night he was
usually asleep, and by day he wandered about the forest with a
single-barrelled gun, whistling to the hares. He must have worked
among machinery in early days, for before he stood still he always
shouted to himself: "Stop the machine!" and before going on: "Full
speed!" He had a huge black dog of indeterminate breed, called
Arapka. When it ran too far ahead he used to shout to it: "Reverse
action!" Sometimes he used to sing, and as he did so staggered
violently, and often fell down (the wolf thought the wind blew him
over), and shouted: "Run off the rails!"

The wolf remembered that, in the summer and autumn, a ram and two
ewes were pasturing near the winter hut, and when she had run by
not so long ago she fancied that she had heard bleating in the
stall. And now, as she got near the place, she reflected that it
was already March, and, by that time, there would certainly be lambs
in the stall. She was tormented by hunger, she thought with what
greediness she would eat a lamb, and these thoughts made her teeth
snap, and her eyes glitter in the darkness like two sparks of light.

Ignat's hut, his barn, cattle-stall, and well were surrounded by
high snowdrifts. All was still. Arapka was, most likely, asleep in
the barn.

The wolf clambered over a snowdrift on to the stall, and began
scratching away the thatched roof with her paws and her nose. The
straw was rotten and decaying, so that the wolf almost fell through;
all at once a smell of warm steam, of manure, and of sheep's milk
floated straight to her nostrils. Down below, a lamb, feeling the
cold, bleated softly. Leaping through the hole, the wolf fell with
her four paws and chest on something soft and warm, probably a
sheep, and at the same moment, something in the stall suddenly began
whining, barking, and going off into a shrill little yap; the sheep
huddled against the wall, and the wolf, frightened, snatched the
first thing her teeth fastened on, and dashed away. . . .

She ran at her utmost speed, while Arapka, who by now had scented
the wolf, howled furiously, the frightened hens cackled, and Ignat,
coming out into the porch, shouted: "Full speed! Blow the whistle!"

And he whistled like a steam-engine, and then shouted: "Ho-ho-ho-ho!"
and all this noise was repeated by the forest echo. When, little
by little, it all died away, the wolf somewhat recovered herself,
and began to notice that the prey she held in her teeth and dragged
along the s