d look at the hut. I went
and saw it. It was all right, a nice little white cottage and thirty
or forty yards of garden to it.' Here's your fifty roubles,' I said.
And I bought it on the spot.

"We did nothing with it.

"Next summer, when I came down to Ghilendzhik, I said to my husband,
'Let us go and see our house and land.' Accordingly we went along to
look. What was our astonishment to find it occupied by another old
crone. I went up to the door and said:

"'Good-day!'

"'Good-day!' said a cracked old voice. 'And who might you be?'

"'I might be the landlady,' I said. 'How is it you're here?'

"'Oh, you're the _khosaika_, the hostess,' replied the old crone. 'Eh,
dear! Eh, deary, deary! My respects to you. I didn't know you were the
_khosaika_. I saw an empty cottage here one day; it didn't seem to
belong to any one, so, as I hadn't one myself, I just came in.'

"The old dame bustled about apologetically.

"'Never mind,' said I. 'Live on, live on.'

"'Live on,' said Alexander Fed'otch.

"We went away and didn't come back to it or ask about it for seventeen
years. Then one day I received a letter offering me twenty pounds (two
hundred roubles) for the property, but as I had no need of money I
paid no attention. A month later some one offered me thirty pounds.
Obviously there was something in the air; there was some reason for
the sudden lively interest in our property. Alexander Fed'otch went
down, and he discovered that the site was wanted by the Government for
a new vodka-shop. If we didn't sell, we should at last be forced to
give up the property to the Government, and perhaps find ourselves
involved in litigation over it. Alexander Fed'otch made negotiations,
and sold it for ninety pounds--nine hundred roubles--think of it. And
it only cost us five pounds to start with! Ah, here is a place where
you can get rich if you only have a little capital."

"The old woman?" I queried. "Was she evicted?"

"Oh no, she had disappeared--died, I suppose."

"You made a handsome profit!"

"Yes, yes. But that's quite another history. You think we made
eighty-five pounds profit. No, no. We ought to have invested the money
quietly, but unfortunately Alexander Fed'otch, when he was selling the
house, met another man who persuaded him to buy a plot of land higher
up, and to build a grandiose villa upon it. They thought it a splendid
idea, and Alexander Fed'otch paid the nine hundred roubles as part
of the money down