“Well, Deniska, shall we overtake the waggons to-day?” asked Kuzmitchov.

Deniska looked at the sky, rose in his seat, lashed at his horses and then answered: 

“By nightfall, please God, we shall overtake them.”

There was a sound of dogs barking.  Half a dozen steppe sheep-dogs, suddenly leaping out as though from ambush, with ferocious howling barks, flew to meet the chaise.  All of them, extraordinarily furious, surrounded the chaise, with their shaggy spider-like muzzles and their eyes red with anger, and jostling against one another in their anger, raised a hoarse howl.  They were filled with passionate hatred of the horses, of the chaise, and of the human beings, and seemed ready to tear them into pieces.  Deniska, who was fond of teasing and beating, was delighted at the chance of it, and with a malignant expression bent over and lashed at the sheep-dogs with his whip.  The brutes growled more than ever, the horses flew on; and Yegorushka, who had difficulty in keeping his seat on the box, realized, looking at the dogs’ eyes and teeth, that if he fell down they would instantly tear him to bits; but he felt no fear and looked at them as malignantly as Deniska, and regretted that he had no whip in his hand.

The chaise came upon a flock of sheep.

“Stop!” cried Kuzmitchov.  “Pull up!  Woa!”

Deniska threw his whole body backwards and pulled up the horses.

“Come here!” Kuzmitchov shouted to the shepherd.  “Call off the dogs, curse them!”

The old shepherd, tattered and barefoot, wearing a fur cap, with a dirty sack round his loins and a long crook in his hand—­a regular figure from the Old Testament—­called off the dogs, and taking off his cap, went up to the chaise.  Another similar Old Testament figure was standing motionless at the other end of the flock, staring without interest at the travellers.

“Whose sheep are these?” asked Kuzmitchov.

“Varlamov’s,” the old man answered in a loud voice.

“Varlamov’s,” repeated the shepherd standing at the other end of the flock.

“Did Varlamov come this way yesterday or not?”

“He did not; his clerk came. . . .”

“Drive on!”

The chaise rolled on and the shepherds, with their angry dogs, were left behind.  Yegorushka gazed listlessly at the lilac distance in front, and it began to seem as though the windmill, waving its sails, were getting nearer.  It became bigger and bigger, grew quite large, and now he could distinguish clearly its two sails.  One sail was old and patched, the other had only lately been made of new wood and glistened in the sun.  The chaise drove straight on, while the windmill, for some reason, began retreating to the left.  They drove on and on, and the windmill kept moving away to the left, and still did not disappear.

“A fine windmill Boltva has put up for his son,” observed Deniska.

“And how is it we don’t see his farm?”