mowing day at Spask there is no question of returning to the village during working hours; for once in a way Ivan Ivanich sticks to business, and meals, as well as any little refreshers of a liquid nature, are partaken of upon the spot; hunks of black bread tied up in red handkerchiefs, salted herrings in grimy bits of newspaper, and _kvass_, in dirty-looking bottles, forming the principal items of the food and drink brought by the moujiks to be consumed upon the ground. _Kvass_ is a drink to which I should recommend every reader to give a very wide berth, for it is without exception the nastiest decoction that ever the perverted ingenuity of mankind invented, and is calculated to nauseate the toughest British palate to such an extent that the said Britisher will flee the country rather than taste the noxious stuff a second time. On this occasion there was quite an array of red handkerchiefs left at the edge of the field, together with sundry loose hunks of black bread and other comestibles, and half-a-dozen tiny children of a non-perambulating age, which latter had been brought to the field by their mothers for the excellent reason that there was no one left in the village to look after them, and were now peacefully sleeping, like so many little bundles of rags, each under the tree selected by its parent for the office of shade-giver. Assuredly not one of the red-shirted souls so busily wielding their scythes, or of the gaily-kerchiefed women tossing and drying the grass, ever bethought herself of the possibility of danger to the little ones thus left a hundred or so of yards away: for who would hurt them? There were no gipsies to carry them away, or brigands--they had never heard of such gentry; it was perfectly safe, and nobody bothered his head about the babies. Therefore it came as a terrible shock to every person present when of a sudden some one raised the cry: "Medvyed, medvyed!" (a bear, a bear!) There was no mistake about it, it was indeed a bear, and a big one, too--"the tsar of the bears," as a moujik expressed it afterwards. The brute was apparently busy searching among the red handkerchiefs for something to eat, when first seen; but at the general shout or howl of fear and surprise which immediately arose from the whole body of peasants in the field, he raised his nose and deliberately scanned the assembled villagers, showing his teeth and growling unpleasantly. The villagers were too frightened, at first, to either move or utter a sound. The spectacle of a bear in their midst was too unusual in that portion of Russia in which Spask lay to be other than intensely horrifying. Spask did not even boast of an _ochotnik_, or hunter, among its inhabitants; the population, one and all, were as ignorant of the best course to pursue under the circumstances as though the foul fiend himself had suddenly appeared among them, and their tongues, as well as their arms, were absolutely paralysed with amazement and terror.