Red Stefan Read Online Free PDF

thoughts, and became aware that she was asking him a question.
    â€œWhere are we going?”
    â€œTo Yuri’s village—for the moment. Afterwards—I don’t know—it depends. I’m not quite sure how things are there just now. You see—” he leaned confidentially nearer—“I’ve been away all the summer. I only got back a week ago, and then I had to dig Yuri out and get him to come up to the town. He didn’t want to a bit—he was afraid of a heavy fall of snow. But I had to have a good excuse to be there, so I got him to put a cartload of market stuff together and chance it. Of course he sold it pretty well. They tried to stop the peasants selling their own stuff, you know, but they had to let them do it in the end. There are too many of them. They can’t shoot ’em all, and if they did, the rest of Russia would starve. So Yuri gets his price for butter and vegetables and eggs. As a matter of fact I had to be in Tronsk to meet the man who is going to take over my job. He didn’t come, so they’ll probably have to find someone else—”
    â€œYou mean—”
    He nodded.
    â€œI expect they got him. I was pretty sure of that by the second day, but I just felt I’d got to hang on. When I saw you on the bridge, of course I knew why. It was lucky you weren’t a day later, because Yuri wouldn’t have waited another twenty-four hours for anyone on earth. I expect he’s right about the snow, but we shall get in before it comes.”
    She could see him quite plainly now. The road ran south and a little west, and the sullen dawn came up behind them, painting the sky just above the horizon with livid streaks. Everywhere else the clouds were of an even, impenetrable greyness. As they looked back along the way by which they had come, there was nothing to be seen but a vast plain thinly veiled in snow. When Elizabeth leaned sideways to the edge of the cart and looked past old Yuri’s humped shoulders, there were, however, signs of broken ground and a sprinkling of trees with their branches stark against the snow. As they came up with the first of the trees, she heard a loud cawing sound and looked about her for a sign of crow or raven. The sound came again, much farther off. And then, to her extreme surprise, a cuckoo called from a thicket on their right. She turned to Stephen and found him regarding her gravely.
    â€œDid you know there were cuckoos in Russia?” he said, and before she could answer, the call came again, behind them. It hung on the frosty air, came more faintly, and died away.
    Yuri looked over his shoulder, said something in a rapid mutter and, turning back, jerked at the reins.
    â€œWhat did he say?” said Elizabeth. “Was it about the cuckoo? Did he hear it? I thought you said he couldn’t hear anything.”
    Stephen nodded.
    â€œHe can hear one thing, but it’s not the cuckoo. He was only saying something about the snow. He says he smells wind, and perhaps that’ll carry it away. Do you know what the one thing is that he can hear? He lived up farther north when he was a boy, and he was chased by wolves. He was in a two-horse sleigh with two men, and when the wolves were gaining on them they chucked Yuri out. He was only a peasant child, you see. I tell you, some of those Russian nobles fairly asked for the Revolution. Yuri’s father was a serf. They treated ’em like dogs, and after they were emancipated they cheated ’em right and left. It’s only about twenty-five years since a peasant could be flogged by his master. If he died of the flogging, no one worried—there were lots of peasants.”
    â€œWhat happened to Yuri? How did he escape?”
    â€œHe shinned up a tree just in time, and the wolves followed the sleigh. He nearly died of the cold and the fright, and to this day he can hear a wolf’s cry when he can’t hear anything else. Look—you