At the entrance to the copse stood a milestone.  Elizarov touched it; read it.  Praskovya reached them out of breath.  Her wrinkled and always scared-looking face was beaming with happiness; she had been at church to-day like anyone else, then she had been to the fair and there had drunk pear cider.  For her this was unusual, and it even seemed to her now that she had lived for her own pleasure that day for the first time in her life.  After resting they all three walked on side by side.  The sun had already set, and its beams filtered through the copse, casting a light on the trunks of the trees.  There was a faint sound of voices ahead.  The Ukleevo girls had long before pushed on ahead but had lingered in the copse, probably gathering mushrooms.

“Hey, wenches!” cried Elizarov.  “Hey, my beauties!”

There was a sound of laughter in response.

“Crutch is coming!  Crutch!  The old horseradish.”

And the echo laughed, too.  And then the copse was left behind.  The tops of the factory chimneys came into view.  The cross on the belfry glittered:  this was the village:  “the one at which the deacon ate all the caviare at the funeral.”  Now they were almost home; they only had to go down into the big ravine.  Lipa and Praskovya, who had been walking barefooted, sat down on the grass to put on their boots; Elizar sat down with them.  If they looked down from above Ukleevo looked beautiful and peaceful with its willow-trees, its white church, and its little river, and the only blot on the picture was the roof of the factories, painted for the sake of cheapness a gloomy ashen grey.  On the slope on the further side they could see the rye—­some in stacks and sheaves here and there as though strewn about by the storm, and some freshly cut lying in swathes; the oats, too, were ripe and glistened now in the sun like mother-of-pearl.  It was harvest-time.  To-day was a holiday, to-morrow they would harvest the rye and carry the hay, and then Sunday a holiday again; every day there were mutterings of distant thunder.  It was misty and looked like rain, and, gazing now at the fields, everyone thought, God grant we get the harvest in in time; and everyone felt gay and joyful and anxious at heart.

“Mowers ask a high price nowadays,” said Praskovya.  “One rouble and forty kopecks a day.”

People kept coming and coming from the fair at Kazanskoe:  peasant women, factory workers in new caps, beggars, children....  Here a cart would drive by stirring up the dust and behind it would run an unsold horse, and it seemed glad it had not been sold; then a cow was led along by the horns, resisting stubbornly; then a cart again, and in it drunken peasants swinging their legs.  An old woman led a little boy in a big cap and big boots; the boy was tired out with the heat and the heavy boots which prevented his bending his legs at the knees, but yet blew unceasingly with all his might at a tin trumpet.  They had gone down the slope and turned into the street, but the trumpet could still be heard.