The return home was more comfortable. The blizzard was even more terrible in the twilight, but they were cheered by the consciousness that a burden had been removed from their shoulders: whether for good or for evil, the deed had been done. So they whipped up their horses smartly, dashing ahead at random, trusting solely to the ill-defined forms of the small trees which marked out the road. And the loud-mouthed wife of Vanka Krasny stood upright in the leading sledge and danced, flourishing her handkerchief and screeching to the gale, through the dark, raging turmoil, through the snow which whipped against her lips and drowned her wolf’s voice: “The dove, the grey dove, Has a head of gold.” _Moscow, 1909._ FOOTNOTES: [1] A verst is two-thirds of a mile.--TRANS. [2] This muddling of “Emir of Bukhara” is only one example of the ignorant combinations and locutions used by the peasant characters.--TRANS. [3] A play on words, “tar” in the second sentence meaning “liquor.”--TRANS. [4] “Matushka” and “batiushka” (literally, “Little Mother” and “Little Father”) are the characteristic Russian formula for addressing elderly strangers, regardless of class distinctions.--TRANS. [5] A desyatina is a unit of land measurement equalling 2.07 acres.--TRANS. [6] When a man or woman begins to get on in the world his admiring neighbours signalize their appreciation by adding to the Christian name the patronymic, as if the clever one were of gentle (noble) birth. In this story, Tikhon soon receives the public acknowledgment of success, having begun as plain “Tikhon.” Peasant-fashion, “Nikititch” was transmuted into “Mikititch.”--TRANS. [7] Sharpers who pretend to be the poverty-stricken descendants of the Tatar Princes who ruled Kazan before it was conquered, during the rein of Ivan the Terrible.--TRANS. [8] A straight, loose gown, falling from the armpits, worn by unmarried girls.--TRANS. [9] A heretic. Literally, one who drinks milk (moloko) during the Fasts in defiance to the Orthodox Catholic Church.--TRANS. [10] Probably a deliberate bit of insolence, as he must have known that the patronymic was “Ilitch,” not “Fomitch.”--TRANS. [11] All priests and monks in the Orthodox Catholic Church wear the hair and beard long. Tikhon Ilitch refers to the superstition that it portends bad luck to meet an ecclesiastic when one is arranging something or going somewhere.--TRANS. [12] Polu, meaning “half,” reduces the name to absurdity: something like “the Half-carp.”--TRANS. [13] Referring to a famous Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow.--TRANS. [14] The insulting nickname “khokhly” is used. The question mentioned is in the form of a rhyme, intentionally offensive. The reply is also rhymed.--TRANS. [15] That is, to the heart of the Kremlin, in Moscow.--TRANS.