Verified textA carpenter was driving home from the forest, hauling a thick log. A gentleman came riding toward him in a troika. "Hey, peasant, get off the road!" "No, master, you get off. I'm with a load, and you're riding empty — you're the one to yield." The gentleman didn't bother to talk much; he shouted to the coachman and the servant: "Throw the cart off the road, lads, and give the peasant a good thrashing so he knows what it means to contradict a gentleman!" The servant and the coachman dared not disobey the gentleman; they jumped down from the box, overturned the cart into the ditch, and beat the carpenter. Then they got back on and drove off, only dust rising in a column. The carpenter struggled and struggled, somehow got the cart out of the ditch, and thought to himself: "All right, master, you won't get away with this; you'll remember how you offended a working man." He made it home, unloaded the log, took his saw and axe, and set off for the landlord's estate. Walking past the master's house, he shouts: "Who wants warm porches built, who wants a bathhouse hewn?" The gentleman loved to build. He heard and called to the carpenter: "Can you really build good porches?" "Why shouldn't I? There's a forest not far from here such that if you build the porches from that timber, you won't even need to heat them in winter — they'll always be warm." And he calls to the gentleman: "Come with me to choose the building timber." They came to the forest. The carpenter walks from tree to tree, tapping each with the butt of his axe. He strikes, then presses his ear to it and listens. "This one won't do. But this one — just right." The gentleman asks: "How can you tell which tree is suitable? Teach me too." The carpenter led him to a thick tree: "Embrace this tree and press your ear firmly against it. I'll tap, and you listen — just press harder." "But my arms aren't long enough to embrace the tree." "No matter, let me tie you to it." He tied the gentleman's hands to the tree, broke off a birch switch, and began to ply him with it. Beating him, he says: "I'll give you another thrashing, so you'll know what it means to wrong a peasant for nothing." He beat him, beat him, and left the gentleman tied to the tree. He himself went away. Only the next day was the gentleman found, untied, and brought home. The gentleman took to his bed from those beatings and ailed. Meanwhile, the carpenter disguised himself as a folk healer, dressed so that he couldn't be recognized, and came to the estate. "Does anyone need healing, mending?" The gentleman heard and calls: "Heal me, brother. The horses bolted, I fell, and since then I can neither sit nor stand." "Why not heal? Order the bathhouse heated and tell everyone no one is to come in, or they'll jinx it and all the treatment will be lost — it'll be even worse for you." The bathhouse was heated; the carpenter led the gentleman in, locked the door, and says: "Undress and lie on the bench; I'll rub you with a burning salve and steam you — you'll have to endure it." "You'd better tie me to the bench, or I might fall off." That's just what the carpenter wanted. He tied the gentleman to the bench tight and tight, and began to lash him with a strap. Beating him, he says: "Don't wrong a working man for nothing, don't wrong a peasant..." He gave the gentleman as much of it as he needed and went home. The next day the gentleman rode to town, saw the carpenter at the market, and asks: "Tell me, peasant, you were here yesterday, weren't you?" And the carpenter guessed what was what, and answers: "Not at all — I'm forty-six years old; how can I be yesterday's?"