saw that her sons were also mounted, she rushed towards
the younger, whose features expressed somewhat more gentleness than
those of his brother. She grasped his stirrup, clung to his saddle, and
with despair in her eyes, refused to loose her hold. Two stout Cossacks
seized her carefully, and bore her back into the hut. But before the
cavalcade had passed out of the courtyard, she rushed with the speed of
a wild goat, disproportionate to her years, to the gate, stopped a
horse with irresistible strength, and embraced one of her sons with mad,
unconscious violence. Then they led her away again.

The young Cossacks rode on sadly, repressing their tears out of fear of
their father, who, on his side, was somewhat moved, although he strove
not to show it. The morning was grey, the green sward bright, the birds
twittered rather discordantly. They glanced back as they rode. Their
paternal farm seemed to have sunk into the earth. All that was visible
above the surface were the two chimneys of their modest hut and the tops
of the trees up whose trunks they had been used to climb like squirrels.
Before them still stretched the field by which they could recall the
whole story of their lives, from the years when they rolled in its dewy
grass down to the years when they awaited in it the dark-browed Cossack
maiden, running timidly across it on quick young feet. There is the
pole above the well, with the waggon wheel fastened to its top, rising
solitary against the sky; already the level which they have traversed
appears a hill in the distance, and now all has disappeared. Farewell,
childhood, games, all, all, farewell!

CHAPTER II

All three horsemen rode in silence. Old Taras's thoughts were far away:
before him passed his youth, his years--the swift-flying years, over
which the Cossack always weeps, wishing that his life might be all
youth. He wondered whom of his former comrades he should meet at the
Setch. He reckoned up how many had already died, how many were still
alive. Tears formed slowly in his eyes, and his grey head bent sadly.

His sons were occupied with other thoughts. But we must speak further of
his sons. They had been sent, when twelve years old, to the academy at
Kief, because all leaders of that day considered it indispensable to
give their children an education, although it was afterwards utterly
forgotten. Like all who entered the academy, they were wild, having been
brought up in unrestrained freedom;