Soon after Peter renewed his note, Pavel strained himself lifting timbers for a new barn, and fell over among the shavings with such a gush4 of blood from the lungs that his fellow workmen thought he would die on the spot. They hauled him home and put him into his bed, and there he lay, very ill indeed. Misfortune seemed to settle like an evil bird on the roof of the log house, and to flap its wings there, warning human beings away. The Russians had such bad luck that people were afraid of them and liked to put them out of mind.
One afternoon Antonia and her father came over to our house to get buttermilk, and lingered, as they usually did, until the sun was low. Just as they were leaving, Russian Peter drove up. Pavel was very bad, he said, and wanted to talk to Mr. Shimerda and his daughter; he had come to fetch them. When Antonia and her father got into the wagon5, I entreated6 grandmother to let me go with them: I would gladly go without my supper, I would sleep in the Shimerdas’ barn and run home in the morning. My plan must have seemed very foolish to her, but she was often large-minded about humouring the desires of other people. She asked Peter to wait a moment, and when she came back from the kitchen she brought a bag of sandwiches and doughnuts for us.
Mr. Shimerda and Peter were on the front seat; Antonia and I sat in the straw behind and ate our lunch as we bumped along. After the sun sank, a cold wind sprang up and moaned over the prairie. If this turn in the weather had come sooner, I should not have got away. We burrowed7 down in the straw and curled up close together, watching the angry red die out of the west and the stars begin to shine in the clear, windy sky. Peter kept sighing and groaning8. Tony whispered to me that he was afraid Pavel would never get well. We lay still and did not talk. Up there the stars grew magnificently bright. Though we had come from such different parts of the world, in both of us there was some dusky superstition9 that those shining groups have their influence upon what is and what is not to be. Perhaps Russian Peter, come from farther away than any of us, had brought from his land, too, some such belief.
The little house on the hillside was so much the colour of the night that we could not see it as we came up the draw. The ruddy windows guided us—the light from the kitchen stove, for there was no lamp burning.
We entered softly. The man in the wide bed seemed to be asleep. Tony and I sat down on the bench by the wall and leaned our arms on the table in front of us. The firelight flickered10 on the hewn logs that supported the thatch11 overhead. Pavel made a rasping sound when he breathed, and he kept moaning. We waited. The wind shook the doors and windows impatiently, then swept on again, singing through the big spaces. Each gust12, as it bore down, rattled13 the panes14, and swelled15 off like the others. They made me think of defeated armies, retreating; or of ghosts who were trying desperately16 to get in for shelter, and then went moaning on. Presently, in one of those sobbing17 intervals18 between the blasts, the coyotes tuned19 up with their whining20 howl; one, two, three, then all together—to tell us that winter was coming. This sound brought an answer from the bed—a long complaining cry—as if Pavel were having bad dreams or were waking to some old misery21. Peter listened, but did not stir. He was sitting on the floor by the kitchen stove. The coyotes broke out again; yap, yap, yap—then the high whine22. Pavel called for something and struggled up on his elbow.
‘He is scared of the wolves,’ Antonia whispered to me. ‘In his country there are very many, and they eat men and women.’ We slid closer together along the bench.
I could not take my eyes off the man in the bed. His shirt was hanging open, and his emaciated23 chest, covered with yellow bristle24, rose and fell horribly. He began to cough. Peter shuffled25 to his feet, caught up the teakettle and mixed him some hot water and whiskey. The sharp smell of spirits went through the room.
Pavel snatched the cup and drank, then made Peter give him the bottle and slipped it under his pillow, grinning disagreeably, as if he had outwitted someone. His eyes followed Peter about the room with a contemptuous, unfriendly expression. It seemed to me that he despised him for being so simple and docile26.
Presently Pavel began to talk to Mr. Shimerda, scarcely above a whisper. He was telling a long story, and as he went on, Antonia took my hand under the table and held it tight. She leaned forward and strained her ears to hear him. He grew more and more excited, and kept pointing all around his bed, as if there were things there and he wanted Mr. Shimerda to see them.
‘It’s wolves, Jimmy,’ Antonia whispered. ‘It’s awful, what he says!’
The sick man raged and shook his fist. He seemed to be cursing people who had wronged him. Mr. Shimerda caught him by the shoulders, but could hardly hold him in bed. At last he was shut off by a coughing fit which fairly choked him. He pulled a cloth from under his pillow and held it to his mouth. Quickly it was covered with bright red spots—I thought I had never seen any blood so bright. When he lay down and turned his face to the wall, all the rage had gone out of him. He lay patiently fighting for breath, like a child with croup. Antonia’s father uncovered one of his long bony legs and rubbed it rhythmically27. From our bench we could see what a hollow case his body was. His spine28 and shoulder-blades stood out like the bones under the hide of a dead steer29 left in the fields. That sharp backbone30 must have hurt him when he lay on it.
Gradually, relief came to all of us. Whatever it was, the worst was over. Mr. Shimerda signed to us that Pavel was asleep. Without a word Peter got up and lit his lantern. He was going out to get his team to drive us home. Mr. Shimerda went with him. We sat and watched the long bowed back under the blue sheet, scarcely daring to breathe.
On the way home, when we were lying in the straw, under the jolting31 and rattling32 Antonia told me as much of the story as she could. What she did not tell me then, she told later; we talked of nothing else for days afterward33.
When Pavel and Peter were young men, living at home in Russia, they were asked to be groomsmen for a friend who was to marry the belle35 of another village. It was in the dead of winter and the groom34’s party went over to the wedding in sledges37. Peter and Pavel drove in the groom’s sledge36, and six sledges followed with all his relatives and friends.
After the ceremony at the church, the party went to a dinner given by the parents of the bride. The dinner lasted all afternoon; then it became a supper and continued far into the night. There was much dancing and drinking. At midnight the parents of the bride said good-bye to her and blessed her. The groom took her up in his arms and carried her out to his sledge and tucked her under the blankets. He sprang in beside her, and Pavel and Peter (our Pavel and Peter!) took the front seat. Pavel drove. The party set out with singing and the jingle38 of sleigh-bells, the groom’s sledge going first. All the drivers were more or less the worse for merry-making, and the groom was absorbed in his bride.
The wolves were bad that winter, and everyone knew it, yet when they heard the first wolf-cry, the drivers were not much alarmed. They had too much good food and drink inside them. The first howls were taken up and echoed and with quickening repetitions. The wolves were coming together. There was no moon, but the starlight was clear on the snow. A black drove came up over the hill behind the wedding party. The wolves ran like streaks39 of shadow; they looked no bigger than dogs, but there were hundreds of them.
Something happened to the hindmost sledge: the driver lost control—he was probably very drunk—the horses left the road, the sledge was caught in a clump40 of trees, and overturned. The occupants rolled out over the snow, and the fleetest of the wolves sprang upon them. The shrieks41 that followed made everybody sober. The drivers stood up and lashed42 their horses. The groom had the best team and his sledge was lightest—all the others carried from six to a dozen people.
Another driver lost control. The screams of the horses were more terrible to hear than the cries of the men and women. Nothing seemed to check the wolves. It was hard to tell what was happening in the rear; the people who were falling behind shrieked43 as piteously as those who were already lost. The little bride hid her face on the groom’s shoulder and sobbed44. Pavel sat still and watched his horses. The road was clear and white, and the groom’s three blacks went like the wind. It was only necessary to be calm and to guide them carefully.
At length, as they breasted a long hill, Peter rose cautiously and looked back. ‘There are only three sledges left,’ he whispered.
‘And the wolves?’ Pavel asked.
‘Enough! Enough for all of us.’
Pavel reached the brow of the hill, but only two sledges followed him down the other side. In that moment on the hilltop, they saw behind them a whirling black group on the snow. Presently the groom screamed. He saw his father’s sledge overturned, with his mother and sisters. He sprang up as if he meant to jump, but the girl shrieked and held him back. It was even then too late. The black ground-shadows were already crowding over the heap in the road, and one horse ran out across the fields, his harness hanging to him, wolves at his heels. But the groom’s movement had given Pavel an idea.
They were within a few miles of their village now. The only sledge left out of six was not very far behind them, and Pavel’s middle horse was failing. Beside a frozen pond something happened to the other sledge; Peter saw it plainly. Three big wolves got abreast45 of the horses, and the horses went crazy. They tried to jump over each other, got tangled46 up in the harness, and overturned the sledge.
When the shrieking47 behind them died away, Pavel realized that he was alone upon the familiar road. ‘They still come?’ he asked Peter.
‘Yes.’
‘How many?’
‘Twenty, thirty—enough.’
Now his middle horse was being almost dragged by the other two. Pavel gave Peter the reins48 and stepped carefully into the back of the sledge. He called to the groom that they must lighten—and pointed49 to the bride. The young man cursed him and held her tighter. Pavel tried to drag her away. In the struggle, the groom rose. Pavel knocked him over the side of the sledge and threw the girl after him. He said he never remembered exactly how he did it, or what happened afterward. Peter, crouching50 in the front seat, saw nothing. The first thing either of them noticed was a new sound that broke into the clear air, louder than they had ever heard it before—the bell of the monastery51 of their own village, ringing for early prayers.
Pavel and Peter drove into the village alone, and they had been alone ever since. They were run out of their village. Pavel’s own mother would not look at him. They went away to strange towns, but when people learned where they came from, they were always asked if they knew the two men who had fed the bride to the wolves. Wherever they went, the story followed them. It took them five years to save money enough to come to America. They worked in Chicago, Des Moines, Fort Wayne, but they were always unfortunate. When Pavel’s health grew so bad, they decided52 to try farming.
Pavel died a few days after he unburdened his mind to Mr. Shimerda, and was buried in the Norwegian graveyard53. Peter sold off everything, and left the country—went to be cook in a railway construction camp where gangs of Russians were employed.
At his sale we bought Peter’s wheelbarrow and some of his harness. During the auction54 he went about with his head down, and never lifted his eyes. He seemed not to care about anything. The Black Hawk money-lender who held mortgages on Peter’s livestock55 was there, and he bought in the sale notes at about fifty cents on the dollar. Everyone said Peter kissed the cow before she was led away by her new owner. I did not see him do it, but this I know: after all his furniture and his cookstove and pots and pans had been hauled off by the purchasers, when his house was stripped and bare, he sat down on the floor with his clasp-knife and ate all the melons that he had put away for winter. When Mr. Shimerda and Krajiek drove up in their wagon to take Peter to the train, they found him with a dripping beard, surrounded by heaps of melon rinds.
The loss of his two friends had a depressing effect upon old Mr. Shimerda. When he was out hunting, he used to go into the empty log house and sit there, brooding. This cabin was his hermitage until the winter snows penned him in his cave. For Antonia and me, the story of the wedding party was never at an end. We did not tell Pavel’s secret to anyone, but guarded it jealously—as if the wolves of the Ukraine had gathered that night long ago, and the wedding party been sacrificed, to give us a painful and peculiar56 pleasure. At night, before I went to sleep, I often found myself in a sledge drawn57 by three horses, dashing through a country that looked something like Nebraska and something like Virginia.
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1
exorbitant
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| adj.过分的；过度的 | |
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creditor
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| n.债仅人，债主，贷方 | |
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hawk
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| n.鹰，骗子；鹰派成员 | |
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gush
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| v.喷，涌；滔滔不绝(说话)；n.喷，涌流；迸发 | |
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wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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entreated
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| 恳求，乞求( entreat的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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burrowed
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| v.挖掘（洞穴），挖洞( burrow的过去式和过去分词 )；翻寻 | |
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8
groaning
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| adj. 呜咽的, 呻吟的 动词groan的现在分词形式 | |
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9
superstition
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| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
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10
flickered
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| （通常指灯光）闪烁，摇曳( flicker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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11
thatch
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| vt.用茅草覆盖…的顶部；n.茅草(屋) | |
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12
gust
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| n.阵风，突然一阵（雨、烟等），（感情的）迸发 | |
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rattled
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| 慌乱的，恼火的 | |
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panes
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| 窗玻璃( pane的名词复数 ) | |
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15
swelled
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| 增强( swell的过去式和过去分词 )； 肿胀； （使）凸出； 充满（激情） | |
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16
desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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18
intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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19
tuned
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| adj.调谐的，已调谐的v.调音( tune的过去式和过去分词 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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20
whining
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| n. 抱怨，牢骚 v. 哭诉，发牢骚 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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22
whine
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| v.哀号，号哭；n.哀鸣 | |
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23
emaciated
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| adj.衰弱的，消瘦的 | |
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bristle
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| v.（毛发）直立，气势汹汹，发怒；n.硬毛发 | |
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25
shuffled
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| v.洗（纸牌）( shuffle的过去式和过去分词 )；拖着脚步走；粗心地做；摆脱尘世的烦恼 | |
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26
docile
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| adj.驯服的，易控制的，容易教的 | |
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rhythmically
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| adv.有节奏地 | |
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spine
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| n.脊柱，脊椎；(动植物的)刺；书脊 | |
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29
steer
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| vt.驾驶，为…操舵；引导；vi.驾驶 | |
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30
backbone
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| n.脊骨，脊柱，骨干；刚毅，骨气 | |
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31
jolting
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| adj.令人震惊的 | |
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32
rattling
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| adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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groom
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| vt.给（马、狗等）梳毛，照料，使...整洁 | |
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35
belle
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| n.靓女 | |
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sledge
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| n.雪橇，大锤；v.用雪橇搬运，坐雪橇往 | |
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37
sledges
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| n.雪橇，雪车( sledge的名词复数 )v.乘雪橇( sledge的第三人称单数 )；用雪橇运载 | |
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38
jingle
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| n.叮当声，韵律简单的诗句；v.使叮当作响，叮当响，押韵 | |
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39
streaks
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| n.（与周围有所不同的）条纹( streak的名词复数 )；（通常指不好的）特征（倾向）；（不断经历成功或失败的）一段时期v.快速移动( streak的第三人称单数 )；使布满条纹 | |
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40
clump
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| n.树丛，草丛；vi.用沉重的脚步行走 | |
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41
shrieks
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| n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
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42
lashed
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| adj.具睫毛的v.鞭打( lash的过去式和过去分词 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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43
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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44
sobbed
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| 哭泣，啜泣( sob的过去式和过去分词 )； 哭诉，呜咽地说 | |
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45
abreast
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| adv.并排地；跟上(时代)的步伐，与…并进地 | |
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46
tangled
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| adj. 纠缠的，紊乱的 动词tangle的过去式和过去分词 | |
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47
shrieking
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| v.尖叫( shriek的现在分词 ) | |
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48
reins
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| 感情，激情； 缰( rein的名词复数 )； 控制手段； 掌管； （成人带着幼儿走路以防其走失时用的）保护带 | |
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49
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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50
crouching
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的现在分词 ) | |
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51
monastery
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| n.修道院，僧院，寺院 | |
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52
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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53
graveyard
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| n.坟场 | |
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54
auction
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| n.拍卖；拍卖会；vt.拍卖 | |
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55
livestock
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| n.家畜，牲畜 | |
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56
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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57
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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