The Cossacks: A Tale of 1852

ad over a third of the sky, and against its brilliancy the dull white immensity of the mountains was sharply defined. The air was rarefied, motionless, and ful

cows and buffaloes disperse at a run all over the streets and Cossack women in coloured beshmets go to and fro among them. You can hear their merry laughter and shrieks mingling with the lowing of the cattle. There an armed and mounted Cossack, on leave from the cordon, rides up to a hut and, leaning towards the window, knocks. In answer to the knock the handsome head of a young woman appears at the window and you can hear caressing, laughing voices. There a tattered Nogay labourer, with prominent cheekbones, brings a load of reeds from the steppes, turns his creaking cart into the Cossack captain's broad and clean courtyard, and lifts the yoke off the oxen that stand tossing their heads while he and his master shout to one another in Tartar. Past a puddle that reaches nearly across the street, a barefooted Cossack woman with a bundle of firewood on her back makes her laborious way by clinging to the fences, ho

et to separate and drive the cattle into their sheds. 'Take off your slippers, you devil's wench!' shouts her mother, 'you've worn them into holes!' Maryanka is not at all offended at being called a 'devil's wench', but accepting it as a term of endearment cheerfully goes on with her task. Her face is covered with a kerchief tied round her head. She is wearing a pink smock and a green beshmet. She disappears inside the lean-to shed in the yard, following the big fat cattle; and from the shed comes her voice as she speaks gently and persuasively to the buffalo: 'Won't she stand still? What a creature! Come now, come old dear!' Soon the girl and the old woman pass from the she

approaches Granny Ulitka from the homestead opposite

cleared up

the fire. Is it fire

being able to obl

lingly lift the lid of a matchbox, which is a rarity in the Caucasus. The masculine-lo

at the school. Mo

her. But he writes that he'll come home f

r man, one sees; i

urse i

s wife had known all this long ago. She wanted to talk about her Lukashka whom she had lately fitted o

at the

me shirts by Fomushkin. He says he's all right, and that his superiors are satisfie

hka was surnamed 'the Snatcher' because of his bravery in snatching a boy from a watery grave, and t

ellow, everyone praises him,' says Lukashka's mother. 'Al

ge?' answered the cornet's wife slyly as she carefully

to find such another!' The cornet's wife knows what Lukashka's mother is after, but though she believes him to be a good Cossack she hangs back: first because she is a cornet's wif

she'll be marriageable too,' s

he vineyard done and then we'll come and make our bows to you,' say

wife proudly. 'It's to me you mus

ime to say anything more just now, so she lights her rag with the match and says,

inging the burning rag, sh

, looking at the beautiful maiden. 'What need for her to grow any mor

remained sitting on the threshold thinking h