I don't think I can remember a summer when the forests beyond the Volga did not catch fire. Every July the sky was clouded by a muddy yellow smoke; the leaden sun, all its brightness gone, looked down on the earth like a bad eye. "As for forests, who cares about them?" said Osip. "They all belong to the nobles, or the crown; the peasants don't own them. And if towns catch fire, that is not a very serious business either. Rich people live in towns; they are not to be pitied. But take the villages. How many villages are burned down every summer? Not less than a hundred, I should think; that's a serious loss!" He laughed softly. "Some people have property and don't know how to manage it, and between ourselves, a man has to work not so much on his own behalf, or on the land, as against fire and water." "Why do you laugh?" "Why not? You won't put a fire out with your tears, nor will they make the floods more mighty." I knew that this handsome old man was more clever than any one I had met; but what were his real sympathies and antipathies? I was thinking about this all the time he was adding his little dry sayings to my store. "Look round you, and see how little people preserve their own, or other people's strength. How your master squanders yours! And how much does water cost in a village? Reflect a little; it is better than any cleverness which comes from learning. If a peasant's hut is burned, another one can be put up in its place, but when a worthy peasant loses his sight, you can't set that right! Look at Ardalon, for example, or Grisha; see how a man can break out! A foolish fellow, the first, but Grisha is a man of understanding. He smokes like a hayrick. Women attacked him, as worms attack a murdered man in a wood." I asked him without anger, merely out of curiosity: "Why did you go and tell the master about my ideas?" He answered calmly, even kindly: "So that he might know what harmful ideas you have. It was necessary, in order that he may teach you better ones. Who should teach you, if not he? I did not speak to him out of malice, but out of pity for you. You are not a stupid lad, but the devil is racking your brain. If I had caught you stealing, or running after the girls, or drinking, I should have held my tongue. But I shall always repeat all your wild talk to the master; so now you know." "I won't talk to you, then!" He was silent, scratching the resin off his hands with his nails. Then he looked at me with an expression of affection and said: "That you will! To whom else will you talk? There is no one else."