MELITON SHISHKIN, a bailiff from the Dementyev farm, exhausted by the sultry heat
of the fir-wood and covered with spiders' webs and pine-needles, made his way with his
gun to the edge of the wood. His Damka -- a mongrel between a yard dog and a setter --
an extremely thin bitch heavy with young, trailed after her master with her wet tail
between her legs, doing all she could to avoid pricking her nose. It was a dull, overcast
morning. Big drops dripped from the bracken and from the trees that were wrapped in a
light mist; there was a pungent smell of decay from the dampness of the wood.
There were birch-trees ahead of him where the wood ended, and between their stems and
branches he could see the misty distance. Beyond the birch-trees someone was playing on
a shepherd's rustic pipe. The player produced no more than five or six notes, dragged
them out languidly with no attempt at forming a tune, and yet there was something harsh
and extremely dreary in the sound of the piping.
As the copse became sparser, and the pines were interspersed with young birch-trees,
Meliton saw a herd. Hobbled horses, cows, and sheep were wandering among the bushes
and, snapping the dry branches, sniffed at the herbage of the copse. A lean old shepherd,
bareheaded, in a torn grey smock, stood leaning against the wet trunk of a birch-tree. He
stared at the ground, pondering something, and played his pipe, it seemed, mechanically.
"Good-day, grandfather! God help you!" Meliton greeted him in a thin, husky voice
which seemed incongruous with his huge stature and big, fleshy face. "How cleverly you
are playing your pipe! Whose herd are you minding?"
"The Artamonovs'," the shepherd answered reluctantly, and he thrust the pipe into his
bosom.
"So I suppose the wood is the Artamonovs' too?" Meliton inquired, looking about him.
"Yes, it is the Artamonovs'; only fancy . . . I had completely lost myself. I got my face
scratched all over in the thicket."
He sat down on the wet earth and began rolling up a bit of newspaper into a cigarette.
Like his voice, everything about the man was small and out of keeping with his height,
his breadth, and his fleshy face: his smiles, his eyes, his buttons, his tiny cap, which
would hardly keep on his big, closely-cropped head. When he talked and smiled there
was something womanish, timid, and meek about his puffy, shaven face and his whole
figure.
"What weather! God help us!" he said, and he turned his head from side to side. "Folk
have not carried the oats yet, and the rain seems as though it had been taken on for good,
God bless it."
