Kornéy Vasílyef was fifty-four when he had last visited his village. There was no grey to be seen in his thick curly hair, and his black beard was only a little grizzly at the cheekbones. His face was smooth and ruddy, the nape of his neck broad and firm, and his whole strong body padded with fat as a result of town life and good fare.
He had finished army service twenty years ago, and had returned to the village with a little money. He first began shopkeeping, and then took to cattle-dealing. He went to Tcherkásy, in the province of Kiev, for his “goods”—that is, cattle—and drove them to Moscow.
In his iron-roofed brick house in the village of Gáyi lived his old mother, his wife and two children (a girl and a boy), and also his orphan nephew—a dumb lad of fifteen—and a labourer.
Kornéy had married twice. His first wife was a weak, sickly woman who died without having any children; and he, a middle-aged widower, had married a strong, handsome girl, the daughter of a poor widow from a neighbouring village. His children were by this second wife.
Kornéy had sold his last lot of cattle so profitably in Moscow that he had about three thousand roubles; and having learnt from a fellow-countryman that near their village a ruined landowner’s forest was for sale at a bargain, he thought he would go in for the timber trade also. He knew the business, for before serving in the army he had been assistant clerk to a timber merchant, and had managed a wood.
At the railway-station nearest to Gáyi, Kornéy met a fellow-villager, “one-eyed Kouzmá.” Kouzmá came from Gáyi with his pair of poor shaggy horses to meet every train, seeking for fares. Kouzmá was poor,