: A young scientist-folklorist finds himself in a secluded castle in a swamp, whose mistress is mad and wants to kill an insidious guardian. A young man saves a girl and marries her.

The narration is conducted on behalf of the scientist-folklorist Andrei Beloretsky. The division of the text into chapters and their names is conditional and does not correspond to the original.

Ninety-six-year-old Andrei Beloretsky recalls the events associated with the decline of the old Belarusian clan Yanovsky and the extinction of the Belarusian gentry. This amazing and fantastic story forever changed his life.

Acquaintance with Nadia and the ghosts of an old estate

In the late 80s of the XIX century, a young folklorist scientist Andrei Beloretsky traveled to Belarus in search of ancient legends.

Beloretsky chose such an unusual job to study his people and understand where he came from. At that time, this occupation was considered “dangerous for the existing order,” but the governor, an unexpectedly good man, gave him a letter of recommendation in which he ordered all kinds of help to be given to the scientist.

Beloretsky was especially interested in legends associated with a particular place. At that time, the extinction of the Belarusian gentry began, along with which the ancient tribal traditions disappeared. One acquaintance advised Beloretsky to go to a remote corner of Belarus. The scientist passed the settled, fertile lands, vast forests and ended up on the dull plain of a peat bog.

At night, Beloretsky’s cart almost fell into some swamp, the horses hardly got out onto the forest road, which led to a huge house. It was the Green Yalin Estate. The old housekeeper said that only the Volotova breakthrough did not have a fence around the estate - it was from there that Beloretsky miraculously escaped.

The house was huge, with beautiful antique furniture, but completely neglected. Beloretsky was taken over by the young mistress of the estate Nadia Yanovskaya, a pale, fragile girl, a pig with fine golden hair.

Nadia’s face with regular features and huge black eyes distorted a strange expression. Beloretsky girl seemed very ugly.

At dinner, Nadia invited Beloretsky to stay in the Swamp Yalins for several weeks until the "dark nights of autumn." The girl said that her father died two years ago. Since then, she lives alone in a huge house. There are three people in fifty rooms: she, the housekeeper and the old watchman. In two outbuildings live a park watchman, laundress, cook and manager Ignat Berman-Gantsevich, and around the house there is a huge park overgrown with centuries-old fir trees.

Nadia allowed Beloretsky to roam the district and rummage through the family archives - if only he stayed.

After spending the first and only good night in Zeleny Yalin, Beloretsky wandered around the dark brown plain with bogs and peasants half-dead from fever all day. In the evening, after dinner, he heard footsteps in the hallway. Turned pale by horror, Nadia said that it wanders along the passages of the house, the Small Man of Bolotny Yalin - a ghost that appears before the death of one of Yanovsky.

There was another “family” ghost in the house - the Blue Woman, the soul of the one who once cursed the Yanovsky family. But the worst thing was the wild hunt of King Stach, who destroyed the father of Nadia.

Beloretsky jumped into the corridor, did not see anyone, but the steps were clearly audible. He realized that Nadia’s face was distorted by the horror that had become familiar to her.The girl believed that she would die soon, and was waiting for her death, considering her a deserved punishment for the crimes of her ancestors. She began to speak with enthusiasm about the sufferings of her people, and Beloretsky suddenly saw an amazing beauty in Nadia.

It was an unearthly beauty, tortured, with bitter lips and huge dry eyes.

Beloretsky did not believe in ghosts, and therefore firmly decided to find out who brings the unfortunate girl to the grave.

Beloretsky believed that in such an ancient castle there can be auditory canals through which steps can be heard, so he went to the library in the morning to find the old house plan and find out everything about wild hunting. There he met manager Berman, a man with the face of a china doll. He gave Beloretsky ancient chronicles of the Yanovsky clan.

At the beginning of the XVII century, the local gentry supported the young prince, who proclaimed himself King Stach.

Only Roman Yanovsky did not accept him, but in the end he became the twin of the king.

Once on a hunt, Roman betrayed his twin - he drank his retinue with poisoned wine, and stabbed King Stach himself with a dagger. Dying, the king cursed the family of the traitor to the twelfth tribe. Since then, many of Yanovsky’s, beginning with the Old Roman himself, have been killed by a group of ghostly horsemen — the wild hunt of King Stach.

Nadia was the last, twelfth descendant of the family, and Berman saw a wild hunt coming for her. The girl’s father drove the ghosts into the Volotova breach.

Ball, duel and new friend

Two days later, Nadia celebrated her eighteenth birthday. The remnants of a noble nobility - beggars, in tatters, with signs of degeneration on blunt faces and a huge ambition gathered in the Swamp Yalin from around the district. Pan Hryn Dubatovk, Nadia’s guardian and her father’s old friend, also arrived at the ball.

He was a huge man in old Belarusian clothes, who made the impression of a provincial bear, a jovial guy and a drunkard. With him was Pan Ales Raven, a well-built young man with dead black eyes and a pale face.

One of Dubatovka's gifts was a portrait of Roman the Old, who was immediately hung over the fireplace. Then the guardian announced the report on the property of Nadia. It turned out that all of her property was a bit of arable land, bringing meager income, and a small bank deposit. The palace, the park and the protected forest were a marjoram, ancestral property that could not be sold. In fact, the girl was a beggar.

At this strange ball, Beloretsky quarreled with Ales Vorona, a well-known duelist in the district, and made friends with twenty-three-year-old Andrei Svetsilovich, a former student at Kiev University who was expelled for participating in student unrest.

Svecilovich was the only relative and heir to Nadia. In addition to him, only a certain Garaburda claimed the inheritance, but his kinship with Yanovsky belonged to the field of legends.

At eighteen, Svecilovich was in love with Nadeya, because of which his father, who believed in an ancient curse, sent his son out of the house. Now he felt that love was returning.

Leaving in the morning, Dubatovk invited Beloretsky to a bachelor party. Asleep, Beloretsky saw in the window a Small Man with an elongated skull, a toad face, unnaturally long fingers and greenish skin, in an old green suit. With a groan, the creature disappeared. Beloretsky decided to act more decisively and take Svetsilovich as assistants.

A day later, Beloretsky went to Dubatovka. There he managed to talk in private with Svetsilovich.They agreed to unravel this matter from two sides, but Dubatovka did not say anything - they were afraid that the old man would get upset and hinder.

Dubatovk tried to find out from Beloretsky whether he would marry Nadia. This conversation was heard by Raven, whom the girl had once refused, got angry and hinted that Beloretsky was chasing money and a generous wife. During a quarrel, Vorona challenged Beloretsky to a duel, although Dubatovk tried to stop him.

The duel took place right there, in an empty room with no windows. In total darkness Beloretsky managed to outwit Crow and accidentally wound him in the head - he did not want to kill a badass and shot, hoping to miss.

A wild hunt chased Beloretsky on the way to Bolotny Yalin.

In the waves of a faint transparent fog, the silhouettes of the riders loomed, rushing at a furious gallop, only horse manes fluttering in the wind.

The ghosts were dressed in ancient costumes, their horses rushed silently, and King Stach himself rushed ahead. Beloretsky miraculously managed to get to the breach in the fence that Nadya had told him about. The hunt pursued him to the very porch.

Investigation, threats and suspicions

The next day Beloretsky found a note with threats, pinned to the trunk of a spruce tree, in which they demanded not to interfere with patrimonial revenge. This finally convinced him of the terrestrial origin of wild hunting, because the ghosts of notes do not write.

At night Beloretsky again heard footsteps. Leaving the bedroom, he saw a housekeeper who entered one of the rooms. When Beloretsky came in next, the room was empty. Returning to the corridor, he saw the Blue Woman, very similar to Nadia, only her face was majestic, calm and looked older. She stepped over the low windowsill and disappeared. Then the housekeeper passed by, clutching a sheet of paper in her hand.

In the morning, Nadia asked Beloretsky to leave - after the appearance of a wild hunt, she was afraid for him. In addition, hope for happiness began to wake up in her, and it is better not to hope for those condemned to death.

Beloretsky refused to leave. He wanted to help not only Nadia, but also the surrounding peasants, who were also intimidated by wild hunting. From that day on, he began to carry a six-shot revolver, with which he usually traveled to remote places.

How elevates and strengthens a person's consciousness of the fact that they rely on him, as on a stone wall.

Svetsilovich who came in the evening was surprised to hear Beloretsky’s story about wild hunting. He suspected that Raven was involved in this, but that evening, because of his wound, he stayed with Dubatovka, and at the end of the banquet he became completely ill. Svecilovich and Dubatovka also suspected, who suddenly decided to give the frightened girl a portrait of Roman the Old, but he also feasted all night.

Then the friends decided to find out who lured Nadia’s father from the house on the evening of his death. Nadia then was visiting with neighbors, some Kulsha, and her father went after her. Beloretsky decided to visit these Kulsha, and ordered Svetsilovich to inquire about Berman in the provincial city.

That evening, someone shot at Beloretsky from a thick bush of lilacs and scratched his shoulder. He did not catch the shooter. At night he had a nervous breakdown. He writhed all night with fear, which he is still ashamed to recall.

In the morning, Beloretsky asked Berman if there were sound channels or secret rooms in the old estate. The manager only knew about the existence of the Yanovsky personal archive. Beloretsky drew attention to his hands with unnaturally long fingers, and an obsessive thought about them stuck in his head.

The birth of love and the death of a friend

On the way to Kulshy, near the Volotova breakthrough, Beloretsky found a large stone cross in the grass that once marked the site of the death of Roman the Old. At the cross, he met an emaciated woman with a dying child. A wild hunt killed her husband, and the pan "drove him out of the ground." According to the woman, "the biggest screamers" hunt drowns in a quagmire, the rest obey the panam out of fear.

They don’t give bread to the hungry, they feed him the bread of a soldier who shoots him because he is hungry. State wisdom!

Sending a woman to Bolotniye Yaliny, Beloretsky got to the Kulsha house, which was squinting from decay, where he found only a half-mad old woman.

Rygor, a tall and powerful man of about thirty, a hunter and a tracker, took care of her.

He said that Mrs. Kulsha moved her mind with fear after a wild hunt killed Nadia’s father.

Rygor himself did not consider ghost hunters - their horses left traces on the road and a real litter. Beloretsky told him about his investigation, and Rygor offered help, but warned: if he caught a wild hunt, he would destroy everyone.

Despite the madness, the old woman said that on that day she invited Nadia to visit at the request of Garaburda.

At night, Beloretsky again saw the housekeeper. Following her, he found a secret passage that led into the room with the Janowski archive. It turned out that the stupid and greedy granny also claimed to be an inheritance. Her father declared himself a relative of Yanovsky, but the court ruled that he was not a nobleman and had no right to Bolotnye Yaliny.

That same night a wild hunt appeared again, and an inhuman voice sobbed and shouted: "Roman in the last knee - come out!" Beloretsky wanted to run out and shoot at them, but in his hands lay Nadia, who had lost consciousness. He only now realized how courageous the girl was, who was not afraid to let him, a stranger, into her house.

Beloretsky was afraid, but could not leave the woman he loved. He understood that he could not marry a noble noblewoman, so he decided to remain silent and give way to Svecilovich. Beloretsky decided to save Nadia and leave the Swamp Yalins forever.

We Belarusians rarely know how to love without sacrificing something ...

Svetsilovich soon received information about Berman, who turned out to be an embezzler and a thief. After one of the scams, he hid in the Swamp Yalins. His mother and brother, brought up in a private boarding school, also disappeared, after which it turned out that "these Bermans are generally not Bermans, but who is unknown."

Then Beloretsky and Svetsilovich met with Rygor. He said that the wild hunt knows the secret paths in the Volotova prorv, the horses of their ancient breed and are horseshoe-old horseshoes, and the "ghosts" sniff tobacco. The main place of their training is located somewhere in Yanovskaya Pushcha.

Garabourd has nothing to do with hunting - he is a poor rider and during his last two appearances of wild hunting he sat at home. But someone else could persuade him to ask Kulsha to invite Yanovskaya to visit. Listening to this conversation, Svetsilovich suddenly guessed who this man was - he met him recently at Yanovskaya Pushcha. Svetsilovich did not discover his name - at first he decided to check everything himself. He vowed to do everything, "if only the wild hunt of King Stakh, the horror of the past" would not rush above the ground.

Late in the evening, Beloretsky set up an ambush at the fallen fence of the estate from the side of the Volotova breakthrough. Soon a wild hunt appeared. Beloretsky started firing and suddenly someone huge attacked him from behind. He began to resist and managed to move the enemy with his knee “to a causal place”. The attacker gasped and turned out to be Dubatovk. Upon learning that Nadya was visiting a wild hunt, he decided to watch for the “ghosts” and stumbled upon Beloretsky.

Only when Dubatovk left, piling himself up on a horse with difficulty, did Beloretsky realize that there were too few riders today. Apparently, part of the hunt went to deal with Svetsilovich, inadvertently arousing their suspicions. Beloretsky rushed to his house, but he had already left. In the stove, Beloretsky found a half-burned letter signed "Your well-wisher Likol ...", with the help of which Svecilovich was lured out of the house.

In a letter, Svecilovich was scheduled to meet somewhere on the plain of three pines.Finding out that this place is located at the Volotova breakthrough, Beloretsky rushed there and managed to see how the riders of the wild hunt kill his friend.

The Secret of the Small Man

The next bailiff who arrived the next day stated that it was impossible to investigate the murder in this wild corner, and the murdered one was a rebel, an unreliable person. Then Beloretsky began to insist on the investigation of the case of the attempt on the life and reason of Nadia. The bailiff dirty hinted at the relationship between Beloretsky and Nadia, for which he drew him with a whip in the face.

Rygor found out that Svecilovich met with a tall thin man who smoked a cigarette. At the scene of the murder, he found a wad made from the page of a magazine that only Nadeya wrote out.

In the library of Bolotnykh Yalin, Beloretsky found a magazine issue with a torn page and decided that the "mastermind of the wild hunt" was in the palace, and it could only be Berman. Perhaps he scared Nadia at night.

After the funeral, Beloretsky received a subpoena. He was nearly sent out of the county for beating the bailiff, but a letter from the governor in which he ordered the young folklorist to be supported helped. With the help of this document, Beloretsky pressed the judge against the wall and found out that someone who was young and strong paid for his “removal”, who “benefits either Yanovskaya’s death or marriage to her.”

In the evening Rygor showed up and said that he had found a cache of wild hunting. He was going to go there with his people and put the robbers on a stake like horse thieves, and burn their nest. In addition, Rygor brought a letter to Svetsilovich’s address, from which Beloretsky learned that Berman, “for dishonest deeds” sentenced to expulsion and deprivation of gentry rights, was a distant relative of the Yanovsky and could claim an inheritance. Another letter was to wait for Beloretsky here in the Swamp Yalins.

Then Beloretsky finally realized that the Small Man had the same unnaturally long fingers as Berman. He rushed to look for a letter that came to him and found him in the outbuilding of the manager. In it, a benefactor promised to tell about the Small Man and made an appointment for Beloretsky at the site of the death of Roman the Old.

Apparently, Berman was bothered by this letter, and he went to a meeting. Beloretsky rushed off to the Volotova Prory, hoping to be present at the meeting of accomplices, but saw one of the ghostly horsemen shot Berman. Beloretsky crawled closer and overheard the conversation of the two "hunters", from which he learned that it was not Berman who should have killed him, but him.

It also turned out that the mysterious Likol was not the beginning of a surname, but a nickname. This same Likol, a great lover of antiquity, dreamed of capturing the Swamp Yalins. For Nadia, this estate was a dead weight, and for an outsider, it could become a great wealth. The wild hunt led by Likola not only destroyed the Yanovsky clan, but also intimidated especially brave peasants, and here Svetsilovich, Beloretsky and Rygor, who took the side of the peasantry, were very hindered.

Before dispersing, the bandits remembered that before his death, Nadia’s father threatened to extradite them from the tomb. The next day, Rygor took Beloretsky to the place of the death of Nadia’s father - that night he himself pulled his body out of the quagmire. At the very quagmire, in a hole under the roots, friends found a cigarette case, and in it - a piece of fabric with a half-worn inscription: "Kill the crow ...".

Returning to the Swamp Yalins, Beloretsky and Rygor learned from Nadia that she called Dubatovka in her childhood Likol. Beloretsky intimidated Garaburdu, who appeared at the estate, and he said that Dubatovk had bought his promissory notes. When the last Yanovskaya dies, the estate will go to Garaburde, and from it, for debts, to Dubatovka.

Having locked Garaburdu in the castle dungeon, Beloretsky began to take apart Berman’s papers, stumbled upon an old plan of the palace, where the ear canals and secret passages were marked in the walls, and a diary in which the manager wrote about his love for his brother.

People must be creatures of darkness.Then, in their organisms, everything is perfectly brilliantly manifested, an animal that we must preserve and love.

It was Berman who shot Beloretsky from a thicket of lilacs.

Beloretsky opened the door to a secret passage and sat down to guard. At night, the Small Man of the Green Yalin came out of the course, who turned out to be Berman's brother, a mentally retarded freak. Berman used it to completely drive Nadia crazy. Announcing the girl "the death of one of the ghosts", Beloretsky sent the unfortunate to the county hospital for the insane.

The end of the wild hunt

Beloretsky and Rygor with the men ambushed a wild hunt. Some of the men, led by Beloretsky, were on guard at Zeleny Yalin, the rest under Rygor's command were at Yanovskaya Pushcha.

The hunt appeared at the estate. At the head of the ghostly horsemen rode King Stach, who turned out to be a Crow. The bandits were taken by surprise, and the men very quickly dealt with them. Crow killed Beloretsky.

A terrible wild hunt was defeated by the hands of ordinary men on the very first day, when they pulled themselves up a bit and believed that even against ghosts you can climb with a pitchfork.

From one of the surviving bandits, Beloretsky learned that it was Dubatovk, using Garaburda and Kulsha, that he had lured little Nadeya out of the house. The father went after his daughter and died. Beloretsky’s duel with Vorona was also planned in advance, but they did not throw a note with threats. Apparently, Berman did it.

Svetsilovich was killed because he met Raven near the stitches leading to the cache. Then Dubatovk attacked Beloretsky, could not kill, but easily circled his finger. It was Dubatovk who made the wad from the page of a magazine taken in Bolotny Yalin, so that Beloretsky began to suspect Berman.

Meanwhile, Rygor cracked down on the rest of the "hunters." Then the teams united and went to the house of Dubatovka. Looking out the window, Beloretsky instead of a cheerful "Christmas grandfather" saw a gloomy man with a yellow face and dead eyes. He realized how lucky they were that after a fight with him Dubatovk could not ride a horse - he would have killed them like kittens.

Finding that they had come for him, Dubatovk began to shoot back. The men set fire to the house, but Dubatovk escaped through an underground passage and ran to the Volotova Prory. Then the men released the horses of the wild hunt. Accustomed to the voice and smell of Dubatovka, they rushed after them and trampled him into the swamp.

Returning to the Swamp Yalin, exhausted Beloretsky immediately fell asleep. He woke up in the middle of the night from a nightmare and saw the Blue Woman in his room. Beloretsky grabbed her and realized that it was Nadia. The girl suffered from sleepwalking and roamed the castle at night.

Nadia woke up trembling with horror. Beloretsky began to reassure her, and she, clinging to him, began to beg him to take her from this terrible house. Beloretsky could not resist his desire, and Nadia became his first woman.

The next day, Beloretsky took Nadeya from the Swamp Yalin. She decided to donate antiques to museums, and set up a school or hospital in the house where the woman with a child saved from starvation remained a housekeeper.

Beloretsky rented a house for Nadia on a quiet outskirts of the city, and soon her sleepwalking passed. Two months later, she realized that she was pregnant. They lived for many years in great love, and they felt good even in Siberia, where Beloretsky came to in 1902. He told this story after the death of his beloved wife.

But until now Beloretsky has been dreaming of the wild hunt of King Stach, a symbol of darkness, hunger, inequality and dark horror.

The retelling is based on the translation V. N. Shchedrina.