Page:Short Story Classics (Foreign, Volume 1, Russian, Collier, 1907).djvu/187

Rh "Well, where are you going now?"

"I can not say, your honor."

"How is that, you fool, you can not say?"

"Just so, your honor, because I have nowhere to go to. I must look for some kind of employment, your honor."

And the station-master looked at him for a moment and fell to thinking, then he said to him: "Well, brother, stay here on the station in the mean time. But it seems to me that you are a married man? Where is your wife?"

"Yes, sir, I am married; my wife is serving at the house of a merchant at Kursk."

"Well, then, write to your wife to come here. I shall get a free ticket for her. We will soon have a vacant watch-house here, and I will ask the division-master to give you the place."

"Many thanks, your honor," replied Semen.

And so he remained on the station, helping in the station-master's kitchen, cutting wood, sweeping the courtyard and the railway platform. In two weeks his wife arrived, and Semen went on a hand-car to his new home.

The watch-house was new and warm, wood he had in plenty, the former watchman left a small garden, and there was a little less than one and a half acres of arable land on the two sides of the railroad-bed. Semen was overjoyed: he began to dream of a little homestead of his own, and of buying a horse and a cow.

He was given all the necessary supplies: a green