Were they ideas, memories, or dreams that had been flitting through his mind?
They were frequently all three.

He would rouse himself and ask what he had been thinking about; and would see himself as a Cossack working in a vineyard with his Cossack wife, or an abrek in the mountains, or a boar running away from himself.

And all the time he kept peering and watching for a pheasant, a boar, or a deer.
In the evening Daddy Eroshka would be sure to be sitting with him.
Vanyusha would bring a jug of chikhir, and they would converse quietly, drink, and separate to go quite contentedly to bed.

The next day he would again go shooting, again be healthily weary, again they would sit conversing and drink their fill, and again be happy.

Sometimes on a holiday or day of rest Olenin spent the whole day at home.