Chapter 69: A Troublesome Visitor

A Troublesome Visitor In the low-pitched, crooked little hut of Artyom, the forester, two men were sitting under the big dark icon—Artyom himself, a short and lean peasant with a wrinkled, aged-looking face and a little beard that grew out of his neck, and a well-grown young man in a new crimson shirt and big wading boots, who had been out hunting and come in for the night. They were sitting on a bench at a little three-legged table on which a tallow candle stuck into a bottle was lazily bur…