"
Vasena, standing by the door, and somewhat resembling a wild animal,
answered calmly:
"Well he wasn't so young as to.... Haven't we all got to die! What is
it to him now? He and his had everything in their day! Dear Lord,
they had everything!"
IX
Low, downy cloudlets drifted over the sky in the early hours of the
morning. Dark, lowering masses followed in their wake. The snow fell
in large, cold, soft, feather-like flakes.
St. Martin's Summer was past, to be succeeded by the advent of
another earthly joy--the first white covering of snow, when it is so
delicious to follow the fresh footprints of the beasts, a rifle in
hand.
THE HEIRS
I
Legend says that from the Sokolovaya Mountain--called the Mountain of
Falcons, came Stenka Razin. It is written in books that from thence
came also Emelian Pugachev.
The Sokolovaya Mountain towers high above the Volga and the plains,
making a dark, precipitous descent to the pirate river below.
Across the Volga lies an ancient town. By the Glebychev Ravine, close
to the old Cathedral guarded by one of Pugachev's guns, stands a
mansion with a facade of ochre-coloured-columns. In olden days, when
it was the residence of the princely Rastorovs' balls were held
there, but decay had set in during the last twenty years, and Kseniya
Davydovna--the mistress--old, ill, a spinster, was drawing to the end
of her days.
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