Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/196

Tales from Tolstoi They listened not to the old man. It fell in the seventh year after this, that Ivan's daughter-in-law at a marriage feast rounded upon Gabriel in the presence of many people, and said he had gone off with other people's horses. Gabriel was drunk, he did not control his feelings; he struck the woman, and injured her so that she was in bed for a week. … Ivan was glad. He went and laid a complaint with the magistrate. "Now," thought he, "I shall be quit of my neighbour. He cannot avoid Siberia now."

And again Ivan's affair did not go as far as he wished it. The magistrate would not listen to his complaint. They came to see the woman; the woman got up, and there were no marks upon her. Ivan went to the local mir-court, and the mir-court transferred the matter to the district court. Ivan laboured hard at the district court, and plied the bailiff and clerk with half a bucket of sweet drink, and managed at last to get Gabriel condemned to a flogging on the back. They read the sentence to Gabriel in court.

The clerk read: "It is the sentence of the court that Gorde's serf Gabriel be punished by twenty strokes with the birch in the presence of the district court."

Ivan also heard the judgment and looked at Gabriel—what will he do next? On hearing it Gabriel went as white as a sheet, turned round and went out into the forecourt. Ivan went out after him: he was going to his horses, when he heard something—Gabriel was speaking.

"Good!" he was saying, "he will get my back warmed for me! It will sting me no doubt; let him 146