up, stopped near the hounds, waiting to see how the matter would end. Out of the bushes came the huntsman who had been fighting and rode toward his young master, with the fox tied to his crupper. While still at a distance he took off his cap and tried to speak respectfully, but he was pale and breathless and his face was angry. One of his eyes was black, but he probably was not even aware of it.
“What has happened?” asked Nikoláy.
“A likely thing, killing a fox our dogs had hunted! And it was my gray bitch that caught it! Go to law, indeed! … He snatches at the fox! I gave him one with the fox. Here it is on my saddle! Do you want a taste of this? …” said the huntsman, pointing to his dagger and probably imagining himself still speaking to his foe.
Nikoláy, not stopping to talk to the man, asked his sister and Pétya to wait for him and rode to the spot where the enemy’s, Ilágin’s, hunting party was.
The victorious huntsman rode off to join the field, and there, surrounded by inquiring sympathizers, recounted his exploits.
The facts were that Ilágin, with whom the Rostóvs had a quarrel and were at law, hunted over places that belonged by custom to the Rostóvs, and had now, as if purposely, sent his men to the very woods the Rostóvs were hunting and let his man snatch a fox their dogs had chased.
Nikoláy, though he had never seen Ilágin, with his usual absence of moderation in judgment, hated him cordially from reports of his arbitrariness and violence, and regarded him as his bitterest foe. He