Page:The Kiss and Other Stories by Anton Tchekhoff, 1908.pdf/129

 "You had an eclipse, or not?" cried the shepherd from behind the bushes.

"Yes," cried Meliton.

"You had? Everywhere the people complain of it. That means, brother, there's disorder in heaven too. An eclipse isn't sent for nothing. Gei, gei, gei!"

Having got his flock together, the shepherd leaned against a birch-tree, and, looking at the sky, drew the reed idly from his bosom and began to play. He played mechanically as before, keeping to half a dozen notes, as if he handled the reed for the first time; and the notes came forth irresolutely, without order, with no melody imaginable; so that Meliton, deep in thought on the world's coming destruction, found the music painful and unpleasant and wished it would cease. The high, piping notes, which trembled and died away, seemed to weep disconsolately, as if the reed itself were pained and frightened; and the lower notes seemed to speak of the mist, the grey heavens, the melancholy trees. The music, in truth, seemed made for the weather, the old man, and his words.

Meliton felt impelled to complain. He went up to the shepherd, looked at his sad, ironical face and at the reed, and muttered—

"And life has grown worse, grandfather! There's no living nowadays. Famines and poverty  murrain, sickness! We are crushed by need."

The steward's puffy face turned purple, and his