'Good health to you, Erofay, upright man!' replied Kassyan in a dejected voice. I at once made known his suggestion to the coachman; Erofay expressed his approval of it and drove into the yard. While he was busy deliberately unharnessing the horses, the old man stood leaning with his shoulders against the gate, and looking disconsolately first at him and then at me. He seemed in some uncertainty of mind; he was not very pleased, as it seemed to me, at our sudden visit. 'So they have transported you too?' Erofay asked him suddenly, lifting the wooden arch of the harness. 'Yes.' 'Ugh!' said my coachman between his teeth. 'You know Martin the carpenter.... Of course, you know Martin of Ryaby?' 'Yes.' 'Well, he is dead. We have just met his coffin.' Kassyan shuddered. 'Dead?' he said, and his head sank dejectedly. 'Yes, he is dead. Why didn't you cure him, eh? You know they say you cure folks; you're a doctor.' My coachman was apparently laughing and jeering at the old man. 'And is this your trap, pray?' he added, with a shrug of his shoulders in its direction. 'Yes.' 'Well, a trap ... a fine trap!' he repeated, and taking it by the shafts almost turned it completely upside down. 'A trap!... But what will you drive in it to the clearing?... You can't harness our horses in these shafts; our horses are all too big.' 'I don't know,' replied Kassyan, 'what you are going to drive; that beast perhaps,' he added with a sigh. 'That?' broke in Erofay, and going up to Kassyan's nag, he tapped it disparagingly on the back with the third finger of his right hand. 'See,' he added contemptuously, 'it's asleep, the scare-crow!' I asked Erofay to harness it as quickly as he could. I wanted to drive myself with Kassyan to the clearing; grouse are fond of such places. When the little cart was quite ready, and I, together with my dog, had been installed in the warped wicker body of it, and Kassyan huddled up into a little ball, with still the same dejected expression on his face, had taken his seat in front, Erofay came up to me and whispered with an air of mystery: 'You did well, your honour, to drive with him. He is such a queer fellow; he's cracked, you know, and his nickname is the Flea. I don't know how you managed to make him out....' I tried to say to Erofay that so far Kassyan had seemed to me a very sensible man; but my coachman continued at once in the same voice: 'But you keep a look-out where he is driving you to. And, your honour, be pleased to choose the axle yourself; be pleased to choose a sound one.... Well, Flea,' he added aloud, 'could I get a bit of bread in your house?' 'Look about; you may find some,' answered Kassyan. He pulled the reins and we rolled away.