The Melekhov farm was right at the end of Tataisk village. The gate of the cattle-yard opened northward towards the Don. A steep, sixty-foot slope between chalky, grassgrown banks» and there was the shore. A pearly drift of mussel-shells, a grey, broken edging of shingle, and then— the steely-blue, rippling surface of the Don, seething beneath the wind. To the east, beyond the willow-wattle fence of the threshing-floor, was the Hetman’s highway, greyish wormwood scrub, vivid brown, hoof-trodden knotgrass, a shrine standing at the fork of the road, and then the steppe, enveloj^ in a shifting mirage. To the south a chalky range of hills. On the west the street, crossing the square and running towards the leas. The cossack Prokoffey Melekhov returned to the village during the last war with Turkey. He brought Imck a wife — a little woman wrapped from head to foot in a shawl. She kept her face covert, and rarely revealed her yearning eyes. The silken shawl was redolent of strange, aromatic perfumes ; its rainbpw-hued patterns aroused the jealou^ of the peasant women. The captive Turkish woman did not get on well with Prokrftey's relations, and ere long old Melekhov gave his son hit portion. The old man never got over the disgrace of the separation, and all his life he refused to set foot inside his son’s hut

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