An old Cossack colonel greets his sons home from the seminary by knocking the elder down, then takes them both to the Sich and a war that will test every bond of blood and faith. Gogol moves between slaughter and lyric within a paragraph, and the steppe itself is the book's largest character. Five shorter tales follow it — St. John's Eve, The Cloak, How the Two Ivans Quarrelled, The Mysterious Portrait and The Calash. Paintings of riders, siege and horizon open this Gilded Library volume; the decoration is sabre, horsetail standard and steppe grass.
