A SUMMER ON THE YENESEI 243 



on a green slope, stood the wooden house of Simeon 

 Prokopcliuk. Evidently the family were all asleep, for 

 nobody came out to meet us except a pack of dogs. 

 We felt like a troop of housebreakers as we marched 

 up in a body in the dead of night. Joseph Gerasimvitch 

 and his sister entered first, and soon returned with 

 their uncle. Simeon Prokopcliuk was a short, thick- 

 set man, with neither the good manners nor the 

 good presence of his brother, Gerasim. He had 

 been a publican in Yenesiesk, and a number of 

 empty vodka bottles on the roof showed that he still 

 maintained the customs of the pot-house. His right 

 hand was twisted and crippled, and he had one of the 

 ugliest and most repellent countenances that we saw 

 on the Yenesei. However, in spite of the rude way in 

 which we had aroused him, he was all hospitality, and 

 ushered us into the kitchen. A flickering candle sent 

 our monstrous shadows dancing over the ceiling. Before 

 the stove, just awakened from sleep, stood Mrs. Simeon 

 Prokopchuk. She was a large-limbed woman, who, if 

 she had not aged by much toil and child-bearing, would 

 have been strikingly handsome. When she had shaken 

 hands with us she went quietly to fetch the samovar, 

 as if it were quite a matter of course that a party of 

 ten should turn up unexpectedly in the middle of the 

 night. As she worked she explained that she and the 

 younger children had only just returned to the house. 

 They had passed the summer in a balagan at Mezen- 

 chyne, a fishing station about eight versts farther up 

 the river, where the eldest son, Nicolai, still worked. 

 This house, although not so well furnished as that of 



