stand by my intention, I would have liked to return at once to the manor .... but glanced at my watch; it was not yet six o'clock. I decided to wait a while. Every one was still asleep at the farm, in all probability ... and to prowl about the house at such an hour would only serve to arouse unnecessary suspicion; and besides, in front of me stretched bushes, and beyond them an aspen wood was visible... I must do myself the justice to say, that, notwithstanding the thoughts which were exciting me, the noble passion for the hunt had not yet grown wholly mute within me; "perchance," I thought,--"I shall hit upon a covey,--and that will serve to pass away the time." I entered the bushes. But, truth to tell, I walked in a very careless way, quite out of consonance with the rules of the art: I did not follow my dog constantly with my eyes, I did not snort over a thick bush, in the hope that a red-browed black snipe would fly thence with a whirr and a crash, but kept incessantly looking at my watch, which never serves any purpose whatsoever. And, at last, it was going on nine.--"'T is time!" I exclaimed aloud, and was on the point of turning back to the manor, when suddenly a huge black woodcock actually did begin to flutter out of the thick grass a couple of paces from me. I fired at the magnificent bird, and wounded it under the wing; it almost fell to the ground, but recovered itself, started off, fluttering its wings swiftly and, diving toward the wood, tried to soar above the first aspens on the edge, but its strength failed, and it rolled headlong into the thicket. It would have been utterly unpardonable to abandon such a prize. I strode briskly after it, entered the forest, made a sign to Dianka, and a few moments later I heard a feeble clucking and flapping; it was the unlucky woodcock, struggling under the paws of my quick-scented hound. I picked it up, put it in my game-bag, glanced round, and--remained rooted to the spot, as it were....