Out of doors it was a moonless, winter night, with clouds in the sky, not cold. We stopped at the crossroads. The elder boys, in their third year, stopped near me, asking me to accompany them further. The younger ones looked at us, and rushed off down-hill. They had begun to learn with a new master, and between them and me there is not the same confidence as between the older boys and myself.
'Well, let us go to the wood' (a small wood about 120 yards from the house), said one of them. The most insistent was Fédka, a boy of ten, with a tender, receptive, poetic yet daring nature. Danger seems to form the chief condition of pleasure for him. In summer it always frightened me to see how he, with two other boys, would swim out into the very middle of the pond, which is nearly 120 yards wide, and would now and then disappear in the hot reflection of the summer sun, and swim under water; and how he would then turn on his back, causing fountains of water to rise, and calling with his high-pitched voice to his comrades on the bank to see what a fine fellow he was.
He now knew there were wolves in the wood, and so he wanted to go there. All agreed; and the four of us went to the wood. Another boy, a lad of twelve, physically and morally strong, whom I will call Syómka, went on in front and kept calling and 'ah-ou-ing' with his ringing voice, to some one at a distance. Prónka, a sickly, mild and very gifted lad, from a poor family (sickly probably chiefly from lack of food), walked by my side. Fédka walked between me and Syómka, talking all the time in a particularly gentle voice: now relating how he had herded horses in summer, now saying there was nothing to be afraid of, and now asking, 'Suppose one should jump out?' and insisting on my giving some reply. We did not go into the wood: that would have been too dreadful; but even where we were, near the wood, it was darker, and the road was scarcely visible, and the lights of the village were hidden from view. Syómka stopped and listened: 'Stop, lads! What is that?' said he suddenly.
We were silent, and though we heard nothing, things seemed to grow more gruesome.
'What shall we do if it leaps out ... and comes at us?' asked Fédka.
We began to talk about Caucasian robbers. They remembered a Caucasian tale I had told them long ago, and I again told them of 'braves,' of Cossacks, and of Hádji Mourát.[46] Syómka went on in front, treading boldly in his big boots, his broad back swaying regularly. Prónka tried to walk by my side, but Fédka pushed him off the path, and Prónka—who, probably on account of his poverty, always submitted—only ran up alongside at the most interesting passages, sinking in the snow up to his knees.
Every one who knows anything of Russian peasant children knows that they are not accustomed to, and cannot bear, any caresses, affectionate words, kisses, hand touchings, and so forth. I have seen a lady in a peasant school, wishing to pet a boy, say: 'Come, I will give you a kiss, dear!' and actually kiss him; and the boy was ashamed and offended, and could not understand why he had been so treated. Boys of five are already above such caresses—they are no longer babies. I was therefore particularly struck when Fédka, walking beside me, at the most terrible part of the story suddenly touched me lightly with his sleeve, and then clasped two of my fingers in his hand, and kept hold of them. As soon as I stopped speaking, Fédka demanded that I should go on, and did this in such a beseeching and agitated voice that it was impossible not to comply with his wish.
'Now then, don't get in the way!' said he once angrily to Prónka, who had run in front of us. He was so carried away as even to be cruel; so agitated yet happy was he, holding on to my fingers, that he could let no one dare to interrupt his pleasure.
'Some more! Some more! It is fine!' said he.
We had passed the wood and were approaching the village from the other end.