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‘Why did they all give in to him?’

‘Why! well, it is so….’

‘He has frightened you all, and now he does as he likes with you.’

‘Frightened, yes…. He’d frighten any one. And he’s a wonderful hand at contrivances, my goodness, yes! I once came upon him in the forest; there was a heavy rain falling; I was for edging away…. But he looked at me, and beckoned to me with his hand like this. “Come along,” says he, “Kondrat, don’t be afraid. Let me show you how to live in the forest, and to keep dry in the rain.” I went up to him, and he was sitting under a fir-tree, and he’d made a fire of damp twigs: the smoke hung about in the fir-tree, and kept the rain from dripping through. I was astonished at him then. And I’ll tell you what he contrived one time’ (and Kondrat laughed); ‘he really did do a funny thing. They’d been thrashing the oats at the thrashing-floor, and they hadn’t finished; they hadn’t time to rake up the last heap; well, they ‘d set two watch-men by it for the night, and they weren’t the boldest-hearted of the chaps either. Well, they were sitting and gossiping, and Efrem takes and stuffs his shirt-sleeves full of straw, ties up the wrist-bands, and puts the shirt up over his head. And so he steals up in that shape to the thrashing-floor, and just pops out from behind the corner and gives them a peep of his horns. One chap says to the other: “Do you see?” “Yes,” says the other, and didn’t he give a screech all of a sudden … and then the fences creaked and nothing more was seen of them. Efrem shovelled up the oats into a bag and dragged it off home. He told the story himself afterwards. He put them to shame, he did, the chaps…. He did really!’

Kondrat laughed again. And Yegor smiled. ‘So the fences creaked and that was all?’ he commented. ‘There was nothing more seen of them,’ Kondrat assented. ‘They were simply gone in a flash.’

We were all silent again. Suddenly Kondrat started and sat up.

‘Eh, mercy upon us!’ he ejaculated; ‘surely it’s never a fire!’

‘Where, where?’ we asked.

‘Yonder, see, in front, where we ‘re going…. A fire it is! Efrem there, Efrem–why, he foretold it! If it’s not his doing, the damned fellow!…’

I glanced in the direction Kondrat was pointing. Two or three miles ahead of us, behind a green strip of low fir saplings, there really was a thick column of dark blue smoke slowly rising from the ground, gradually twisting and coiling into a cap-shaped cloud; to the right and left of it could be seen others, smaller and whiter.

A peasant, all red and perspiring, in nothing but his shirt, with his hair hanging dishevelled about his scared face, galloped straight towards us, and with difficulty stopped his hastily bridled horse.

‘Mates,’ he inquired breathlessly, ‘haven’t you seen the foresters?’

‘No, we haven’t. What is it? is the forest on fire?’

‘Yes. We must get the people together, or else if it gets to Trosnoe …’

The peasant tugged with his elbows, pounded with his heels on the horse’s sides…. It galloped off.

Kondrat, too, whipped up his pair. We drove straight towards the smoke, which was spreading more and more widely; in places it suddenly grew black and rose up high. The nearer we moved to it, the more indefinite became its outlines; soon all the air was clouded over, there was a strong smell of burning, and here and there between the trees, with a strange, weird quivering in the sunshine, gleamed the first pale red tongues of flame.

‘Well, thank God,’ observed Kondrat, ‘it seems it’s an overground fire.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Overground? One that runs along over the earth. With an underground fire, now, it’s a difficult job to deal. What’s one to do, when the earth’s on fire for a whole yard’s depth? There’s only one means of safety–digging ditches,–and do you suppose that’s easy? But an overground fire’s nothing. It only scorches the grasses and burns the dry leaves! The forest will be all the better for it. Ouf, though, mercy on us, look how it flares!’