32 CRASNOI LAIS. 



ing, dogs baying, guns firing, and hares scuttling 

 to the right and left of you, while through all, 

 with a beautiful pertinacity which hardly allowed 

 him time to fire a shot, the veteran forester tootled 

 away on his horn. This would have augured 

 badly for our sport on the morrow but that the 

 forest was immense, and we were only in an out- 

 lying bit of it, from which we probably drove some 

 game towards our next day's ground. Although 

 the snow was covered with tracks, we saw nothing 

 but hares, of which we bagged about twenty. 



The morning of Thursday broke as brilliantly 

 as its predecessors, and the sun seemed if possible 

 to glare with a harder light on the frozen snow. 

 Outside our door the forester was apparently on 

 the point of knocking down three or four Cossacks 

 almost as excited as himself. His voice rose to a 

 scream, his arms kept swinging about ; even I 

 knew enough Russian to hear that he was swear- 

 ing awfully, and I had my fears lest something 

 had happened to mar our day's sport. However, he 

 finally calmed down, and presently I heard him call- 

 ing a huge-bearded ruffian a little dove (golubchik), 

 whom he had addressed as the son of the most 

 immoral of the canine race not five minutes before. 

 He was merely explaining some of the minor details 

 in the business of the coming day, he told me 

 afterwards. 



About 7.30 a Cossack colonel, with a hundred 



