Out of doors it was a moonless winter night, with clouds in the sky, not cold. We stopped at the crossroads. The elder boys, in their third year at school, stopped near me asking me to accompany them further. The younger ones looked at us and rushed off down-hill. They had begun to learn with a new master, and between them and me there is not the same confidence as between the older boys and myself.

"Well, let us go to the wood" (a small wood about one hundred and twenty yards from the house), said one of them. The most insistent was Fédka, a boy of ten, with a tender, receptive, poetic yet daring nature. Danger seems to form the chief condition of pleasure for him. In summer it always frightened me to see how he, with two other boys, would swim out into the very middle of the pond, which is nearly one hundred and twenty yards wide, and would now and then disappear in the hot reflection of the summer sun and swim under water; and how he would then turn on his back, causing fountains of water to rise, and calling with his highpitched voice to his comrades on the bank to see what a fine fellow he was.

He now knew there were wolves in the wood, and so he wanted to go there. All agreed; and the four of us went to the wood. Another boy, a lad of twelve, physically and morally strong, whom I will call Sëmka, went on in front and kept calling and "ah-ou-ing" with his ringing voice, to some one at a distance. Prónka, a sickly, mild, and very gifted lad, from a poor family (sickly probably chiefly from lack of food), walked by my side. Fédka walked between me and Sëmka, talking all the time in a particularly gentle voice: now relating how he had herded horses in summer, now saying there was nothing to be afraid of, and now asking, "Suppose one should jump out?" and insisting on my giving some reply. We did not go into the wood: that would have been too dreadful; but even where we were, near the wood, it was

darker, the road was scarcely visible, and the lights of the village were hidden from view. Sëmka stopped and listened: "Stop, you fellows! What is this?" said he suddenly.

We were silent and, though we heard nothing, things seemed to grow more gruesome.

"What shall we do if it leaps out . . . and comes at us?" asked Fédka.

We began to talk about Caucasian robbers. They remembered a Caucasian tale I had told them long ago, and I again told them of "braves," of Cossacks, and of Hadji Murad.1 Sëmka went on in front, treading boldly in his big boots, his broad back swaying regularly. Prónka tried to walk by my side, but Fédka pushed him off the path, and Prónkawho, probably on account of his poverty, always submitted -only ran up alongside at the most interesting passages, sinking in the snow up to his knees.

Everyone who knows anything of Russian peasant children knows that they are not accustomed to, and cannot bear, any caresses, affectionate words, kisses, hand-touchings, and so forth. I have seen a lady in a peasant school, wishing to pet a boy, say: "Come, I will give you a kiss, dear!" and actually kiss him; and the boy was ashamed and offended, and could not understand why he had been so treated. Boys of five are already above such caresses-they are no longer babies. I was therefore particularly struck when Fédka, walking beside me, at the most terrible part of the story suddenly touched me lightly with his sleeve, and then clasped two of my fingers in his hand, and kept hold of them. As soon as I stopped speaking, Fédka demanded that I should go on, and did this in such a beseeching and agitated voice that it was impossible not to comply with his wish.

"Now then, don't get in the way!" said he once angrily

1 A daring leader of the hill-tribes, who was prominent at the time Tolstoy was serving in the Caucasus.

to Prónka, who had run in front of us. He was so carried away as even to be cruel; so agitated yet happy was he, holding on to my fingers, that he could let no one dare to interrupt his pleasure.

"More!

More! It is fine!" said he.

We had passed the wood and were approaching the village from the other end.

"Let's go on," said all the boys when the lights became visible. "Let us take another turn!"

We went on in silence, sinking here and there in the snow, not hardened by much traffic. A white darkness seemed to sway before our eyes; the clouds hung low, as though something had heaped them upon us. There was no end to that whiteness, amid which we alone crunched along the snow. The wind sounded through the bare tops of the aspens, but where we were, behind the woods, it was calm.

I finished my story by telling how a "brave," surrounded by his enemies, sang his death-song and threw himself on his dagger. All were silent.

"Why did he sing a song when he was surrounded?" asked Sëmka.

"Weren't you told?-he was preparing for death!" replied Fédka, aggrieved.

"I think he said a prayer," added Prónka.

All agreed. Fédka suddenly stopped.

"How was it, you told us, your Aunt had her throat cut?" asked he. (He had not yet had enough horrors.) "Tell us! Tell us!"

I again told them that terrible story of the murder of the Countess Tolstoy,' and they stood silently about me watching my face.

"The fellow got caught!" said Sëmka.

1 Some details of this crime are given in "Why do Men Stupefy Themselves?" in Essays and Letters, published in the World's Classics.

"He was afraid to go away in the night, while she was lying with her throat cut!" said Fédka; "I should have run away!" and he gathered my two fingers yet more closely in his hand.

We stopped in the thicket beyond the threshing-floor at the very end of the village. Sëmka picked up a dry stick from the snow and began striking it against the frosty trunk of a lime tree. Hoar frost fell from the branches on to our caps, and the noise of the blows resounded in the stillness of the wood.

"Lev Nikolaevich," said Fédka to me (I thought he was again going to speak about the Countess), "why does one learn singing? I often think, why, really, does one?"

What made him jump from the terror of the murder to this question heaven only knows; yet by the tone of his voice, the seriousness with which he demanded an answer, and the attentive silence of the other two, one felt that there was some vital and legitimate connection between this question and our preceding talk. Whether the connection lay in some response to my suggestion that crime might be explained by lack of education (I had spoken of that), or whether he was testing himself-transferring himself into the mind of the murderer and remembering his own favourite occupation (he has a wonderful voice and immense musical talent), or whether the connection lay in the fact that he felt that now was the time for sincere conversation, and all the problems demanding solution rose in his mind-at any rate his question surprised none of us.

"And what is drawing for? And why write well?" said I, not knowing at all how to explain to him what art is for.

"What is drawing for?" repeated he thoughtfully. He really was asking, What is Art for? And I neither dared nor could explain.

"What is drawing for?" said Semka. "Why, you draw anything, and can then make it from the drawing."

"No, that is designing," said Fédka. "But why draw figures?"

Sëmka's matter-of-fact mind was not perplexed.

"What is a stick for, and what is a lime tree for?" said he, still striking the tree.

"Yes, what is a lime tree for?" said I.

"To make rafters of," replied Sëmka.

"But what is it for in summer, when not yet cut down?" "It's no use then."

"No, really," insisted Fédka; "why does a lime tree grow?" And we began to speak of the fact that not everything exists for use, but that there is also beauty, and that Art is beauty; and we understood one another, and Fédka quite understood why the lime tree grows and what singing is for.

Prónka agreed with us, but he thought rather of moral beauty: goodness.

Sëmka understood with his big brain, but did not acknowledge beauty apart from usefulness. He was in doubt (as often happens to men with great reasoning power): feeling Art to be a force, but not feeling in his soul the need of that force. He, like them, wished to get at Art by his reason, and tried to kindle that fire in himself.

"We'll sing Who hath to-morrow. I remember my part," said he. (He has a correct ear, but no taste or refinement in singing.) Fédka, however, fully understood that the lime tree is good when in leaf: good to look at in summer; and that that is enough.

Prónka understood that it is a pity to cut it down, because it, too, has life:

"Why, when we take the sap of a lime, it's like taking blood."