CHAPTER II.
SOME OTHER PERSONS AND DISAGREEABLE VISIONS.
AN hour later, perhaps, Repa came home from the woods with the carpenter Lukash, on the landlord's wagon. Repa was a burly fellow, as tall as a poplar, strong, just hewn out with an axe. He went to the woods every day, for the landlord had sold to Jews all the forest which was free of peasant privileges. Repa received good wages, for he was a good man to work. When he spat on his palm, seized the axe, gave a blow with a grunt and struck, the pine-tree groaned, and chips flew from it half an ell long. In loading timber onto wagons he was also the first man.
The Jews, who went through the woods with measures in their hands and looked at the tops of the pines, as if hunting for crows' nests, were amazed at his strength. Droysla, a rich merchant from Oslovitsi, said to him,—
"Well, Repa! devil take thee! Here are six groshes for vodka. No! here, wait; here are five groshes for vodka!"
But Repa did not care,—he just wielded his axe till the woods thundered; sometimes for amusement he let his voice out through the forest,—
"Hop! Hop!"
His voice flew among the trees, and came back as an echo. And again, nothing was heard but the thunder of Repa's axe; and sometimes the pines too began to talk among their branches with a sound as is usual in a forest.
At times, also, the wood-cutters sang; and at singing, Repa too was the first man. One should have heard how he thundered forth with the wood-cutters a song which he had taught them himself,—
"Something shouted in the woods,