In one of the cities of the Rostov district there is a court. Boyarin Sturgeon, the voivode of the Khvalynsk Sea Som and the judicial peasants - Sudak and Pike-trembling are considering the petition on Ersha, which was composed of peasants of the Rostov district, fish Bream and Chub. They accuse Yersha of having come from the Volga River to Lake Rostov, which had long been their patrimony, asked to live with his family, and then settled in, bred the children and drove them, peasants, from the patrimony, completely taking possession of their hereditary possession , Rostov lake. Yorsh answers the court that he, who came from small boyars, did not beat or rob anyone, since Lake Rostov was always his property and belonged to his grandfather, old Ruff, and Leshch and Chub - his, Ruff, accusers - were with his father in the slaves.

Yorsh, in turn, blames Leshch and Chub: they, ungrateful, forgetting that he let them go and ordered them to live, went to the Volga during the famine and settled on the bays, after which they started to encroach on his head with a petition . Yorsh complains to the court that Bream and Chub themselves are thieves and robbers and want to completely ruin it. Ruff concludes his speech by mentioning acquaintances with the great princes, boyars, and clerks who eat him, Ruff, and "they fix their stomachs with a hangover."The plaintiffs, Bream and Chub, in response to a request from the judges, refer to the witnesses and ask that they be sent for and listened to.

And the witnesses show that the Bream and the Chub are kind people, God's peasants, feed on their strength, live their fiefdom, and Yorsh is a yabednik, a dashing man, a thief and a robber, there is no one living from him, and he ruined many honest people with his machinations and killed by starvation. Witnesses claim that he is of the lowest kind and not boyar, and as regards meeting and friendship with princes and boyars, Ruff lies impudently, for Ruff knows well only poor people, brazhniki and any tavern gobbers who have nothing to buy good fish .

The sturgeon is the last to stand before the judges and tells them about how vile and insidious Yorsh treated him: he met him, sturgeon, at the mouth of Lake Rostov, called him his brother and advised him to go to the lake, where, as the sturgeon later found out, there is always plenty feed. The sturgeon believed Ersha, because of which the family almost died of starvation, and he himself got into the net, where he was deliberately lured by the malicious Ruff. The court listens attentively to the plaintiffs, witnesses and the defendant and sentences: Justify the bream and the Chub, and accuse Ruff and give the plaintiff, the Bream. Ruff is executed by commercial execution and hanged for theft and shedding on hot days in the sun.