Page:Pushkin - Russian Romance (King, 1875).djvu/258

casionally turn in this way, but it is not the dead he cares for! In the summer, a lady actually did drive by, and she did ask after the station-master, and went to see his grave."

"What lady?" asked I, with curiosity.

"A beautiful lady," answered the lad: "she drove a coach and six horses, with three little gentlemen, a wet-nurse, and a black pug dog, and when told that the old station-master had died, she began to cry, and said to the children, 'Sit you here quietly, whilst I go to the churchyard.' Well, I offered to show her the way. But the lady said: 'I know the road myself,' and she gave me five kopecks in silver—such a lady!"

We arrived at the cemetery, a bare place, with nothing to mark its limits, strewn with wooden crosses, with not a tree to shade it. Never in my life had I seen such a melancholy grave-yard.

"This is the grave of the old station-master," said the boy, jumping on a mound of earth, over which a black cross with a copper image was placed.

"And the lady came here?" asked I.

"Yes," answered Vanka. "I looked at her from a distance. She threw herself down here, and so she lay a long time. Then she went into the village, called the priest, gave him some money, and drove away; and to me she gave five kopecks in silver—a splendid lady!"

I also gave the lad five kopecks, and no longer regretted my journey, or the seven roubles I had spent.