d brought down two birds; Ivan
Sergeyevitch had no luck, and was envying my father's good fortune all
the time. At last, when it was beginning to get dark, a woodcock flew
over Turgenieff, and he shot it.

"Killed it?" called out my father.

"Fell like a stone; send your dog to pick him up," answered Ivan
Sergeyevitch.

My father sent us with the dog, Turgenieff showed us where to look
for the bird; but search as we might, and the dog, too, there was no
woodcock to be found. At last Turgenieff came to help, and my father
came; there was no woodcock there.

"Perhaps you only winged it; it may have got away along the ground,"
said my father, puzzled. "It is impossible that the dog shouldn't find
it; he couldn't miss a bird that was killed."

"I tell you I saw it with my own eyes, Lyoff Nikolaievich; it fell
like a stone. I didn't wound it; I killed it outright. I can tell the
difference."

"Then why can't the dog find it? It's impossible; there's something
wrong."

"I don't know anything about that," insisted Turgenieff. "You may take
it from me I'm not lying; it fell like a stone where I tell you."

There was no finding the woodcock, and the incident left an unpleasant
flavor, as if one or the other of them was in the wrong. Either
Turgenieff was bragging when he said that he shot it dead, or my father,
in maintaining that the dog could not fail to find a bird that had been
killed.

And this must needs happen just when they were both so anxious to avoid
every sort of misunderstanding! That was the very reason why they had
carefully fought shy of all serious conversation, and spent all their
time merely amusing themselves.

When my father said good night to us that night, he whispered to us that
we were to get up early and go back to the place to have a good hunt for
the bird.

And what was the result? The woodcock, in falling, had caught in the
fork of a branch, right at the top of an aspen-tree, and it was all we
could do to knock it out from there.

When we brought it home in triumph, it was something of an "occasion,"
and my father and Turgenieff were far more delighted than we were. It
turned out that they were both in the right, and everything ended to
their mutual satisfaction.

Ivan Sergeyevitch slept down-stairs in my father's study. When the party
broke up for the night, I used to see him to his room, and while he was
undressing I sat on his bed and talked sport with him.

He asked me if I co