The door opened; Pan Ponyatsky thrust in his head and whispered:
"Don't worry about her, sir; she is all right, only a little quieter now." Then the head disappeared.
Love! Love over the seas and hills and years!
It had become known that a woman was to visit Agrenev, and forthwith he was ordered away for twenty-four hours on Detachment. Who then would ever know what guard had opened the door, what officer had wrought the deed? Would a woman dare scream, having come where she had no right to be? Or would she dare tell … to a husband or a lover? No, not to a husband, nor a lover, nor to anyone! And Pan Ponyatsky? Why should he not earn an odd fifty roubles? Who was he to know of love across the seas and hills?
Yesterday, the day before, and again to-day, continuous fighting and retreating. The staff-train moved off, but the officers went on foot. A wide array of men, wagons, horses, cannon, ordinance. All in a vast confusion. None could hear the rattling fire of the machine-guns and rifles. All was lost in a torrential downpour of rain. Towards evening there was a halt. All were eager to rest. No one noticed the approaching dawn. Then a Russian battery commenced to thunder. They were ordered to counter-attack. They trudged back through the rain, no one knew why—Agrenev, Kremnev, the brethren—three women.
THE SNOW WIND
A cruel, biting blizzard swept across the snow; over the earth moved misty, fantastic clouds, that drifted slowly across the face of a pale troubled moon. Towards night-fall, the wolves could be heard in the valley, howling a summons to their leader from the spot where the pack always assembled.
The valley descended sharply to a hollow thickly overgrown with red pines. Thirteen years back an unusually violent storm had swept the vicinity, and hurled an entire pine belt to the ground. Now, under the wide, windy sky, spread a luxuriant growth of young firs, while little oaks, hazels, and alders here and there dotted the depression.
Here the leader of the wolf-pack had his lair. Here for thirteen years his mate had borne his cubs. He was already old, but huge, strong, greedy, ferocious, and fearless, with lean legs, powerful snapping jaws, a short, thick neck on which the hair stood up shaggily like a short mane and terrified his younger companions.
This great, gaunt old wolf had been leader for seven years, and with good reason. By day he kept to his lair. At night, terrible and relentless, he prowled the fields and growled a short summons to his mates. He led the pack on their quests for food, hunting throughout the night, racing over plains and down ravines, ravening round farms and villages. He not only slew elks, horses, bulls, and bears, but also his own wolves if they were impudent or rebellious. He lived—as every wolf must live—to hunt, to eat, and to breed.