Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/154

142

with his bow and arrows went out to hunt; he killed a goat, flung it over his shoulders, and was carrying it home.

On the way he saw a wild boar.

The Huntsman dropped the goat, shot the boar, and wounded him.

The boar rushed upon the Huntsman, gored him to death with his tusks, and then himself died.

A Wolf smelled the blood, and came to the place where were lying the goat, the boar, the man and his bow.

The Wolf was overjoyed, and said to himself, "Now I shall have enough to eat for a long time; but I am not going to eat it all up at once; I will eat a little at a time, so that none of it may be wasted. First I will eat the hardest part, and then I will feast on the softest and daintiest."

The Wolf sniffed the goat, the boar, and the man, and he said:—

"This food is soft, I will eat this afterward; but first of all I will eat the tendon on this bow."

And he began to gnaw at the tendon on the bow. When he had bitten through the bowstring, the bow sprang and hit the Wolf in the belly. And the Wolf also perished, and the other wolves came and ate up the man, and the goat, and the boar, and the Wolf.

set a snare by a lake. Many birds were caught in it. The birds were large; they seized the snare, and flew off with it.

The Huntsman began to run after the birds. A peasant saw him running after them, and he said:—