On my way back from Preobrajensky one evening I met a man and a woman on horseback, both scolding one another at full voice—so loudly, indeed, that I could not fail to hear every word said as we met and passed.
It appeared that the man, who was the older, refused to permit the woman, who seemed scarcely more than a young girl, to take some course which she was resolved to pursue. When I had discovered this much their voices became inaudible, and I should have forgotten all about the matter but that I happened to find a lady in trouble in the forest next day, and in conversation with her recognised her voice as that of the scolding maiden of yesterday.
She was standing, when I first came upon her, in riding dress, and disconsolately gazed through the trees as though looking for someone she had lost, or whom she expected to arrive.
She started round when I rode softy up, and I now saw that I had to do with a most beautiful woman, one of the most beautiful I had ever seen. She asked me somewhat angrily whether I had seen her horse.
‘The fool shied at a hare that ran across his path,’ she said, ‘and as I was thinking of other things I was surprised and thrown—for which he shall feel my whip when I find him!’
‘A hare to cross your path is bad fortune,’ I laughed. ‘It is to be hoped you are not engaged upon any enterprise in the success of which you are greatly concerned, for, if so, it is likely to fail!’
‘Maybe I am,’ she replied, ‘but it shall not fail—that is, if the issue depends upon myself.’
‘But maybe it depends upon the will of someone—a father or an uncle,’ I hazarded, remembering the sobbing of the previous evening.
She started.
‘Are you a wizard or a guesser?’ she said.