on till evening, when he drove
the cattle home again, and they were all as hungry as could be, and
wearied to death from dancing.

[27] A _karbovanets_ is about four shillings.

[Illustration: SUDDENLY ST PETER APPEARED TO HIM]

Now the parson was not a little astonished when he saw his cattle.
"Where on earth has he been feeding them?" thought he; "they are quite
tired out and almost famished! I'll take care to go myself to-morrow,
and see exactly whither he takes them, and what he does with them." On
the third day the neat-herd again drove the cattle into the pastures,
but this time the parson followed after them, and went and hid himself
behind the hedge near to which Ivan was watching the cattle graze.
There he sat then, and watched to see what the man would do. Presently
Ivan mounted on to the haystack and began to play. And immediately all
the cattle fell a-dancing, and everything in the hedge, and the parson
behind the hedge danced too. Now the hedge was a quickset hedge, and
as the parson began capering about in it, he tore to shreds his
cassock and his breeches, and his under-coat, and his shirt, and
scratched his skin and wrenched out his beard as if he had been very
badly shaved, and still the poor parson had to go on dancing in the
midst of the prickly hedge till there were great weals and wounds all
over his body, and the red blood began to flow. Then the parson saw he
was in evil case, and shrieked to his herdsman to leave off playing;
but the herdsman was so wrapped up in his music that he did not hear
him; but at last he looked in the direction of the hedge, and when he
saw the poor parson skipping about like a lunatic, he stopped. The
parson darted away as fast as his legs could carry him toward the
village, and oh! what a sight he looked as he dashed through the
streets! The people didn't know him, and--scandalized that anybody
should run about in rags and tatters so that his whole body could be
seen--began to hoot him. Then the poor man turned aside from the
public road, crawled off through the woods, and dashed off through the
tall reeds of the gardens, with the dogs after him. For wherever he
went they took him for a robber, and hounded on the dogs. At last the
parson got home, all rags and tatters, so that when his wife saw him
she did not know him, but called to the labourers, "Help, help! here's
a robber, turn him out!" They came rushing up with sticks and cudgels,
but he began talking to t