Hania

"Good-evening," began Zolzik.

"Good-evening, lord secretary!" answered the woman, not ceasing to work.

"Is yours at home?"

"He is at work in the woods."

"But that is too bad; I have an affair with him from the commune."

An affair with the commune for common people always means something evil. The woman stopped working, looked with alarm at the secretary, and inquired with concern, —

"Well, what is it?"

Zolzik meanwhile passed through the gateway and stood near her.

"Let us have a kiss, then I'll tell you."

"Keep away!" said the woman.

But the secretary had succeeded already in putting his arm around her waist, and drawing her toward him.

"I will scream!" said she, pulling away vigorously.

"My pretty one, – Marysia!"

"Oh, this is just an offence against God! Oh!"

She struggled still more vigorously; but Pan Zolzik was so strong that he did not let her go.

At this moment Kruchek came to her aid. He raised the hair on his back, and with furious barking sprang at the secretary; and, since the secretary was dressed in a short coat, Kruchek seized his nankeen trousers, went through the nankeen, caught the skin, went through the skin, and when he felt fulness in his mouth, he began to shake his head madly and tug.

"Jesus! Mary!" cried the lord secretary, forgetting that he belonged to the esprits forts.

But Kruchek did not let go his hold till the secretary seized a billet of wood and pounded him uncounted times on the back with it; when Kruchek got a blow on his spine, he sprang away whining piteously. But after a while he jumped at the man again.

"Take off this dog! take off this devil!" cried the secretary, brandishing the stick with desperation.

The woman cried to the dog, and sent him outside the gate. Then she and the secretary gazed at each other in silence.

"Oh, my misfortune! Why did you look at me?" asked Marysia, at length, frightened by the bloody turn of the affair.

"Vengeance on you!" shouted the secretary. "Vengeance on you! Wait! Repa will be a soldier. I wanted to save him. But now – you will come yourself to me! Vengeance on you!"

The poor woman grew as pale as if some one had struck her on the head with a hatchet; she spread out her hands, opened her mouth, as if she wanted to say something; but meanwhile the secretary raised his cap with green binding from the ground, and went away quickly, brandishing the stick in one hand, and holding his badly torn trousers with the other.

CHAPTER II

SOME OTHER PERSONS AND DISAGREEABLE VISIONS

AN hour later, perhaps, Repa came home from the woods with the carpenter Lukash, on the landlord's wagon. Repa was a burly fellow, as tall as a poplar, strong, just hewn out with an axe. He went to the woods every day, for the landlord had sold to Jews all the forest which was free of peasant privileges. Repa received good wages, for he was a good man to work. When he spat on his palm, seized the axe, gave a blow with a grunt and struck, the pine-tree groaned, and chips flew from it half an ell long. In loading timber onto wagons he was also the first man.

The Jews, who went through the woods with measures in their hands and looked at the tops of the pines, as if hunting for crows' nests, were amazed at his strength. Droysla, a rich merchant from Oslovitsi, said to him, —

"Well, Repa! devil take thee! Here are six groshes for vodka. No! here, wait; here are five groshes for vodka!"

But Repa did not care, – he just wielded his axe till the woods thundered; sometimes for amusement he let his voice out through the forest, —

"Hop! Hop!"

His voice flew among the trees, and came back as an echo. And again, nothing was heard but the thunder of Repa's axe; and sometimes the pines too began to talk among their branches with a sound as is usual in a forest.

At times, also, the wood-cutters sang; and at singing, Repa too was the first man. One should have heard how he thundered forth with the wood-cutters a song which he had taught them himself, —

"Something shouted in the woods,
B-u-u-u-u!
And struck terribly,
B-u-u-u-u!
That's a mosquito that fell from the oak,
B-u-u-u-u!
And he broke a bone in his shoulder,
B-u-u-u-u!
That was an honest mosquito,
B-u-u-u-u!
He is flying barely alive,
B-u-u-u-u!
And they asked the mosquito,
B-u-u-u-u!
Oi, is a doctor not needed?
B-u-u-u!
Or any druggist?
B-u-u-u!
Only a spade and a pickaxe,
B-u-u-u-u!"

In the dramshop, too, Repa was first in everything: he loved sivuha; and he was quick at fighting when he had drunk anything. Once he made such a hole in the head of the house-servant, Damaz, that Yozvova, the housekeeper, swore that his soul could be seen through it. Another time, but that was when he was barely seventeen years of age, he fought in the dramshop with soldiers on furlough. Pan Skorabevski, who was mayor at the time, took him to the chancery, and gave him a couple of blows on the head; but for appearance' sake only, then, being satisfied, he inquired, —

"Repa, have the fear of God! How didst thou manage them? There were seven against thee."

"Well, serene heir," answered Repa, "their legs were worn out with marching, and the moment I touched one he fell to the floor."

Pan Skorabevski quashed the affair. For a long time he had been very friendly to Repa. The peasant women even whispered into one another's ears that Repa was his son.

"That can be seen at once," said they; "he has the courage of a noble, the dog blood!"

But this was not true; though everybody knew Repa's mother, no one knew his father. Repa himself paid rent for a cottage and three morgs of land, which became his own afterward. He cultivated his land; and, being a good worker, his affairs went on well. He married, and met such a wife that a better could not be found with a candle; and surely he would have been prosperous, had it not been that he liked vodka a little too well.

But what could be done? If any one mentioned the matter, he answered right off, —

"I drink from my own money, and what's that to you?"