ld dog knows
everything, but he always pretends the contrary."

"I don't believe the archimandrite allowed you so much as a smell of
corn-brandy," continued Taras. "Confess, my boys, they thrashed you well
with fresh birch-twigs on your backs and all over your Cossack bodies;
and perhaps, when you grew too sharp, they beat you with whips. And not
on Saturday only, I fancy, but on Wednesday and Thursday."

"What is past, father, need not be recalled; it is done with."

"Let them try it know," said Andrii. "Let anybody just touch me, let any
Tatar risk it now, and he'll soon learn what a Cossack's sword is like!"

"Good, my son, by heavens, good! And when it comes to that, I'll go with
you; by heavens, I'll go too! What should I wait here for? To become a
buckwheat-reaper and housekeeper, to look after the sheep and swine, and
loaf around with my wife? Away with such nonsense! I am a Cossack; I'll
have none of it! What's left but war? I'll go with you to Zaporozhe to
carouse; I'll go, by heavens!" And old Bulba, growing warm by degrees
and finally quite angry, rose from the table, and, assuming a dignified
attitude, stamped his foot. "We will go to-morrow! Wherefore delay? What
enemy can we besiege here? What is this hut to us? What do we want with
all these things? What are pots and pans to us?" So saying, he began to
knock over the pots and flasks, and to throw them about.

The poor old woman, well used to such freaks on the part of her husband,
looked sadly on from her seat on the wall-bench. She did not dare say a
word; but when she heard the decision which was so terrible for her, she
could not refrain from tears. As she looked at her children, from whom
so speedy a separation was threatened, it is impossible to describe the
full force of her speechless grief, which seemed to quiver in her eyes
and on her lips convulsively pressed together.

Bulba was terribly headstrong. He was one of those characters which
could only exist in that fierce fifteenth century, and in that
half-nomadic corner of Europe, when the whole of Southern Russia,
deserted by its princes, was laid waste and burned to the quick by
pitiless troops of Mongolian robbers; when men deprived of house
and home grew brave there; when, amid conflagrations, threatening
neighbours, and eternal terrors, they settled down, and growing
accustomed to looking these things straight in the face, trained
themselves not to know that there was such a thing as fea