Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 02.djvu/215



the following day Olénin went without the old man to the place where they had scared up the stag. Instead of going through the gate, he climbed over a hedge of brambles, just as everybody else in the village would do. He had not yet got all the thorns out of his mantle, when his dog, which had run ahead, startled two pheasants. The moment he entered into the buckthorn thicket, pheasants flew up at every step. (The old man had not shown him this place the day before, intending to hunt there with snares.) Olénin killed five pheasants out of twelve shots, and, crawling for them under the thorn bushes, grew so fatigued that the perspiration trickled down his face in streams. He called back his dog, uncocked his gun, put the bullets on the shot, and, warding off the gnats with the sleeves of his mantle, slowly walked toward the place where he had been the day before. It was, however, impossible to keep back the dog, which ran upon trails on the path, and he killed two more pheasants; he lost his time with them, and did not come to the familiar spot before midday.

It was a very clear, quiet, warm day. The morning dampness was dried up even in the forest, and millions of gnats literally covered his face, back, and hands. The black dog looked gray under a covering of gnats. The mantle, through which the gnats thrust their stings, looked just as gray. Olénin wanted to run away from the pests; he even thought that it would be impossible to pass a summer in the village. He started homewards; but considering