In the centre of the farmyard rose two pillars with a cross-bar, and from the cross-bar hung, as if it were a holy picture, a large sheet of iron; upon this they rapped when they were alarmed at night. About the farmyard lay thin wolf hounds. A small boy about eight years of age was running around among them, dragging in a small cart his flaxen-haired, chubby-faced younger brother, who wore a large black peaked cap. The little cart was squeaking wildly. The manor-house was grey, heavy-looking, and, assuredly, devilishly dreary in this twilight. “If they would only light up!” Kuzma said to himself. He was deadly weary, and it seemed to him as if he had left the town almost a year ago. Suddenly a sound of roaring and barking became audible, and through the gate of the orchard madly leaped a pair of dogs, a greyhound and a watchdog, dragging each other sidewise, any way as chance decreed, colliding, staring wildly about, and trying to tear each other to pieces, their heads in different directions. After them, shouting something or other, raced the young gentleman. IX Kuzma spent the evening and the night in the garden, in the old bath-house. The superintendent, on arriving from the fields on horseback, had remarked angrily that the garden had been “leased long ago,” and in reply to a request for lodging over-night had expressed insolent amazement. “Well, but you are a sensible fellow!” he had shouted, without either rhyme or reason. “A nice posting-station you’ve picked out! Are there many of your stamp roving about at present?” But he took pity on Kuzma in the end, and gave him permission to go into the bath-house. Kuzma paid off Menshoff and walked past the manor-house to the gate into the linden avenue. Through the unlighted open windows, from beyond the wire fly-screens, thundered a grand piano, drowned by a magnificent baritone-tenor voice, lifted in intricate vocalizations which were completely out of harmony with both the evening and the manor. Along the muddy sand of the sloping avenue, at the end of which, as if at the end of the world, the cloud-flecked sky gleamed dully white, there advanced toward Kuzma a poor-looking peasant, short of stature, with dark reddish hair, his shirt minus a belt; he was capless, wore heavy boots, and was carrying a bucket in his hand. “Oho, ho!” he said, jeeringly, as he listened to the singing while he walked on. “Oho, he’s going it strong, may his belly burst!” “Who is going it strong?” inquired Kuzma. The peasant raised his head and halted. “Why, that young gentleman of ours,” he said, merrily, making havoc with his consonants. “They say he has been doing that these seven years.” “Which one--the one who was chasing the dogs?” “N-no, another one. But that’s not all! Sometimes he takes to screeching, ‘To-day ’tis your turn, to-morrow ’twill be mine’--regular calamity!” “He’s taking lessons, of course?” “Nice lessons they must be!” “And that other one--what does he do?”