The story refers to a series of stories of the beekeeper Rudy Panko, published in the book “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”, brief retelling which can also be found on the Literaguru. The content of this story is ideal for a reading diary.
(268 words) The young Cossack Levko has long been in love with the modest beauty Gann, but his father, the village head, does not want to hear anything about marriage. Only secret meetings on clear summer nights are allowed for lovers.
On one of these evenings, sitting on the porch, Ganna asks to tell a story about an old house by the pond, with boarded up shutters. Levko tells her that there was once a centurion with his daughter. He married a woman who greatly disliked the little girl and ordered her husband to drive the girl out of the house. The stepdaughter rushed from grief from the cliff into the water and became a drowned woman. She also dragged the evil stepmother into the underwater kingdom, but she escaped punishment when she herself turned into a drowned woman.
Walking another time past the house of Gann, he hears Levko, as she tells someone about him in the dark. The stranger offers the girl his love, they say, more serious. A clear month illuminates the face of a stranger, and Levko recognizes his father in him.
Having persuaded the couple to teach the village head a lesson, the son sees how they break a window in the house with a stone, or they sing offensive songs on the street. And after Levko falls asleep near the pond, where there is an abandoned panel house. He sees in the reflection of the pond, as if the shutters in the abandoned house were not boarded up, and the deceased centurion's daughter peeped out of the window. She complains that her stepmother is still plaguing her, and asks the guy to find one among the drowned women. The pair carefully looks at the pale transparent girls who are dancing, and easily finds the witch. Laughing, the little girl hands the hero a note.
Waking up, Levko sees a piece of paper in his hand and, cursing his illiteracy, gives it to his father. The note is from the commissioner of an important, retired lieutenant, who, among other things, orders to marry Levka Makogonenka to Gann Petrychenkova. Here the village head can’t do anything and promises to marry the young in the morning.
