One of these cases is "Yermolai and the Miller's Wife," a sketch which for the calm breadth of vision in its exposure of serfdom is flawless. In "Yermolai" note how Turgenev by a series of discreet intermittent touches brings his people on the scene, and how the tranquil description of the winding river, the Ista, with its stony banks and cold clear streams and rugged precipitous banks, prepares us for the story of poor Arina's sorrows and of the self-complacent master's tyranny. Because Madame Zvyerkoff makes it a rule never to keep married lady's maids, poor Arina is disgraced, her lover sent away as a soldier, and she herself is married to the miller, who has offered a price for her. This distressing episode, though the central theme, is introduced subtly by a side wind after we have accompanied the narrator and the tall gaunt huntsman, Yermolai, to the Ista's banks, where the two sportsmen are benighted and seek sleep in the outhouse of a mill. The bull-necked, fat-bellied miller sends out his wife with a message to them, and this woman with her refined, mournful eyes is none other than the unfortunate Arina, with whom Yermolai is on old, familiar terms. The sportsman-narrator, who has been dozing in the hay, wakes and soon gathers from the snatches of talk between the pair the details of Arina's listless melancholy days after her child's death. Her bitter situation is flashed upon us in Yermolai's suggestion that she shall pay a visit to him in his hut when his own wife is away from home! She changes the subject and soon walks away, and Yermolai's peasant callousness is indicated in his yawning answer to his master's questions. Then this story of a woman's sorrow is brought to a close by one of those exquisite nature touches which brings us back again to the infinite life of the encompassing earth and sky: "'And do you know her lover, Petrushka?' "'Piotr Vassilyevitch? Of course I know him.' "'Where is he now?' "'He was sent for a soldier.' "We were silent for a while. "'She doesn't seem very well?' I asked Yermolai at last. "'I should think not! To-morrow, I say, we shall have good sport. A little sleep now would do us no harm.' "A flock of wild ducks swept whizzing over our heads, and we heard them drop down into the river not far from us. It was quite dark, and it began to be cold; in the thicket sounded the melodious notes of a nightingale. We buried ourselves in the hay and fell asleep!"