Page:More Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/75

Rh "Alas Batyushka! What is to be done? There's not a man in sight!"

"What is it? what is it?" I ask, running out into the sun to the maid-servant who ran past me crying and wailing. She only looked round at me, waved her hands and ran on further. And now there appears old Martha, who is seventy years of age, holding a handkerchief in her hand which she had torn from her head, bounding along and dragging one leg after her in a woollen stocking and hastening to the pond. Two little girls were also running, holding each other by the hand, and a boy of ten, in his father's surtout, holding on to the skirt of one of them, hastened on behind.

"What's the matter?" I asked them.

"A muzhik has been drowned."

"Where?"

"In the pond."

"One of our people, eh?"

"No, a vagabond."

Ivan, the coachman, shuffling with his big slippers over the mown grass, and the fat messenger Yakov, breathing with difficulty, were also running to the pool, and I ran after them.

I remember the feeling within me, which said to me: "Go ahead! throw yourself into the pond and drag out the muzhik; save him and they'll all admire you so," which was what I desired above all.

"Where is he? where is he? "I inquired of the crowd of house-servants collected round the shores of the pond.

"There he is, right at the bottom, over yonder, near