The Fair at Sorochyntsi (short story)

This story opens with the novice narrator described in Panko's introduction providing a literary description of the beauty of Ukraine (then known as Little Russia) and sets the date in August 1800.

The main characters of the story, Solopy Cherevik, his wife Khavronya Nikiforovna, and his daughter Paraska, are traveling to the fair to sell some items, including their old mare.

Cherevik first accepts but later declines because of his constantly enraged spouse and the young man decides to figure out a way to get her, agreeing to give up his oxen for 15 rubles in desperation to a gypsy, if he helps him.

While Khavronya is having a tryst with Afanasy Ivanovich, a priest's son, they hear a group of people coming to her house, so she quickly has the young man hide up in the rafters.

It reforms, however, so he crosses himself and does it again, and the demon eventually had to come to collect the pieces of his jacket, and is down to the last fragment at the time the story is taking place.