‘Rugay! Rugayushka! Forward—quick march,’ another voice shouted this time. And Rugay, the uncle’s red, broad-shouldered dog, stretching out and curving his back, caught up the two foremost dogs, pushed ahead of them, flung himself with complete self-abandonment right on the hare, turned him out of the ditch into the green field, flung himself still more viciously on him once more, sinking up to his knees in the swampy ground, and all that could be seen was the dog rolling over with the hare, covering his back with mud. The dogs formed a star-shaped figure round him. A moment later all the party pulled their horses up round the crowding dogs. The uncle alone dismounted in a rapture of delight, and cutting off the feet, shaking the hare for the blood to drip off, he looked about him, his eyes restless with excitement, and his hands and legs moving nervously. He went on talking, regardless of what or to whom he spoke. ‘That’s something like, quick march . . . there’s a dog for you ... he outstripped them all . . . if they cost a thousand or they cost a rouble . . . forward, quick march, and no mistake!’ he kept saying, panting and looking wrathfully about him, as though he were abusing some one., as though they had all been his enemies, had insulted him, and he had only now at last succeeded in paying them out. ‘So much for your thousand; rouble dogs—forward, quick march! Rugay, here’s the foot,’ he said, dropping the dog the hare’s muddy foot, which he had just cut off; ‘you’ve; deserved it—forward, quick march! ’
‘She wore herself out—ran it down three times all alone,’ Nikolay was i saying, listening to no one, and heedless whether he were heard or not.
‘To be sure, cutting in sideways like that!’ Ilagin’s groom was saying
