“Once she had missed it and turned it away, any mongrel could take it,” Ilágin was saying at the same time, breathless from his gallop and his excitement. At the same moment Natásha, without drawing breath, screamed joyously, ecstatically, and so piercingly that it set everyone’s ear tingling. By that shriek she expressed what the others expressed by all talking at once, and it was so strange that she must herself have been ashamed of so wild a cry and everyone else would have been amazed at it at any other time. “Uncle” himself twisted up the hare, threw it neatly and smartly across his horse’s back as if by that gesture he meant to rebuke everybody, and, with an air of not wishing to speak to anyone, mounted his bay and rode off. The others all followed, dispirited and shamefaced, and only much later were they able to regain their former affectation of indifference. For a long time they continued to look at red Rugáy who, his arched back spattered with mud and clanking the ring of his leash, walked along just behind “Uncle’s” horse with the serene air of a conqueror.

“Well, I am like any other dog as long as it’s not a question of coursing. But when it is, then look out!” his appearance seemed to Nikoláy to be saying.