“Oh, Lord!” cried the peasant, “surely he is not going to take the honey from me!” He drew out his knife and rushed at the bear; the bear turned round, drew himself up grandly, and came to meet him. The peasant hastily tore off a lot of fine birch twigs, twisted them round his left hand, and took the knife in his right. They met. The bear put out his paw, but the peasant warded him off with the left hand, and with the right plunged the knife up to its handle right into his heart. Then he sprang back sharply, but unluckily he got tangled in a branch, so that the bear was able to catch him, and they met in a hand-to-hand fight. First the bear hugged him and nearly broke his bones; then he hugged the bear. The blood rushed from the wound, and Mishka fell down dead. The peasant rubbed himself a little after the bear’s embrace, and thought: “God is merciful even to peasants! If He had not sent me the bear I should have had to go hunting for a wolf heaven knows how long; but now, perhaps, the shopkeeper won’t mind taking a bear’s skin instead of a wolf’s.” He skinned the bear, took the honey, and went home with his prize. But when the shopkeeper saw the bear-skin he shook his head and said— “A bear-skin instead of a wolf-skin! What will you give into the bargain?” “Why, what can I give?” said the peasant; “my breeches?” “All right.” The peasant took off his breeches and gave them to the shopkeeper; then he received his kopeck and took it to the barine to pay off his debt for last year’s cattle-drinking tax; no doubt it was the barine’s prayers that made the water flow in the river so that the peasant’s cattle could drink. As he went the peasant looked at the kopeck that he held in his hand. It had passed through many hands, and was no longer so rough and rusty as when he had given it to the priest for the kingdom of heaven. It was the same kopeck, but the peasant did not recognise it, and said: “All right. This is a nice kopeck, much cleaner than my old one. I’ll give it to the barine now; it won’t soil his honour’s hands.” So he went up to the manor-house, took off his cap and stood at the gate. But as ill luck would have it the barinya was looking out of the window to see whether a young officer was coming, and when she saw the peasant without breeches she cried out— “Ah! ah! I shall die!” turned up her eyes, fainted away, and dropped on the carpet, only just kicking a little. The servants ran to tell the barine that the barinya was graciously pleased to see a peasant without breeches and is dying. The barine rushed out and stamped his foot at the peasant and shouted at him, but when he heard that the peasant had come to pay the tax he got quiet. He graciously took the kopeck, and just wrote a note and gave it to the peasant. “Here, my man,” he said, “just take this note for me to the _Stanovòy_.”[48]