Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 01.djvu/56



, the Chief Hunter, rode ahead of us, on a gray, hook-nosed horse. He wore a shaggy cap, and had a huge horn on his shoulders and a hunting-knife in his belt. From the gloomy and ferocious exterior of that man one would have concluded that he was going to a mortal conflict rather than to a hunt. At the hind feet of his horse ran, in a motley, wavering mass, the hounds, in close pack. It was a pity to see what fate befell the unfortunate hound that took it into his head to drop behind. In order to do so, he had to pull his companion with all his might, and whenever he accomplished it, one of the dog-keepers who rode behind struck him with his hunting-whip, calling out, "Back to the pack!" When he rode out of the gate, papa ordered the hunters and us to ride on the road, but he himself turned into the rye-field.

The harvesting was in full blast. The immeasurable, bright yellow field was closed in only on one side by a tall, bluish forest which then appeared to me as a most distant and mysterious place, beyond which either the world came to an end, or uninhabitable countries began. The whole field was filled with sheaves and men. Here and there, in the high, thick rye, could be seen, in a reaped swath, the bent form of a reaping woman, the swinging of the ears as she drew them through her