Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/69

Rh, with very terrible moustaches, who sat on the box, gave him a decidedly sharp cut with his whip. The young student boiled with rage; with reckless daring, he seized a hind-wheel with his powerful hand, and brought the carriage to a halt. But the coachman, fearing a reckoning, lashed his horses; they leaped forward, and Andríi although, fortunately, he succeeded in freeing his hand, was flung full-length on the ground, with his face flat in the mud. The most resonant and melodious of laughs rang out from overhead. He raised his eyes and saw, standing at a window, a beauty such as he had never beheld before in all his life, black-eyed and white as the snow illumined by the dawning flush of the sun. She was laughing heartily, and her laughter lent sparkling force to her dazzling loveliness. He was taken aback; he gazed at her in utter confusion, abstractedly wiping the mud from his face, by which means it became still further smeared. Who could this beauty be? He tried to find out from the servants who, in rich liveries, stood beside the gate in a crowd, surrounding a young bandura player; but the servants raised a laugh when they saw his besmeared face, and deigned him no reply. At last he learned that she was the daughter of the Voevod of Kovno, who had come hither for a time. The following night, with the daring characteristic of the student alone,