ns, and no one was left
but Kirilin, Atchmianov, and Nikodim Alexandritch. Kerbalay brought
chairs, spread a rug on the ground, and set a few bottles of wine.

The police captain, Kirilin, a tall, good-looking man, who in all
weathers wore his great-coat over his tunic, with his haughty
deportment, stately carriage, and thick, rather hoarse voice, looked
like a young provincial chief of police; his expression was mournful
and sleepy, as though he had just been waked against his will.

"What have you brought this for, you brute?" he asked Kerbalay,
deliberately articulating each word. "I ordered you to give us
_kvarel_, and what have you brought, you ugly Tatar? Eh? What?"

"We have plenty of wine of our own, Yegor Alekseitch," Nikodim
Alexandritch observed, timidly and politely.

"What? But I want us to have my wine, too; I'm taking part in the
picnic and I imagine I have full right to contribute my share. I
im-ma-gine so! Bring ten bottles of _kvarel_."

"Why so many?" asked Nikodim Alexandritch, in wonder, knowing Kirilin
had no money.

"Twenty bottles! Thirty!" shouted Kirilin.

"Never mind, let him," Atchmianov whispered to Nikodim Alexandritch;
"I'll pay."

Nadyezhda Fyodorovna was in a light-hearted, mischievous mood; she
wanted to skip and jump, to laugh, to shout, to tease, to flirt.
In her cheap cotton dress with blue pansies on it, in her red shoes
and the same straw hat, she seemed to herself, little, simple,
light, ethereal as a butterfly. She ran over the rickety bridge and
looked for a minute into the water, in order to feel giddy; then,
shrieking and laughing, ran to the other side to the drying-shed,
and she fancied that all the men were admiring her, even Kerbalay.
When in the rapidly falling darkness the trees began to melt into
the mountains and the horses into the carriages, and a light gleamed
in the windows of the _duhan_, she climbed up the mountain by the
little path which zigzagged between stones and thorn-bushes and sat
on a stone. Down below, the camp-fire was burning. Near the fire,
with his sleeves tucked up, the deacon was moving to and fro, and
his long black shadow kept describing a circle round it; he put on
wood, and with a spoon tied to a long stick he stirred the cauldron.
Samoylenko, with a copper-red face, was fussing round the fire just
as though he were in his own kitchen, shouting furiously:

"Where's the salt, gentlemen? I bet you've forgotten it. Why are
you all sit