What does this sentence mean?

[Loren A. Billings]

I've encountered the following 19th-century-Russian sentence, out of context,
the meaning of which I'd like to find out:

Ia chaiu, nebo s ovchinu pokazalos'.

[reportedly in Pushkin's _Kapitanskaia dochka._]

I know what each word means, but not sure of the composite meaning.
Kindly respond to me directly:

billings at princeton.edu
billings at pucc.bitnet

I will post a summary to this list.  --Loren Billings