This story dates back to the time when the narrator was still a child. A father and one of his sons went to the Crimea to sell tobacco, leaving his wife at home, three more sons and a grandfather to watch the tower - it’s a profitable business, there are many travelers, and best of all, the Chumaks who told outlandish stories. One evening, several carts with Chumaks come, all of them with old grandfather acquaintances. They kissed, lit a cigarette, a conversation began, and there was a treat. The grandfather demanded that the grandchildren dance, entertain the guests, but not for long endure, he himself went. Grandfather danced gloriously, pretending such pretzels that it was wonderful, until he reached one, a place near a bed with cucumbers. Here his legs became. I tried again - the same. Oh, and scolded, and started again - to no avail. Someone laughed from behind. My grandfather looked around, but did not recognize the place: both the chestnut and the Chumaki - everything was gone, there was one smooth field around. I understood where he was, behind the priest's garden, behind the barnyard of the volost clerk. “That's where the evil spirits dragged!” He began to get out, no month, found a path in the dark. A light flashed nearby at a grave, and the other a little at a distance. "Treasure!" - the grandfather decided and heaped a hefty branch for signs, since he had no spade with him. Late he returned to the tower, there were no Chumaks, the children were sleeping.
The next evening, capturing the spade and shovel, he headed for the priest's garden. Here, according to all signs, he went into the field in the old place: and the dovecote sticks out, but the threshing floor is not visible. I went closer to the threshing floor - the dovecote disappeared. And then the rain started, and the grandfather, having not found a place, ran back with abuse. The next day he went with a spade to dig a new bed, yes, bypassing a cursed place where he did not dance, he struck with hearts in a spade, and ended up in the same field. He knew everything: the threshing floor, the dovecote, and the grave with a heaped branch. On the grave lay a stone. Having dug up, his grandfather rolled him off and wanted to sniff a tobacco, as someone sneezed above his head. Looked around - there is nobody. Grandfather started digging and found a boiler. “Ah, my dear, that's where you are!” - exclaimed the grandfather. The bird’s nose, the lamb’s head from the top of the tree, and the bear said the same thing. “Yes, it’s scary to say a word,” muttered his grandfather, and followed by a bird’s nose, a ram’s head, and a bear. Grandfather wants to run - under the feet of a steep without a bottom, a mountain hangs over his head. Grandfather threw the boiler, and everything became the same. Deciding that evil spirits only scared, he grabbed the cauldron and rushed to run.
About this time on the chestnut, both the children and the mother who came in wondered where the grandfather had gone. After supper, the mother went to pour hot slops, and a barrel creeps towards her: it is clear that one of the children, playing pranks, pushes her from behind. Mother splashed into her slop. It turned out to be a grandfather. Grandfathers opened the cauldron, and in it there is rubbish, squabble and "I am ashamed to say what it is." From that time on, grandfather swore to believe the devil, blocked the damned place with wattle fence, and when the neighboring Cossacks hired a field under the chestnut, something always came up in the enchanted place “God knows what!”.
