"Very well; but don't blame me if anything happens!" said Radion; and blowing a mighty blast upon his strident instrument, he accompanied his cows down the road. Presently the whole party branched off to the left across the ditch--the cows jumping it, most of them, in the inimitable manner of their tribe--struck across a patch of sandy common, reached a stretch of green pasture-land beyond, distributed themselves over this natural banqueting-hall in picturesque blotches of whites and reds and blacks, and so gradually passed out of sight and went their happy way until the evening. The villagers meanwhile would see no more of them, but left them in perfect confidence to the care of the pastuch, who received, or was to receive, the sum of four roubles per month for thus taking the cows "off their minds." Radion performed his work with perfect success, and brought his herd home safely, in spite of the danger to be apprehended from _liéshuie_ and their chosen agents for destruction, the wolves and bears. Days passed, and still all went well. Radion's playing of the blatant cowhorn was all that he had described it, and his success as pastuch was complete. He occasionally brought back with him a hare which he had managed, somehow, to capture; or a greyhen, whom he had discovered upon her nest with nine little cheeping blackcock beneath her. Radion had none of the chivalry of the sportsman, and thought nothing of taking the "matka," or mother-bird, from her helpless fledglings, leaving them to starvation, or to the foxes and the grey-hooded crows. The game thus acquired he would distribute as gifts to those of the wives of the moujiks who had the most cows, for Radion's aim in life, as is the aim and object of every true Russian peasant, was "_na chaiok_," or tea money, so called because tea would be the very last thing upon which any moujik would think of laying out a gratuity. Radion hoped, then, for substantial _na chaioks_ at the end of the season from those whose large property in cattle he had safeguarded successfully. But one fine evening, while the summer was yet young and Radion still more or less of a novelty in the village, a terrible thing happened, of a sort to make those in the community who had laughed at the superstitious pastuch and his fears of the wood-goblins to look grave, and ask themselves whether there was not, after all, more in this question of old-time superstitions than appeared at first sight. True, the villagers had never hitherto had any reason to fear the _liéshuie_, or indeed to regard them as anything more than mere story-book beings, having no existence save in the pages of nursery literature and in the brains of loafers like Radion; but now....