Pidorka and Petrus began to live like a gentleman and lady.  There was plenty of everything, and everything was handsome. . . .  But honest people shook their heads when they looked at their way of living.  “From the Devil no good can come,” they unanimously agreed.  “Whence, except from the tempter of orthodox people, came this wealth?  Where else could he get such a lot of gold?  Why, on the very day that he got rich, did Basavriuk vanish as if into thin air?” Say, if you can, that people imagine things!  In fact, a month had not passed, and no one would have recognized Petrus.  Why, what had happened to him?  God knows.  He sits in one spot, and says no word to any one:  he thinks continually, and seems to be trying to recall something.  When Pidorka succeeds in getting him to speak, he seems to forget himself, carries on a conversation, and even grows cheerful; but if he inadvertently glances at the sacks, “Stop, stop!  I have forgotten,” he cries, and again plunges into reverie, and again strives to recall something.  Sometimes when he has sat long in a place, it seems to him as though it were coming, just coming back to mind, . . . and again all fades away.  It seems as if he is sitting in the tavern:  they bring him vodka; vodka stings him; vodka is repulsive to him.  Some one comes along, and strikes him on the shoulder; . . . but beyond that everything is veiled in darkness before him.  The perspiration streams down his face, and he sits exhausted in the same place.

What did not Pidorka do?  She consulted the sorceress; and they poured out fear, and brewed stomach ache,[Footnote:  “To pour out fear,” is done with us in case of fear; when it is desired to know what caused it, melted lead or wax is poured into water, and the object whose form it assumes is the one which frightened the sick person; after this, the fear departs.  Sonyashnitza is brewed for giddiness, and pain in the bowels.  To this end, a bit of stump is burned, thrown into a jug, and turned upside down into a bowl filled with water, which is placed on the patient’s stomach:  after an incantation, he is given a spoonful of this water to drink.]—­but all to no avail.  And so the summer passed.  Many a Cossack had mowed and reaped:  many a Cossack, more enterprising than the rest, had set off upon an expedition.  Flocks of ducks were already crowding our marshes, but there was not even a hint of improvement.

It was red upon the steppes.  Ricks of grain, like Cossacks’ caps, dotted the fields here and there.  On the highway were to be encountered wagons loaded with brushwood and logs.  The ground had become more solid, and in places was touched with frost.  Already had the snow begun to besprinkle the sky, and the branches of the trees were covered with rime like rabbit-skin.  Already on frosty days the red-breasted finch hopped about on the snow-heaps like a foppish Polish nobleman, and picked out grains of corn; and children, with huge sticks, chased wooden