, good tea to drink, and refined conversation....  I want all the niceties, while you live in poverty and dirt in the village....  I couldn’t stand it for a day.  Suppose there were an edict that I must live with you, I should either set fire to the hut or lay hands on myself.  From a boy I’ve had this love for ease; there is no help for it.”

“Where are you living now?”

“With the gentleman here, Dmitry Ivanitch, as a huntsman.  I furnish his table with game, but he keeps me... more for his pleasure than anything.”

“That’s not proper work you’re doing, Yegor Vlassitch....  For other people it’s a pastime, but with you it’s like a trade... like real work.”

“You don’t understand, you silly,” said Yegor, gazing gloomily at the sky.  “You have never understood, and as long as you live you will never understand what sort of man I am....  You think of me as a foolish man, gone to the bad, but to anyone who understands I am the best shot there is in the whole district.  The gentry feel that, and they have even printed things about me in a magazine.  There isn’t a man to be compared with me as a sportsman....  And it is not because I am pampered and proud that I look down upon your village work.  From my childhood, you know, I have never had any calling apart from guns and dogs.  If they took away my gun, I used to go out with the fishing-hook,