‘Mates,’ he inquired breathlessly, ‘haven’t you seen the foresters?’
‘No, we haven’t. What is it? is the forest on fire?’
‘Yes. We must get the people together, or else if it gets to Trosnoe …’
The peasant tugged with his elbows, pounded with his heels on the horse’s sides…. It galloped off.
Kondrat, too, whipped up his pair. We drove straight towards the smoke, which was spreading more and more widely; in places it suddenly grew black and rose up high. The nearer we moved to it, the more indefinite became its outlines; soon all the air was clouded over, there was a strong smell of burning, and here and there between the trees, with a strange, weird quivering in the sunshine, gleamed the first pale red tongues of flame.
‘Well, thank God,’ observed Kondrat, ‘it seems it’s an overground
