However, there were sometimes shortcomings and misfortunes even here. The prolonged search for Malek-Adel had cost Tchertop-hanov a great deal of money; he did not even dream of Kostroma hounds now, and rode about the neighbourhood in solitude as before. So one morning, four miles from Bezsonovo, Tchertop-hanov chanced to come upon the same prince's hunting party before whom he had cut such a triumphant figure a year and a half before. And, as fate would have it, just as on that day a hare must go leaping out from the hedge before the dogs, down the hillside! Tally-ho! Tally-ho! All the hunt fairly flew after it, and Tchertop-hanov flew along too, but not with the rest of the party, but two hundred paces to one side of it, just as he had done the time before. A huge watercourse ran zigzagging across the hillside, and as it rose higher and higher got gradually narrower, cutting off Tchertop-hanov's path. At the point where he had to jump it, and where, eighteen months before, he actually had jumped it, it was eight feet wide and fourteen feet deep. In anticipation of a triumph--a triumph repeated in such a delightful way--Tchertop-hanov chuckled exultantly, cracked his riding-whip; the hunting party were galloping too, their eyes fixed on the daring rider; his horse whizzed along like a bullet, and now the watercourse was just under his nose--now, now, at one leap, as then!... But Malek-Adel pulled up sharply, wheeled to the left, and in spite of Tchertop-hanov's tugging him to the edge, to the watercourse, he galloped along beside the ravine. He was afraid, then; did not trust himself! Then Tchertop-hanov, burning with shame and wrath, almost in tears, dropped the reins, and set the horse going straight forward, down the hill, away, away from the hunting party, if only not to hear them jeering at him, to escape as soon as might be from their damnable eyes! Covered with foam, his sides lashed unmercifully, Malek-Adel galloped home, and Tchertop-hanov at once locked himself into his room. 'No, it's not he; it's not my darling! He would have broken his neck before he would have betrayed me!' XI What finally 'did for,' as they say, Tchertop-hanov was the following circumstance. One day he sauntered, riding on Malek-Adel, about the back-yards of the priest's quarters round about the church of the parish in which is Bezsonovo. Huddled up, with his Cossack fur cap pulled down over his eyes, and his hands hanging loose on the saddle-bow, he jogged slowly on, a vague discontent in his heart. Suddenly someone called him.