I have a neighbour, a young landowner and a young sportsman. One fine July morning I rode over to him with a proposition that we should go out grouse-shooting together. He agreed. 'Only let's go,' he said, 'to my underwoods at Zusha; I can seize the opportunity to have a look at Tchapligino; you know my oakwood; they're felling timber there.' 'By all means.' He ordered his horse to be saddled, put on a green coat with bronze buttons, stamped with a boar's head, a game-bag in crewels, and a silver , a new-fangled French gun over his shoulder, turned himself about with some satisfaction before the looking-glass, and called his dog, Hope, a gift from his cousin, an old maid with an excellent heart, but no hair on her head. We started. My neighbour took with him the village , Arhip, a , peasant with a square face and of proportions, and an overseer he had recently hired from the Baltic provinces, a youth of nineteen, thin, flaxen-haired, and short-sighted, with sloping shoulders and a long neck, Herr Gottlieb von der Kock. My neighbour had himself only recently come into the property. It had come to him by inheritance from an aunt, the widow of a councillor of state, Madame Kardon-Kataev, an excessively stout woman, who did nothing but lie in her bed, sighing and . We reached the underwoods. 'You wait for me here at the clearing,' said Ardalion Mihalitch (my neighbour) addressing his companions. The German bowed, got off his horse, pulled a book out of his pocket--a novel of Johanna Schopenhauer's, I fancy--and sat down under a bush; Arhip remained in the sun without stirring a muscle for an hour. We beat about among the bushes, but did not come on a single covey. Ardalion Mihalitch announced his intention of going on to the wood. I myself had no faith, somehow, in our luck that day; I, too, sauntered after him. We got back to the clearing. The German the page, got up, put the book in his pocket, and with some difficulty mounted his bob-tailed, broken-winded , who neighed and kicked at the slightest touch; Arhip shook himself, gave a at both at once, swung his legs, and at last succeeded in starting his and dejected . We set off.  
I had been familiar with Ardalion Mihalitch's wood from my childhood. I had often strolled in Tchapligino with my French tutor, Monsieur Désiré Fleury, the kindest of men (who had, however, almost ruined my constitution for life by dosing me with Leroux's mixture every evening). The whole wood consisted of some two or three hundred immense oaks and ash-trees. Their stately, powerful trunks were magnificently black against the golden green of the nut bushes and mountain-ashes; higher up, their wide knotted branches stood out in lines against the clear blue sky, unfolding into a tent overhead; , honey-buzzards and kestrels flew whizzing under the motionless tree-tops; wood-peckers tapped loudly on the stout bark; the blackbird's bell-like trill was heard suddenly in the thick , following on the ever-changing note of the gold-hammer; in the bushes below was the and twitter of hedge-warblers, siskins, and peewits; finches ran swiftly along the paths; a hare would steal along the edge of the wood, halting cautiously as he ran; a squirrel would sporting from tree to tree, then suddenly sit still, with its tail over its head. In the grass among the high ant-hills under the delicate shade of the lovely, feathery, deep-indented bracken, were violets and lilies of the valley, and funguses, russet, yellow, brown, red and ; in the patches of grass among the spreading bushes red strawberries were to be found.... And oh, the shade in the wood! In the most heat, at mid-day, it was like night in the wood: such peace, such , such freshness.... I had spent happy times in Tchapligino, and so, I must own, it was with feelings I entered the wood I knew so well. The ruinous, snowless winter of 1840 had not spared my old friends, the oaks and the ashes; , naked, covered here and there with sickly foliage, they struggled mournfully up above the young growth which 'took their place, but could never replace them.' [Footnote: In 1840 there were severe frosts, and no snow fell up to the very end of December; all the wintercorn was frozen, and many splendid oak-forests were destroyed by that merciless winter. It will be hard to replace them; the productive force of the land is diminishing; in the '' wastelands (visited by processions with holy images, and so not to be touched), instead of the noble trees of former days, birches and aspens grow of themselves; and, indeed, they have no idea among us of planting woods at all.--Author's Note.]
 
Some trees, still covered with leaves below, fling their lifeless, ruined branches , as it were, in reproach and despair; in others, stout, dead, dry branches are thrust out of the midst of foliage still thick, though with none of the luxuriant abundance of old; others have fallen altogether, and lie rotting like on the ground. And--who could have dreamed of this in former days?--there was no shade--no shade to be found anywhere in Tchapligino! 'Ah,' I thought, looking at the dying trees: 'isn't it and bitter for you?'... Koltsov's lines to me:
 
'What has become
Of the voices,
The strength,
The royal pomp?
Where now is the
Wealth of green?...
 
 
'How is it, Ardalion Mihalitch,' I began, 'that they didn't fell these trees the very next year? You see they won't give for them now a tenth of what they would have done before.'
 
He merely his shoulders.
 
'You should have asked my aunt that; the timber merchants came, offered money down, pressed the matter, in fact.'
 
'Mein Gott! mein Gott!' Von der Kock cried at every step. ' a bity, vat a bity!'
 
'What's a bity!' observed my neighbour with a smile.
 
'That is; how bitiful, I meant to say.'
 
What particularly aroused his regrets were the oaks lying on the ground--and, indeed, many a would have given a good sum for them. But the constable Arhip preserved an unruffled composure, and did not indulge in any lamentations; on the contrary, he seemed even to jump over them and crack his whip on them with a certain satisfaction.
 
We were getting near the place where they were cutting down the trees, when suddenly a shout and hurried talk was heard, following on the crash of a falling tree, and a few instants after a young peasant, pale and dishevelled, dashed out of the towards us.
 
'What is it? where are you running?' Ardalion Mihalitch asked him.
 
He stopped at once.
 
'Ah, Ardalion Mihalitch, sir, an accident!'
 
'What is it?'
 
'Maksim, sir, crushed by a tree.'
 
'How did it happen?... Maksim the foreman?'
 
'The foreman, sir. We'd started cutting an ash-tree, and he was looking on.... He stood there a bit, and then off he went to the well for some water--wanted a drink, seemingly--when suddenly the ash-tree began creaking and coming straight towards him. We shout to him: 'Run, run, run!'.... He should have rushed to one side, but he up and ran straight before him.... He was scared, to be sure. The ash-tree covered him with its top branches. But why it fell so soon, the Lord only knows!... Perhaps it was rotten at the core.'
 
'And so it crushed Maksim?'
 
'Yes, sir.'
 
'To death?'
 
'No, sir, he's still alive--but as good as dead; his arms and legs are crushed. I was running for Seliverstitch, for the doctor.'
 
Ardalion Mihalitch told the constable to to the village for Seliverstitch, while he himself pushed on at a quick to the clearing.... I followed him.
 
We found poor Maksim on the ground. The peasants were standing about him. We got off our horses. He hardly moaned at all; from time to time he opened his eyes wide, looked round, as it were, in , and bit his lips, fast turning blue.... The lower part of his face was ; his hair was matted on his brow; his breast heaved irregularly: he was dying. The light shade of a young lime-tree softly over his face.
 
We down to him. He recognised Ardalion Mihalitch.
 
'Please sir,' he said to him, hardly articulately, 'send... for the priest... tell... the Lord... has punished me... arms, legs, all smashed... to-day's... Sunday... and I... I... see... didn't let the lads off... work.'
 
He ceased, out of breath.
 
'And my money... for my wife... after .... Onesim here knows... whom I... what I owe.'
 
'We've sent for the doctor, Maksim,' said my neighbour; 'perhaps you may not die yet.'
 
He tried to open his eyes, and with an effort raised the lids.
 
'No, I'm dying. Here... here it is coming... here it.... Forgive me, lads, if in any way....'
 
'God will forgive you, Maksim Andreitch,' said the peasants thickly with one voice, and they took off their caps; 'do you forgive us!'
 
He suddenly shook his head despairingly, his breast heaved with a painful effort, and he fell back again.
 
'We can't let him lie here and die, though,' cried Ardalion Mihalitch; 'lads, give us the mat from the cart, and carry him to the hospital.'
 
Two men ran to the cart.
 
'I bought a horse... yesterday,' the dying man, 'off Efim... Sitchovsky... paid earnest money... so the horse is mine.... Give it... to my wife....'
 
They began to move him on to the mat.... He trembled all over, like a wounded bird, and ....
 
'He is dead,' muttered the peasants.
 
We mounted our horses in silence and rode away.
 
The death of poor Maksim set me . How wonderfully indeed the Russian peasant dies! The temper in which he meets his end cannot be called or ; he dies as though he were performing a solemn , coolly and simply.
 
A few years ago a peasant belonging to another neighbour of mine in the country got burnt in the drying shed, where the corn is put. (He would have remained there, but a passing pedlar pulled him out half-dead; he into a tub of water, and with a run broke down the door of the burning outhouse.) I went to his hut to see him. It was dark, smoky, stifling, in the hut. I asked, 'Where is the sick man?' 'There, sir, on the stove,' the sorrowing peasant woman answered me in a sing-song voice. I went up; the peasant was lying covered with a sheepskin, breathing heavily. 'Well, how do you feel?' The injured man stirred on the stove; all over burns, within sight of death as he was, tried to rise. 'Lie still, lie still, lie still.... Well, how are you?' 'In a bad way, surely,' said he. 'Are you in pain?' No answer. 'Is there anything you want?'--No answer. 'Shouldn't I send you some tea, or anything.' 'There's no need.' I moved away from him and sat down on the bench. I sat there a quarter of an hour; I sat there half an hour--the silence of the tomb in the hut. In the corner behind the table under the holy pictures a little girl of twelve years old, eating a piece of bread. Her mother threatened her every now and then. In the outer room there was coming and going, noise and talk: the brother's wife was chopping cabbage. 'Hey, Aksinya,' said the injured man at last. 'What?' 'Some kvas.'Aksinya gave him some kvas. Silence again. I asked in a whisper, 'Have they given him the sacrament?' 'Yes.' So, then, everything was in order: he was waiting for death, that was all. I could not bear it, and went away....
 
Again, I recall how I went one day to the hospital in the village of Krasnogorye to see the surgeon Kapiton, a friend of mine, and an enthusiastic sportsman.
 
This hospital consisted of what had once been the of the -house; the lady of the manor had founded it herself; in other words, she ordered a blue board to be nailed up above the door with an in white letters: 'Krasnogorye Hospital,' and had herself handed to Kapiton a red album to record the names of the patients in. On the first page of this album one of the of this Lady Bountiful had the following lines:
 
'Dans ces beaux lieux, où règne l'allégresse
Ce temple fut ouvert la Beauté;
De vos seigneurs admirez la tendresse
Bons habitants de Krasnogorié!'
 
 
while another gentleman had written below:
 
'Et moi aussi j'aime la nature!
             JEAN KOBYLIATNIKOFF.'
 
 
The surgeon bought six beds at his own expense, and had set to work in a thankful spirit to heal God's people. Besides him, the staff consisted of two persons; an , Pavel, liable to attacks of , and a one-armed peasant woman, Melikitrisa, who performed the duties of cook. Both of them mixed the medicines and dried............