complaint about a vegetable garden. Here are
privy councillors coming, and you annoy me with cabbages!' I lost
patience and said something--not very much, but it offended him, and
he struck me in the face. I stood still; I did nothing, just as if
what he did was perfectly all right. They went off; I came to myself,
washed my face, and left."

"And what about the hut?"

"My wife is staying there. She will look after things. Never mind
about their roads."

Vasily got up and collected himself. "Good-bye, Ivanov. I do not know
whether I shall get any one at the office to listen to me."

"Surely you are not going to walk?"

"At the station I will try to get on a freight train, and to-morrow I
shall be in Moscow."

The neighbours bade each other farewell. Vasily was absent for some
time. His wife worked for him night and day. She never slept, and wore
herself out waiting for her husband. On the third day the commission
arrived. An engine, luggage-van, and two first-class saloons; but
Vasily was still away. Semyon saw his wife on the fourth day. Her face
was swollen from crying and her eyes were red.

"Has your husband returned?" he asked. But the woman only made a
gesture with her hands, and without saying a word went her way.

Semyon had learnt when still a lad to make flutes out of a kind of
reed. He used to burn out the heart of the stalk, make holes where
necessary, drill them, fix a mouthpiece at one end, and tune them so
well that it was possible to play almost any air on them. He made a
number of them in his spare time, and sent them by his friends amongst
the freight brakemen to the bazaar in the town. He got two kopeks
apiece for them. On the day following the visit of the commission he
left his wife at home to meet the six o'clock train, and started off
to the forest to cut some sticks. He went to the end of his
section--at this point the line made a sharp turn--descended the
embankment, and struck into the wood at the foot of the mountain.
About half a verst away there was a big marsh, around which splendid
reeds for his flutes grew. He cut a whole bundle of stalks and started
back home. The sun was already dropping low, and in the dead stillness
only the twittering of the birds was audible, and the crackle of the
dead wood under his feet. As he walked along rapidly, he fancied he
heard the clang of iron striking iron, and he redoubled his pace.
There was no repair going on in his section. What did it mea