There was a church in the village,—­St. Pantelei, if I remember rightly.  There lived there a priest, Father Athanasii of blessed memory.  Observing that Basavriuk did not come to church, even on Easter, he determined to reprove him, and impose penance upon him.  Well, he hardly escaped with his life.  “Hark ye, pannotche!” [Footnote:  Sir] he thundered in reply, “learn to mind your own business instead of meddling in other people’s, if you don’t want that goat’s throat of yours stuck together with boiling kutya.” [Footnote:  A dish of rice or wheat flour, with honey and raisins, which is brought to the church on the celebration of memorial masses] What was to be done with this unrepentant man?  Father Athanasii contented himself with announcing that any one who should make the acquaintance of Basavriuk would be counted a Catholic, an enemy of Christ’s church, not a member of the human race.

In this village there was a Cossack named Korzh, who had a laborer whom people called Peter the Orphan—­perhaps because no one remembered either his father or mother.  The church starost, it is true, said that they had died of the pest in his second year; but my grandfather’s aunt would not hear to that, and tried with all her might to furnish him with parents, although poor Peter needed them about as much as we need last year’s snow.  She said that his father had been in Zaporozhe, taken prisoner by the Turks, underwent God only knows what tortures, and having, by some miracle, disguised himself as a eunuch, had made his escape.  Little cared the black-browed youths and maidens about his parents.  They merely remarked, that if he only had a new coat, a red sash, a black lambskin cap, with dandified blue crown, on his head, a Turkish sabre hanging by his side, a whip in one hand and a pipe with handsome mountings in the other, he would surpass all the young men.  But the pity was, that the only thing poor Peter had was a gray svitka with more holes in it than there are gold-pieces in a Jew’s pocket.  And that was not the worst of it, but this:  that Korzh had a daughter, such a beauty as I think you can hardly have chanced to see.  My deceased grandfather’s aunt used to say—­and you know that it is easier for a woman to kiss the Evil One than to call anybody a beauty, without malice be it said—­that this Cossack maiden’s cheeks were as plump and fresh as the pinkest poppy when just bathed in God’s dew, and, glowing, it unfolds its petals, and coquets with the rising sun; that her brows were like black cords, such as our maidens buy nowadays, for their crosses and ducats, of the Moscow pedlers who visit the villages with their baskets, and evenly arched as though peeping into her clear eyes; that her little mouth, at sight of which the youths smacked their lips, seemed made to emit the songs of nightingales; that her hair, black as the raven’s wing, and soft as young flax (our maidens did not then plait their hair in clubs interwoven with pretty, bright-hued ribbons)