There was in our village a good fellow,--a shoemaker. We just called him Cock-of-the-Boots, because he deserved the name. Early in the morning and late at night you might have seen him staggering through the village streets, and yelling, in his drunken fit, and repeating the same phrase:

“Come out, you village wiseacre, if there is such a one among you! Come out,” he shouted, “and I will have a chat with you.”

But no one dared to come out, being sure to get the worst of it.

He had come to us from down Usmán way. He was such a thick-set, homely-looking fellow, with thick, monstrous moustaches, and he wore a blue coat. His wife was as stubby and homely as he, and all in wrinkles, but she had on a chintz dress that was good enough for a shopkeeper’s wife and a red shawl over her shoulders. You would think that the moment he drove into the village he would make for the inn? The Lord bless you, he made plump for the tavern. That is, he and his wife went into the tavern, but the cart was left in charge of six good-looking young fellows, all of them in extensible boots, caps, and blue nankeen coats. They stood around the cart. People began to come up to them, and somebody asked them:

“Say, what kind of people are you, honourable gentlemen? Whence do you come and whither do you tend?”

“Step aside,” they replied to us, “step aside as far as you can, before dad comes back from the tavern, or there will be trouble!”

We all had to laugh, seeing that these strapping fellows were trying to frighten us with their “dad.”

We looked around: there he was coming out of the tavern with a bretzel in his hands, his cap poised way back on his head, while his wife carried a quart of brandy in her hand, in order to treat her sons.

“Go ahead,” he said, “and drink, and then find some quarters, for I am sleepy.”

Right near the tavern there was living in a hut a crazy old woman. We had nicknamed her the Blue Rig. She had no relatives of any sort, and managed to live somehow by charity. While he was cooling himself off in the tavern, his youngsters found out that she was helpless, and so they immediately reported to him:

“Dad, there is hereabouts a destitute old woman. They call her Blue Rig, and we might stop at her hut.”

They settled there, and before long they smoked the old woman out of her house. The township chief sent some hundred-men to oust Cock-of-the-Boots, but he gave the hundred-men a mighty drubbing, and told them that it was his house, and that the chief had better attend to his own business.

The chief marvelled at the fellow, and himself came down upon him with a posse. The whole village went to see the fun.

Cock-of-the-Boots took up a daring attitude in front of the chief, his hands akimbo; then he stroked his moustache and said:

“What made you, sir, come to me when I did not invite you? You had better wait for an invitation.”

“How dare you?” began the chief.

Now each of Cock-of-the-Boots’s sons had a special name: their father called one of them Prince Kutúzov, another Paskévich, a third Díbich. “They are all my generalissimos,” he would say. When the chief began to call him names, he turned to Díbich:

“Díbich! Take him out!”

Díbich, without any further ado, took the chief by his shoulder and led him out. The hundred-men and some of the villagers tried to interfere,--but these protectors got dreadfully mauled by Cock-of-the-Boots and his sons.

“I myself,” cried Cock-of-the-Boots, “with my good fellows can kick out two such villages as this. I,” says he, “will root out any man that will undertake to oppress me, because I am not afraid of anybody, and my children are not afraid of anybody but me.”

And his wife seconded him: “That ’s right,” says she, “we are not afraid of anybody!”

It was a fine family we had to deal with.

“It ’s now up with Cock-of-the-Boots,” we villagers thought, after that occurrence. “They ’ll certainly drag him to Siberia for insulting such a great gentleman.” But that ’s where we were wrong. The chief complained to the district superintendent, saying: “It is so and so, and I can’t do anything with Cock-of-the-Boots, because,” says he, “he has a powerful lot of sons, and they get the better of the whole village.”

No sooner did Cock-of-the-Boots hear of that letter than he slung a wallet with a slice of bread over his shoulder, lighted his pipe,--he had a small pipe with a short carved stem,--and off he went to the capital of the province. A lot of gentlemen were just entering the Governor’s palace, and he somehow managed to slip in with them into the audience room, where he waited for the Governor to appear, in the meantime angrily twisting his moustache.

Then came his turn.

“Who are you?” asked the Chief, “and what do you want?”

“I am, sir,” answered Cock-of-the-Boots, “a crown peasant and a shoemaker. And what I want is that you should kick out the township chief,--his name is so and so,--because he is an embezzler of the Tsar’s treasure, and a great nuisance to the commune. That ’s what I want,” says he.

They say that the gentlemen that were present were stunned, seeing how freely he spoke with the General. The Governor himself frowned and looked for a long time at Cock-of-the-Boots with angry eyes, and finally he said:

“Do you, Cock-of-the-Boots,” says he, “want me to put you in jail for insulting me in that way?”

But Cock-of-the-Boots only smiled, and his moustaches twitched, and he said to the Governor: “Let me tell you,” says he, “that I won’t go to jail, but straight to Peter, to complain to the Emperor himself; and you are not strong enough to stop me,” says he, “because I am not afraid of anybody except God in heaven,” and he threw his wallet over his shoulders, and started out.

The gentlemen present could not keep back any longer and burst out laughing, and the Governor himself laughed.

“What a bold fellow!” says he, “I have not seen the like of him in all my life. Fetch him back,” says he, “and send him to my cabinet. I will talk to him later.”

“I see no objection to having a talk with him,” said Cock-of-the-Boots, smiling. “I am always ready to talk to a Governor.”

It is not known what the Governor and he talked about, only, Cock-of-the-Boots had not yet reached his village when the township chief had an order from the capital to the effect that he had been a chief long enough.