It was the very witch he had killed.
When the sun began to set, the dead girl was taken to the church. The philosopher supported the black-draped coffin with one shoulder, and on that shoulder he felt something cold as ice. The chief himself walked in front, bearing the right side of the dead girl's cramped house. The blackened wooden church, adorned with green moss and topped by three conical cupolas, stood desolate almost at the edge of the village. One could see it was long since any service had been celebrated in it. Candles burned before almost every icon. The coffin was placed in the middle, right in front of the altar. The old chief kissed the dead girl once more, made a prostration, and walked out together with the bearers, ordering the philosopher to be given a good meal and taken to the church after supper. Going into the kitchen, all those who had carried the coffin started touching the stove, something people in Little Russia have the custom of doing after they see a dead body.
The hunger that the philosopher began to feel just then made him-forget all about the deceased for a few moments. Soon all the household servants began gradually to gather in the kitchen. The kitchen of the chief's house was something like a club, to which everything that inhabited the yard flowed, including the dogs, who came right up to the door wagging their tails for bones and scraps. Wherever anyone might be sent, on whatever errand, he would always stop at the kitchen first, to rest on a bench for a moment and smoke a pipe. The bachelors who lived in the house and paraded around in Cossack blouses all lay about here for almost the whole day, on the benches, under the benches, on the stove-in short, wherever they could find a comfortable place to lie. Besides, everybody was forever forgetting something in the kitchen-a hat, a knout for stray dogs, or the like. But the most numerous gathering was at suppertime, when the horseherd came after rounding up all his horses, and the cowherd after bringing the cows home for milking, and all the rest who were not to be seen in the course of the day. During supper, loquacity would come to the most taciturn tongues. Here everything was usually talked about: someone who was having new trousers made for himself… and what was inside the earth… and someone who had seen a wolf… There were numerous bonmotists 7 here, of whom there is no lack among the people of Little Russia.
The philosopher sat down with the others in a wide circle under the open sky in front of the kitchen porch. Soon a woman in a red cap stuck herself out the door holding a hot pot of dumplings with both hands, and placed it in the midst of those ready to eat. Each of them took a wooden spoon from his pocket, or some, lacking a spoon, a splinter of wood. As soon as the mouths began to move a bit more slowly and the wolfish appetite of the whole gathering subsided a little, many began to talk. The talk naturally had to turn to the dead girl.
"Is it true," said one young shepherd, who had stuck so many buttons and brass badges on his leather pipe strap that he looked like a mercer's shop, "is it true that the young miss, not to speak ill of her, kept company with the unclean one?"
"Who? The young miss?" said Dorosh, already known to our philosopher. "But she was a downright witch! I'll swear she was a witch!"
"Enough, enough, Dorosh!" said another, the one who had shown such readiness to give comfort during the trip. "God help them, it's none of our business. No point in talking about it."
But Dorosh was not at all disposed to be silent. He had only just gone to the cellar with the steward on some necessary business and, after bending a couple of times to two or three barrels, had come out extremely cheerful and talking nonstop.
"What do you want? For me to keep quiet?" he said. "But she rode on me, on me myself! By God, she did!"
"And what, uncle," said the young shepherd with the buttons, "are there some tokens you can tell a witch by?"
"No," answered Dorosh. "There's no way to tell. Read through all the psalters, you still won't be able to tell."
"You can, too, Dorosh. Don't say that," said the same comforter. "Not for nothing did God give everybody a special trait. People who've got some learning say witches have little tails."
When a woman s old, she s a witch, the gray-haired Cossack said coolly.
"Ah, you're a good lot, too!" picked up the woman, who was just then pouring fresh dumplings into the emptied pot. "Real fat boars!"
The old Cossack, whose name was Yavtukh but who was nicknamed Kovtun, showed a smile of pleasure on his lips, seeing that his words had struck the old woman to the quick; and the cowherd let out such dense laughter as if two bulls, facing each other, had bellowed at once.
The beginning conversation awakened an irrepressible desire and curiosity in the philosopher to learn more in detail about the chief's deceased daughter. And therefore, wishing to bring him back to the former matter, he addressed his neighbor with these words:
"I wanted to ask, why is it that all the folk sitting here over supper consider the young miss a witch? What, did she cause some evil or put a hex on somebody or other?"
"There were all kinds of things," replied one of the seated men, with a smooth face extremely like a shovel.
"And who doesn't remember the huntsman Mikita, or that…"
"And what about the huntsman Mikita?" said the philosopher.
"Wait! I'll tell about the huntsman Mikita," said Dorosh.
"I'll tell about Mikita," said the herdsman, "because he was my chum."
"I'll tell about Mikita," said Spirid.
"Let him! Let Spirid tell it!" shouted the crowd.
Spirid began:
"You, mister philosopher Khoma, didn't know Mikita. Ah, what a rare man he was! He knew every dog like his own father, so he did. The present huntsman Mikola, who's sitting third down from me, can't hold a candle to him. He also knows his business, but next to Mikita he's trash, slops."
"You're telling it good, really good!" said Dorosh, nodding approvingly.
Spirid went on:
"He'd spot a rabbit quicker than you could take a pinch of snuff.
He'd whistle: 'Here, Robber! Here, Racer!' and be off at full speed on his horse, and there'd be no telling whether he was ahead of the dog or the dog ahead of him. He'd toss off a pint of rotgut as if it had never been there. A fine huntsman he was! Only in more recent days he started staring at the young miss all the time. Either he was really smitten, or she'd put a spell on him, only it was the end of the man, he went all soft, turned into devil knows what- pah! it's even indecent to say it."
"Good," said Dorosh.
"The young miss would no sooner glance at him than he'd drop the bridle, call Robber Grouchy, stumble all over, and do God knows what. Once the young miss came to the stable where he was grooming a horse. 'Mikitka,' she says, 'let me lay my little leg on you.' And he, the tomfool, gets all happy. 'Not only your little leg,' he says, 'you can sit right on me.' The young miss lifted up her leg, and when he saw her bare leg, white and plump, the charm, he says, just stunned him. He bent his back, the tomfool, grabbed her bare legs with both hands, and went galloping like a horse all over the fields. And he couldn't tell anything about where they rode, only he came back barely alive, and after that he got all wasted, like a chip of wood. And once, when they came to the stable, instead of him there was just a heap of ashes and an empty bucket lying there: he burned up, burned up of his own self. And what a huntsman he was, you won't find another like him in the whole world."
When Spirid finished his story, talk came from all sides about the merits of the former huntsman.
"And have you heard about Shepchikha?" said Dorosh, addressing Khoma.
"No."
"Oh-ho! Then it's clear they don't teach you much sense there in your seminary. Well, listen! In our settlement there's a Cossack named Sheptun. A good Cossack! He likes to steal or tell a lie sometimes without any need, but… a good Cossack! His place isn't far from here. At this same time as we're now having supper, Sheptun and his wife finished eating and went to bed, and since the weather was fine, Shepchikha slept outside and Sheptun inside on a bench; or, no, it was Shepchikha inside on a bench and Shep-tun outside…"