'A merry fellow!' observed Filofey when we had driven nearly fifty yards from the tavern. We got into Tula at last: I bought shot, and while I was about it, tea and spirits, and even got a horse from the horse-dealer. At mid-day we set off home again. As we drove by the place where we first heard the rattle of the cart behind us, Filofey, who, having had something to drink at Tula, turned out to be very talkative--he even began telling me fairy-tales--as he passed the place, suddenly burst out laughing. 'Do you remember, master, how I kept saying to you, "A rattle... a rattle of wheels," I said!' He waved his hand several times. This expression struck him as most amusing. The same evening we got back to his village. I related the adventure that had befallen us to Yermolaï. Being sober, he expressed no sympathy; he only gave a grunt--whether of approval or reproach, I imagine he did not know himself. But two days later he informed me, with great satisfaction, that the very night Filofey and I had been driving to Tula, and on the very road, a merchant had been robbed and murdered. I did not at first put much faith in this, but later on I was obliged to believe it: it was confirmed by the police captain, who came galloping over in consequence. Was not that perhaps the 'wedding' our brave spirits were returning from?--wasn't that the 'fine fellow' they had 'put to bed,' in the words of the jocose giant? I stayed five days longer in Filofey's village. Whenever I meet him I always say to him: 'A rattle of wheels? Eh?' 'A merry fellow!' he always answers, and bursts out laughing. EPILOGUE THE FOREST AND THE STEPPE 'And slowly something began to draw him, Back to the country, to the garden dark, Where lime-trees are so huge, so full of shade, And lilies of the valley, sweet as maids, Where rounded willows o'er the water's edge Lean from the dyke in rows, and where the oak Sturdily grows above the sturdy field, Amid the smell of hemp and nettles rank... There, there, in meadows stretching wide, Where rich and black as velvet is the earth, Where the sweet rye, far as the eye can see, Moves noiselessly in tender, billowing waves, And where the heavy golden light is shed From out of rounded, white, transparent clouds: There it is good....' _(From a poem, devoted to the flames.)_ The reader is, very likely, already weary of my sketches; I hasten to reassure him by promising to confine myself to the fragments already printed; but I cannot refrain from saying a few words at parting about a sportman's life. Hunting with a dog and a gun is delightful in itself, _für sich_, as they used to say in old days; but let us suppose you were not born a sportsman, but are fond of nature all the same; you cannot then help envying us sportsmen.... Listen.