: A stray hunter in the night wanders around peasant children who sit by the fire, guard horses and tell each other scary stories about goblin, mermaids, brownies and other evil spirits.

The action takes place in the Russian Empire, in the Chern district of the Tula province. The narration is conducted in the first person. The division of the retelling into chapters is conditional.

“A beautiful July day”

The summer days when the weather is set are beautiful. Morning is clear, radiant. By noon, the sky is covered with light golden-gray clouds, from which occasionally a small, warm rain is sown. Before the evening dawn, the clouds disappear, and the sun sets as calmly as it ascended to heaven.

Hunter lost

It was on such a day that the narrator was hunting black grouse.

In the evening he returned home and suddenly got lost.

“But where am I?” I repeated again out loud, stopped for the third time and looked inquiringly at my English yellow-pinto dog Diana.

Climbing a high, abruptly sloping hill, he saw a huge plain beneath him, which was surrounded by a wide river. The narrator finally found out the area - in the district it was called Bezhin meadow.

Campfire in the night

Two bonfires were burning right under a cliff in the dark, in which five peasant children with two dogs guarded horses. During the day, heat and flies with gadfly did not give horses rest, so in the summer they grazed at night.

To drive out the herd before the evening and to drive the herd at the morning dawn is a great celebration for peasant boys.

The tired hunter went down to the fires, said that he was lost and asked to spend the night. He lay under a bush nearby, pretended to be sleeping, and listened to what the children were talking about.

The boys cooked potatoes and told stories of evil spirits.

Ilyusha

Most of all the stories were told by the twelve-year-old Ilyusha with a hunched-nosed, elongated and blind-faced face, on which a bluntly worried expression froze.

The boy was dressed cleanly and neatly, but poorly. The large family of Ilyusha, apparently, was not rich, so the boy, together with his two brothers, worked in a paper mill from early childhood. Ilyusha “knew better than anyone else all rural beliefs” and sincerely believed in them.

Brownie in a paper mill

The first story was about how the clerk ordered Ilyusha with a group of guys to spend the night in a paper mill. Upstairs someone unexpectedly stomped, went down the stairs, walked to the door. The door swung open, and nobody after it. And suddenly someone coughs! Scared the house boys.

Talking lamb on the grave of the drowned man

Then Ilyusha spoke of a broken dam, an unclean place where the drowned man was once buried. Once a clerk sent a kennel to the post office. He returned through the dam late at night. Suddenly he sees a little white lamb sitting on the grave of a drowned man. The kennel decided to take it with him. The lamb does not break out of the hands, it only looks intently into the eyes. It became terribly a kennel, he strokes a lamb and says: “Byasha, byasha!” And the lamb bared its teeth, and answered him: “Byasha, byasha!”

Late master looking for a break-grass

Then Ilyusha spoke about the deceased gentleman met on the same dam. The dead man was looking for a gap-grass in the "unclean place" and complained that the grave was pressing him.

Parent Saturday

Ilyusha was sure that “you can see the dead at all hours,” and on parental Saturday you can find out who will die this year, you just need to sit on the porch and look at the church road — whoever passes by will die. He talked about a woman who decided to find out who was dying this year, went to the porch on her parents' Saturday and recognized herself in a woman passing by.

Solar Eclipse and Trishka

When the conversation came about the recent “heavenly foresight” - the solar eclipse, Ilyusha told the belief about the amazing person Trishka who will come during the solar eclipse. This Trishka is amazing in his ability to break free from any shackles and leave any prison.

Pavlush

Then Pavlusha also recalled a solar eclipse.

When the sun disappeared, the peasants became frightened, and the lordly cookbook broke all the pots in the furnace, believing that the end of the world had come, and there would be no one to eat cabbage soup. Everyone believed that "white wolves will run across the earth, there will be people, a bird of prey will fly, or they will see Trishka himself."

The peasants went to meet Trishka in the field. Suddenly they see - there is a man "tricky" with a strange head. Everyone rushed to hide, and it turned out to be not Trishka, but a village bochar who bought a new jug and put it on his head to make it easier to carry. Cheered the boys Pavlushin story.

Suddenly, in the midst of conversation, the dogs barked and rushed away. Pavlusha rushed after them. Returning, he said that the dogs sensed the wolf.

Without a twig in his hand, at night, he, without hesitation, galloped alone on a wolf ... "What a glorious boy!" I thought, looking at him.

Kostya

Kostya, a small, puny, very poorly dressed and shy boy of about ten with a thoughtful and sad look, told two stories.

A carpenter meets a mermaid

The first is about a carpenter who got lost in the forest and stumbled upon a mermaid. She sat on a tree branch, called him to her, and laughed. The carpenter took and crossed himself. The mermaid cried plaintively, and then cursed him - the carpenter would grieve until the end of his days. Since then he is sad and walks.

Watery, dragging the boy to the bottom

The second Kostin story was about a boy who was dragged by a water man under water, and his mother went crazy with grief.

Fedya

The eldest of the boys, Fedya, a slender, handsome teenager of about fourteen, belonged, judging by the clothes, to a wealthy family and was “singing” in this company - he treated his friends patronically, but kindly, occasionally interrupted them with good-natured mockery.

Fedya remembered the woman living in his village, who had been abandoned by her lover. She went to drown, and the water dragged her to the bottom, and there she “spoiled”. The woman was pulled out, but she did not come to herself, so she remained a fool.

Vania

The youngest, a seven-year-old boy, Vanya, snoozed all night under the mat, "and only occasionally put his fair-haired curly head out from under it."

Morning

The rest of the children slept when the fires went out. The hunter dozed off too. He left the fires when "morning conceived." The hunter managed to say goodbye only to Pavlushi - he woke up when he left.

Epilogue

The narrator regrets that in the same year, the "glorious guy" Paul died - crashed, falling from his horse.