The old man took the pipe from his lips and, screwing up one eye, looked into its little opening.  His face was sad and covered with thick drops like tears.  He smiled and said: 

“It’s a pity, my friend!  My goodness, what a pity!  The earth, the forest, the sky, the beasts of all sorts—­all this has been created, you know, adapted; they all have their intelligence.  It is all going to ruin.  And most of all I am sorry for people.”

There was the sound in the wood of heavy rain coming nearer.  Meliton looked in the direction of the sound, did up all his buttons, and said: 

“I am going to the village.  Good-bye, grandfather.  What is your name?”

“Luka the Poor.”

“Well, good-bye, Luka!  Thank you for your good words.  Damka, ici!”

After parting from the shepherd Meliton made his way along the edge of the wood, and then down hill to a meadow which by degrees turned into a marsh.  There was a squelch of water under his feet, and the rusty marsh sedge, still green and juicy, drooped down to the earth as though afraid of being trampled underfoot.  Beyond the marsh, on the bank of the Pestchanka, of which the old man had spoken, stood a row of willows, and beyond the willows a barn looked dark blue in the mist.  One could feel the approach of that miserable, utterly inevitable season, when the fields grow dark and the earth is muddy and cold, when the weeping willow seems still more mournful and tears trickle down its stem, and only the cranes fly away from the general misery, and even they, as though afraid of insulting dispirited nature by the expression of their happiness, fill the air with their mournful, dreary notes.

Meliton plodded along to the river, and heard the sounds of the pipe gradually dying away behind him.  He still wanted to complain.  He looked dejectedly about him, and he felt insufferably sorry for the sky and the earth and the sun and the woods and his Damka, and when the highest drawn-out note of the pipe floated quivering in the air, like a voice weeping, he felt extremely bitter and resentful of the impropriety in the conduct of nature.

The high note quivered, broke off, and the pipe was silent.

AGAFYA

During my stay in the district of S. I often used to go to see the watchman Savva Stukatch, or simply Savka, in the kitchen gardens of Dubovo.  These kitchen gardens were my favorite resort for so-called “mixed” fishing, when one goes out without knowing what day or hour one may return, taking with one every sort of fishing tackle as well as a store of provisions.  To tell the truth, it was not so much the fishing that attracted me as the peaceful stroll, the meals at no set time, the talk with Savka, and being for so long face to face with the calm summer nights.  Savka was a young man of five-and-twenty, well grown and handsome, and as strong as a flint.