A SPORTSMAN'S SKETCHES
and curious. . . . I had never heard anything like it.
'Tell me, please, Kassyan,' I began, without taking my eyes off his slightly flushed face, 'what is your occupation?'
He did not answer my question at once. His eyes strayed uneasily for an instant.
'I live as the Lord commands,' he brought out at last; 'and as for occupation—no, I have no occupation. I've never been very clever from a child: I work when I can: I'm not much of a workman—how should I be? I have no health; my hands are awkward. In the spring I catch nightingales.'
'You catch nightingales? . . . But didn't you tell me that we must not touch any of the wild things of the woods and the fields, and so on?'
'We must not kill them, of a certainty; death will take its own without that. Look at Martin the carpenter; Martin lived, and his life was not long, but he died; his wife now grieves for her husband, for her little children. . . . Neither for man nor beast is there any charm against death. Death does not hasten, nor is there any escaping it; but we must not aid death. . . . And I do not kill nightingales—God forbid! I do not catch them to harm them, to spoil their lives, but for the pleasure of men, for their comfort and delight.'
'Do you go to Kursk to catch them?'
'Yes, I go to Kursk, and farther too, at times. I pass nights in the marshes, or at the edge of the
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