other who gets drunk. There’s nothing else to do with him than to make a soldier of him or send him to Siberia. All the Kazyóls are the same; and Matriushka who lives in the village belongs to their family, and is the same sort of cursed good-for-nothing. Don’t you care to have me here, your excellency?” inquired the overseer, perceiving that the prince did not heed what he was saying.
“No, go away,” replied Nekhliudof absentmindedly, and turned his steps toward Davidka Byélui’s.
Davidka’s hovel stood askew and alone at the very edge of the village. It had neither yard, nor cornkiln, nor barn. Only some sort of dirty stalls for cattle were built against one side. On the other a heap of brushwood and logs was piled up, in imitation of a yard.
Tall green steppe-grass was growing in the place where the courtyard should have been.
There was no living creature to be seen near the hovel, except a sow lying in the mire at the threshold, and grunting.
Nekhliudof tapped at the broken window; but as no one made answer, he went into the entry and shouted, “Holloa there!”
This also brought no response. He passed through the entry, peered into the empty stalls, and entered the open hut.
An old red cock and two hens with ruffs were scratching with their legs, and strutting about over the floor and benches. When they saw a man they spread their wings, and, cackling with terror, flew against the walls, and one took refuge on the oven.
The whole hut, which was not quite fourteen feet square, was occupied by the oven with its broken pipe, a loom, which in spite of its being summertime was not taken down, and a most filthy table made of a split and uneven plank.