"Good evening," said the weaver, stopping.

"Where are you going?"

"Dunno, wherever my legs take me."

"Help me, good man, to carry these sacks! Somebody went caroling and then dropped them in the middle of the road. We'll divide the goods fifty-fifty."

"Sacks? And what's in the sacks, wheat loaves or flatbread?"

"I suppose there's everything in them."

Here they hastily pulled sticks from a wattle fence, put a sack on them, and carried it on their shoulders.

"Where are we taking it? to the tavern?" the weaver asked as they went.

"That's what I was thinking-to the tavern. But the cursed Jewess won't believe us, she'll think we stole it; besides, I just came from the tavern. We'll take it to my place. No one will be in our way: my wife isn't home."

"You're sure she's not home?" the prudent weaver asked.

"Thank God, we've still got some wits left," said the chum, "the devil if I'd go where she is. I suppose she'll be dragging about with the women till dawn."

"Who's there?" cried the chum's wife, hearing the noise in the front hall produced by the two friends coming in with the sack, and she opened the door.

The chum was dumbfounded.

"There you go!" said the weaver, dropping his arms.

The chum's wife was a treasure of a sort not uncommon in the wide world. Like her husband, she hardly ever stayed home but spent almost all her days fawning on some cronies and wealthy old women, praised and ate with great appetite, and fought with her husband only in the mornings, which was the one time she occasionally saw him. Their cottage was twice as old as the local scrivener's balloon trousers, the roof lacked straw in some places. Only remnants of the watde fence were to be seen, because no one ever took a stick along against dogs when leaving the house, intending to pass by the chum's kitchen garden instead and pull one out of his fence. Three days would go by without the stove being lit. Whatever the tender spouse wheedled out of good people she hid the best she could from her husband, and she often arbitrarily took his booty if he hadn't managed to drink it up in the tavern. The chum, despite his perennial sangfroid, did not like yielding to her, and therefore almost always left the house with two black eyes, and his dear better half trudged off to tell the old women about her husband's outrages and the beatings she suffered from him.

Now, you can picture to yourself how thrown off the weaver and the chum were by her unexpected appearance. Setting the sack down, they stepped in front of it, covering it with their coat skirts; but it was too late: the chum's wife, though she saw poorly with her old eyes, nevertheless noticed the sack.

"Well, that's good!" she said, with the look of an exultant hawk. "It's good you got so much for your caroling! That's what good people always do; only, no, I suspect you picked it up somewhere. Show me this minute! Do you hear? Show me your sack right this minute!"

"The hairy devil can show it to you, not us," said the chum, assuming a dignified air.

"What business is it of yours?" said the weaver. "We got it for caroling, not you."

"No, you're going to show it to me, you worthless drunkard!" the wife exclaimed, hitting the tall chum on the chin with her fist and going for the sack.

But the weaver and the chum valiantly defended the sack and forced her to retreat. Before they had time to recover, the spouse came running back to the front hall, this time with a poker in her hands. She nimbly whacked her husband on the hands and the weaver on the back with the poker, and was now standing beside the sack.

"What, we let her get to it?" said the weaver, coming to his senses.

"Eh, what do you mean we let her-why did you let her?" the chum said with sangfroid.

"Your poker must be made of iron!" the weaver said after a short silence, rubbing his back. "My wife bought a poker at the fair last year, paid twenty-five kopecks-it's nothing… doesn't even hurt…"

Meanwhile the triumphant spouse, setting a tallow lamp on the floor, untied the sack and peeked into it. But her old eyes, which had made out the sack so well, must have deceived her this time.

"Eh, there's a whole boar in there!" she cried out, clapping her hands for joy.

"A boar! do you hear, a whole boar!" the weaver nudged the chum. "It's all your fault!"

"No help for it!" the chum said, shrugging.

"No help? Don't stand there, let's take the sack from her! Come on! Away with you! away! it's our boar!" the weaver shouted, bearing down on her.

"Get out, get out, cursed woman! It's not your goods!" the chum said, coming closer.

The spouse again took hold of the poker, but just then Choub climbed out of the sack and stood in the middle of the hall, stretching, like a man who has just awakened from a long sleep.

The chum's wife gave a cry, slapping her skirts, and they all involuntarily opened their mouths.

"Why did she say a boar, the fool! That's not a boar!" said the chum, goggling his eyes.

"See what a man got thrown into the sack!" said the weaver, backing away in fear. "Say what you like, you can even burst, but it's the doing of the unclean powers. He wouldn't even fit through the window!"

"It's my chum!" cried the chum, looking closer.

"And who did you think it was?" said Choub, smiling. "A nice trick I pulled on you, eh? And you probably wanted to eat me as pork? Wait, I've got good news for you: there's something else in the sack-if not a boar, then surely a piglet or some other live thing. Something's been moving under me all the time."

The weaver and the chum rushed to the sack, the mistress of the house seized it from the other side, and the fight would have started again if the deacon, seeing there was nowhere to hide, hadn't climbed out of the sack.

"Here's another one!" the weaver exclaimed in fright. "Devil knows how this world… it makes your head spin… not sausages or biscuits, they throw people into sacks!"

"It's the deacon!" said Choub, more astonished than anyone else. "Well, now! that's Solokha for you! putting us into sacks… That's why she's got a house full of sacks… Now I see it all: she had two men sitting in each sack. And I thought I was the only one she… That's Solokha for you!"

The girls were a bit surprised to find one sack missing. "No help for it, this one will be enough for us," Oksana prattled. They all took hold of the sack and heaved it onto the sled.

The headman decided to keep quiet, reasoning that if he shouted for them to untie the sack and let him out, the foolish girls would run away, thinking the devil was sitting in it, and he would be left out in the street maybe till the next day.

The girls, meanwhile, all took each other's hands and flew like the wind, pulling the sled over the creaking snow. Many of them sat on the sled for fun; some got on the headman himself.

The headman resolved to endure everything. They finally arrived, opened the doors to the house and the front hall wide, and with loud laughter dragged the sack inside.

"Let's see what's in it," they all shouted and hastened to untie the sack.

Here the hiccups that had never ceased to torment the headman all the while he was sitting in the sack became so bad that he started hicking and coughing very loudly.

"Ah, somebody's in there!" they all cried and rushed out of the house in fear.

"What the devil! Why are you running around like crazy?" said Choub, coming in the door.