"Well, that's how it is, you see--the Tuchkov Squires used to be something here, and now there are none left.... Some of them died, and some of them came to grief, and now never a word do you hear of them--never a word. There was one in particular who used to be here ... the youngest of the lot ... they called him Victor ... Vick.... He and I were comrades. In the days when the emancipation was promulgated, he and I were lads fourteen years old.... Ah, what a fine young chap he was--the Lord be good to his dear little soul! A pure stream, if ever there was one!--flashing along and gurgling merrily all day long. I wonder where he is now? Alive or already no more?" "Was he such a frightfully good fellow as all that?" inquired Efimushka's fellow-traveller quietly. "That he was!" exclaimed Efimushka, "handsome, with a head of his own, and such a good heart! Ah, thou pilgrim man, good heart alive, he _was_ a ripe berry if you like! If only you--could have seen the pair of us in those days! Aye, aye, aye! What games we did play! What a merry life was ours!--raspberries la la[1]!--'Efimka!' he would cry, 'let us go a hunting!' He had a gun of his own--his father gave it to him on his name-day--and he let me carry it for him. And off we went to the woods for a whole day, nay, for two, for three days! When we came home--he had an imposition, and I had a whacking. Yet look you! the next day he would say: 'Efimka! shall we go after mushrooms?' Thousands of birds we killed together. And as for mushrooms--we gathered poods[2] of them! And the butterflies and cockchafers he caught, and stuck them on pins in little boxes! And he taught me my lessons too! 'Efimka,' said he, 'I'll teach you.' And he went at it hammer and tongs. 'Come, begin,' says he; 'say A,' and I roared 'A-a-a!' How we laughed. At first I looked upon it as a joke. What does a boor want with reading and writing? But he persuaded me. 'Come, you little fool,' says he, 'the emancipation was given to you that you might learn. You _must_ learn your letters in order to know how to live and where to seek for justice.' Of course, children heard their parents speak like that in those days, and began to talk the same way themselves.--It was all nonsense, of course--true learning is in the heart, and it is the heart that teaches the right way. So he taught me, you see! How he made me stick to it! He gave me no rest, I can tell you. What torments! 'Vick,' I said, 'I can't learn my letters. It's not in me. I really can't do it.' Oh, how he pitched into me. Sometimes he lambed it into me with a whip--but teach me he would! 'Oh, be merciful,' I'd cry! 'Learn, then,' he would say! Once I ran away from him, regularly bolted, and there was a to do. He searched for me all day with a gun--he would have shot me. He said to me afterwards: 'If I had met you that day,' said he, 'I should have shot you;' that's what he said! Ah, he was so fierce! Fiery, unbending, a genuine master. He loved me, and