“Hey-hey-hey!” he shouted.  “Hey-hey-hey!  Bother you, the plague take you!  The devil has taken you into the thicket.  Tu-lu-lu!”

With an angry face he went into the bushes to collect his herd.  Meliton got up and sauntered slowly along the edge of the wood.  He looked at the ground at his feet and pondered; he still wanted to think of something which had not yet been touched by death.  Patches of light crept upon the slanting streaks of rain again; they danced on the tops of the trees and died away among the wet leaves.  Damka found a hedgehog under a bush, and wanting to attract her master’s attention to it, barked and howled.

“Did you have an eclipse or not?” the shepherd called from the bushes.

“Yes, we had,” answered Meliton.

“Ah!  Folks are complaining all about that there was one.  It shows there is disorder even in the heavens!  It’s not for nothing....  Hey-hey-hey!  Hey!”

Driving his herd together to the edge of the wood, the shepherd leaned against the birch-tree, looked up at the sky, without haste took his pipe from his bosom and began playing.  As before, he played mechanically and took no more than five or six notes; as though the pipe had come into his hands for the first time, the sounds floated from it uncertainly, with no regularity, not blending into a tune, but to Meliton, brooding on the destruction of the world, there was a sound in it of something very depressing and revolting which he would much rather not have heard.  The highest, shrillest notes, which quivered and broke, seemed to be weeping disconsolately, as though the pipe were sick and frightened, while the lowest notes for some reason reminded him of the mist, the dejected trees, the grey sky.  Such music seemed in keeping with the weather, the old man and his sayings.

Meliton wanted to complain.  He went up to the old man and, looking at his mournful, mocking face and at the pipe, muttered: 

“And life has grown worse, grandfather.  It is utterly impossible to live.  Bad crops, want....  Cattle plague continually, diseases of all sorts....  We are crushed by poverty.”

The bailiff’s puffy face turned crimson and took a dejected, womanish expression.  He twirled his fingers as though seeking words to convey his vague feeling and went on: 

“Eight children, a wife... and my mother still living, and my whole salary ten roubles a month and to board myself.  My wife has become a Satan from poverty....  I go off drinking myself.  I am a sensible, steady man; I have education.  I ought to sit at home in peace, but I stray about all day with my gun like a dog because it is more than I can stand; my home is hateful to me!”

Feeling that his tongue was uttering something quite different from what he wanted to say, the bailiff waved his hand and said bitterly: 

“If the world’s going to end I wish it would make haste about it.  There’s no need to drag it out and make folks miserable for nothing....”