(which word the uncle always pronounced collidor, like a peasant) led to the huntsmen’s room, as the sitting-room for the huntsmen was called. There was a rapid patter of bare feet, and an unseen hand opened the door into the huntsmen’s room. They could then hear distinctly from the corridor the sounds of the balalaika, unmistakably played by a master hand. Natasha had been for some time listening, and now she went out into the corridor to hear the music more clearly.

“That’s Mitka, my coachman … I bought him a good balalaika; I’m fond of it,” said the uncle. It was his custom to get Mitka to play the balalaika in the men’s room when he came home from the chase. He was fond of hearing that instrument.

“How well he plays! It’s really very nice,” said Nikolay, with a certain unconscious superciliousness in his tone, as though he were ashamed to admit he liked this music.

“Very nice?” Natasha said reproachfully, feeling the tone in which her brother had spoken. “It’s not nice, but splendid, really!” Just as the uncle’s mushrooms and honey and liqueurs had seemed to her the most delicious in the world, this playing struck her at that moment as the very acme of musical expression.

“More, more, please,” said Natasha in the doorway, as soon as the balalaika ceased. Mitka tuned up and began again gallantly twanging away at “My Lady,” with shakes and flourishes. The uncle sat listening with his head on one side, and a slight smile. The air of “My Lady” was repeated a hundred times over. Several times the balalaika was tuned up and the same notes were thrummed again, but the audience did not weary of it, and still longed to hear it again and again. Anisya Fyodorovna came in and stood with her portly person leaning against the doorpost.

“You are pleased to listen!” she said to Natasha, with a smile extra-ordinarily like the uncle’s smile. “He does play nicely,” she said.

“That part he never plays right,” the uncle said suddenly with a vigorous gesture. “It ought to be taken more at a run—forward, quick march! … to be played lightly.”

“Why, can you do it?” asked Natasha.

The uncle smiled, and did not answer.

“Just you look, Anisyushka, whether the strings are all right on the guitar, eh? It’s a long while since I have handled it. I had quite given it up!”

Anisya Fyodorovna went very readily with her light step to do her master’s bidding, and brought him his guitar. Without looking at any one the uncle blew the dust off it, tapped on the case with his bony fingers, tuned it, and settled himself in a low chair. Arching his left elbow with a rather theatrical gesture, he held the guitar above the finger-board, and winking at Anisya Fyodorovna, he played, not the first notes of “My Lady,” but a single pure musical chord, and then smoothly, quietly, but confidently began playing in very slow time the well-known song, “As along the high road.” The air of the song thrilled in Nikolay’s and Natasha’s hearts in time, in tune with it, with the same sober gaiety—the same gaiety as was manifest in the whole personality of Anisya Fyodorovna. Anisya Fyodorovna flushed, and hiding her face in her kerchief, went laughing out of the room. The uncle still went on playing the song carefully, correctly, and vigorously, gazing with a transformed, inspired face at the spot where Anisya Fyodorovna had stood. Laughter came gradually into his face on one side under his grey moustache, and it grew stronger as the song went on, as the time quickened, and breaks came after a flourish.

“Splendid, splendid, uncle! Again, again!” cried Natasha, as soon as he had finished. She jumped up from her place and kissed and hugged the uncle. “Nikolenka, Nikolenka!” she said, looking round at her brother as though to ask, “What do you say to it?”