With which gentle sarcasm and another jovial laugh the tall youth departed, leaving Boris to reflect upon the extreme good fortune which had sent him the right man at the right moment to extract him from the tightest fix he had ever succeeded in getting himself into during the whole course of his nineteen summers.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Mishka is the familiar Russian name for a bear.
CHAPTER III.
BORIS CHANGES MASTERS.
Boris, when he returned to the village that same afternoon, enjoyed a veritable triumph at the hands of his delighted fellows. He was honest enough to confess his indebtedness to the stranger, but this did not make the slightest difference in the gratitude of the peasants; and indeed the service which Boris had rendered them, in thus ridding them of an infliction worse than the most terrible blight, was no slight one. A large bear, when so disposed, and when allowed to work his wicked will upon the corn-fields of a village, will very speedily either consume or trample into hay the entire grain wealth of the community; so that the gratitude of the peasants was proportionate to their clear gain in the death of one of the two monster pests which had come, like a scourge upon the village, to devour the fatness thereof.
Boris was carried shoulder-high through the one street of the place; while the carcass of the dead robber, slung by his four legs to a pole, was borne behind, escorted by a booing, yelling crowd of women and children. A bonfire was lighted at night in honour of the hunter and his achievement, when portions of the bear were cooked and eaten, more as an expression of contempt for the late owner of the flesh than for love of the food. Most of the carcass was given to the dogs, however, and they, at least, were delighted with the feast.
Boris was well feasted with vodka and with other delicacies equally bad for him; but being a sensible youth and steady withal, he did not retire at night in the degraded condition of most of his fellow-villagers. He was elated, no doubt, not by the fumes of the spirits, however, but by the sense of triumph; yet the more he pondered over his fight and victory, the more clearly did he realize his indebtedness to the timely aid of the strong young giant who had come to his assistance. As he lay and dozed, half conscious, through the hot hours of the summer night, Boris weaved the adventure of the day into a thousand fantastic shapes, in all of which, however, the stranger played an important part: sometimes he was his own patron saint; then he was a benevolent lieshui, or wood-spirit, a class of beings fully believed in by the peasants, but, according to popular tradition, more likely to take the part of the bear than of Boris in a fight between the two. In a word, the stranger assumed so many various shapes in the hunter's overwrought brain at night, that when day came Boris was by no means certain whether the stranger had in reality existed at all, and was inclined to fancy that the whole thing had been a dream as he lay and slept after the death of the bear, which he had slain single-handed.