w
lives upon his old wife, who begs for alms. He is thin and weak,
with a mangy-looking little beard, speaks with a hissing sound, and
after every word twitches the right side of his face and jerkily
shrugs his right shoulder. The other, Ignat Ryabov, a sturdy,
broad-shouldered peasant who never does anything and is everlastingly
silent, is sitting in the corner under a big string of bread rings.
The door, opening inwards, throws a thick shadow upon him, so that
Slyunka and Semyon the publican can see nothing but his patched
knees, his long fleshy nose, and a big tuft of hair which has escaped
from the thick uncombed tangle covering his head. Semyon, a sickly
little man, with a pale face and a long sinewy neck, stands behind
his counter, looks mournfully at the string of bread rings, and
coughs meekly.

"You think it over now, if you have any sense," Slyunka says to
him, twitching his cheek. "You have the thing lying by unused and
get no sort of benefit from it. While we need it. A sportsman without
a gun is like a sacristan without a voice. You ought to understand
that, but I see you don't understand it, so you can have no real
sense. . . . Hand it over!"

"You left the gun in pledge, you know!" says Semyon in a thin
womanish little voice, sighing deeply, and not taking his eyes off
the string of bread rings. "Hand over the rouble you borrowed, and
then take your gun."

"I haven't got a rouble. I swear to you, Semyon Mitritch, as God
sees me: you give me the gun and I will go to-day with Ignashka and
bring it you back again. I'll bring it back, strike me dead. May I
have happiness neither in this world nor the next, if I don't."

"Semyon Mitritch, do give it," Ignat Ryabov says in his bass, and
his voice betrays a passionate desire to get what he asks for.

"But what do you want the gun for?" sighs Semyon, sadly shaking his
head. "What sort of shooting is there now? It's still winter outside,
and no game at all but crows and jackdaws."

"Winter, indeed," says Slyunka, hooing the ash out of his pipe with
his finger, "it is early yet of course, but you never can tell with
the snipe. The snipe's a bird that wants watching. If you are
unlucky, you may sit waiting at home, and miss his flying over, and
then you must wait till autumn. . . . It is a business! The snipe
is not a rook. . . . Last year he was flying the week before Easter,
while the year before we had to wait till the week after Easter!
Come, do us a fa