Uncle Volodia.
A Story of a Russian Village.
CHAPTER I.
On the one hill of the district, just outside the village of Viletna, stood the great house belonging to Madame Olsheffsky.
All round it lay, what had once in the days gone by, been elaborate gardens, but were now a mere tangle of brushwood, waving grass, and wild flowers.
Beyond this, again, were fields of rye and hemp, bounded on one side by the shining waters of the great Seloe Lake, dug by hundreds of slaves in the time of Madame Olsheffsky's great-grandfather; and on the other by the dim greenness of a pine forest, which stretched away into the distance for mile after mile, until it seemed to melt into the misty line of the horizon.
Between the lake and the gardens of the great house, lay Viletna, with its rough log houses, sandy street, and great Church, crowned with a cupola like a gaily-painted melon; where Elena, Boris, and Daria, the three children of Madame Olsheffsky, drove every Sunday with their mother in the old-fashioned, tumble-down carriage.