KASSYAN OF FAIR SPRINGS
little, scarcely visible, brown eyes, and thick curly black hair, which stood out on his tiny head like the cap on the top of a mushroom. His whole person was excessively thin and weakly, and it is absolutely impossible to translate into words the extraordinary strangeness of his expression.
'What do you want?' he asked me again. I explained to him what was the matter; he listened, slowly blinking, without taking his eyes off me.
'So cannot we get a new axle?' I said finally; 'I will gladly pay for it.'
'But who are you? Hunters, eh?' he asked, scanning me from head to foot.
'Hunters.'
'You shoot the fowls of heaven, I suppose? . . . the wild things of the woods? . . . And is it not a sin to kill God's birds, to shed the innocent blood?'
The strange old man spoke in a very drawling tone. The sound of his voice also astonished me. There was none of the weakness of age to be heard in it; it was marvellously sweet, young and almost feminine in its softness.
'I have no axle,' he added after a brief silence. 'That thing will not suit you.' He pointed to his cart. 'You have, I expect, a large trap.'
'But can I get one in the village?'
'Not much of a village here! . . . No one has an axle here. . . . And there is no one at home either; they are all at work. You must go on,'
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