Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SIX CHAPTER 11
here, behind this tuft of reeds, five paces in front of her; she stopped, and her whole
body was still and rigid. On her short legs she could see nothing in front of her, but
by the scent she knew it was sitting not more than five paces off. She stood still,
feeling more and more conscious of it, and enjoying it in anticipation. Her tail was
stretched straight and tense, and only wagging at the extreme end. Her mouth was
slightly open, her ears raised. One ear had been turned wrong side out as she ran up,
and she breathed heavily but warily, and still more warily looked round, but more
with her eyes than her head, to her master. He was coming along with the face she
knew so well, though the eyes were always terrible to her. He stumbled over the
stump as he came, and moved, as she thought, extraordinarily slowly. She thought
he came slowly, but he was running.
Noticing Laska’s special attitude as she crouched on the ground, as it were,
scratching big prints with her hind paws, and with her mouth slightly open, Levin
knew she was pointing at grouse, and with an inward prayer for luck, especially
with the first bird, he ran up to her. Coming quite close up to her, he could from
his height look beyond her, and he saw with his eyes what she was seeing with her
nose. In a space between two little thickets, at a couple of yards’ distance, he could
see a grouse. Turning its head, it was listening. Then lightly preening and folding its
wings, it disappeared round a corner with a clumsy wag of its tail.
“Fetch it, fetch it!” shouted Levin, giving Laska a shove from behind.
“But I can’t go,” thought Laska. “Where am I to go? From here I feel them, but if I
move forward I shall know nothing of where they are or who they are.” But then he
shoved her with his knee, and in an excited whisper said, “Fetch it, Laska.”
“Well, if that’s what he wishes, I’ll do it, but I can’t answer for myself now,” she
thought, and darted forward as fast as her legs would carry her between the thick
bushes. She scented nothing now; she could only see and hear, without understanding
anything.
Ten paces from her former place a grouse rose with a guttural cry and the peculiar
round sound of its wings. And immediately after the shot it splashed heavily with
its white breast on the wet mire. Another bird did not linger, but rose behind Levin
without the dog. When Levin turned towards it, it was already some way off. But
his shot caught it. Flying twenty paces further, the second grouse rose upwards, and
whirling round like a ball, dropped heavily on a dry place.
“Come, this is going to be some good!” thought Levin, packing the warm and fat
grouse into his game bag. “Eh, Laska, will it be good?”
When Levin, after loading his gun, moved on, the sun had fully risen, though
unseen behind the storm-clouds. The moon had lost all of its luster, and was like
a white cloud in the sky. Not a single star could be seen. The sedge, silvery with
dew before, now shone like gold. The stagnant pools were all like amber. The blue
of the grass had changed to yellow-green. The marsh birds twittered and swarmed
about the brook and upon the bushes that glittered with dew and cast long shadows.
A hawk woke up and settled on a haycock, turning its head from side to side and
looking discontentedly at the marsh. Crows were flying about the field, and a barelegged
boy was driving the horses to an old man, who had got up from under his
long coat and was combing his hair. The smoke from the gun was white as milk over
the green of the grass.
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