When dinner was over the afternoon was well spent and it was time to set out upon the twenty-mile drive which separated the houses of the two boyars. The children were made to kiss one another at parting, a demonstration to which the lady strongly objected though without assigning a reason until after her future lord's departure, when she explained to her mother's superstitious horror, but to her father's boisterous amusement, that she hated him. "He kicked me and hit me," she said, showing certain marks upon her limbs, "because I was tired of playing at soldiers with him and wanted to hug my doll. Don't invite him here again, mother!" "But he belongs to you, my dove, you must love him, he is yours and you are his," cried the horrified parent. "Then I'll spill wine over him and he shall sell me for five roubles, as father sold Gregory just now!" said the child. Whereat the mother crossed herself and muttered a prayer and the boyar laughed boisterously. Meanwhile the Maximof family sped homewards through the gloom of the early winter evening. The cold had a sobering influence both upon the boyar himself and upon the priest, who was with difficulty aroused from torpor, however, when his village was reached and the time came to drop him at his own house. The driver, Kiril, had found friends at Demidof's house anxious to entertain him in return for his dismal accounts of the cruelties and abominations practised by his boyar upon the serfs of his estate. "We are dogs, no better," he had told them; "you may thank God, brothers, that you are not in our place." "Go on and tell us all about it," said one, plying Kiril with more drink. Kiril had many a tale to tell at the price of a drink for each recital, and when true stories failed him he employed his inventive powers. "You, Gregory, had better hang yourself rather than come our way," said he, addressing the man sold in a fit of rage by Demidof at the dinner-table. "There is no need," said Gregory. "My master is not a fool when he is sober; he knows two things, one that he cannot sell me away from the land and the other that I am worth more than five roubles to him. He will remember these two things when he has slept, and I shall not go." "Good; so be it; remain and be happy! What in the devil's name does your master think of to mate his child with the whelp of a wolf? Like father like son; one day he will eat her." "In twelve years much may happen. Drink, friend, and tell us more of the doings of your master, who must indeed be a very child of Satan, if all you say is true." "It is true. Listen now how he knouted Masha, the herdsman's daughter; some lords have respect for the weakness of a woman, but he has none." Kiril was still narrating and still drinking when summoned to put in the horses and start homewards. By this time he was far from sober. On the way home he slept peacefully, the clever little horses knowing the road homewards and keeping faultlessly to the track.